37

                                    

                                          
“What is the matter with you” Sima Ling changed into her riding attire and came out. Seeing Sima Xiang’s expression was not well, she looked around in puzzlement. Then she saw Gu Ru Jiu leaving in the distance with several other misses. “You had a conflict with Miss Gu?”
She didn’t know how Third Aunt usually taught her cousin. Their family had come to Jing for many years, and she had led her cousin to attend many gatherings of noble misses. But after these years, Cousin did not appear to be on good terms with anyone. She didn’t know whose personality the other had inherited.
She knew that Cousin was restrained because she was not born in Jing. But if she was always wary of this one and careful of the next even when having fun, then it would be so tiring.
“It’s nothing. Second Miss Gu is young, and I will not hold this against her.” Sima Xiang shook her head. She glanced at the misses of aristocratic families walking together with Sima Ling and smiled towards them.
Seeing her like this, Sima Ling could not voice the words in her chest. She just felt that her cousin had been raised too petty-minded by her third uncle and aunt.
“Let’s go. Today, we did not bring horses and have to pick our own.” Sima Ling turned and said to her good friends, “We cannot let them pick the good horses first.”
Sima Xiang followed behind them and remained silent as she listened to them say what kind of horses they would pick.
There were many horses tied up on the stables. The stablehands carefully comforted the horses so that the important people could slowly pick.
Gu Ru Jiu picked a chestnut horse. She turned and saw Yang Xi Xue come over with a short-legged horse. She smiled and said, “Why did you pick this one?”
“I am not skilled at riding and shooting, and I’m just participating for the sake of it.” Yang Xi Xue knew her weaknesses well and did not plan to force herself. “But you, be careful later.”
“Don’t worry.” Gu Ru Jiu reached out to pat the horse’s neck. “I know my limits. Cousin, don’t worry.”
As the two spoke, Sima Ling’s group were laughing as they walked in. Sima Ling, from the bottom of her heart, felt that the matter had been a tragedy caused by the third branch not raising their son well. A young master of an aristocratic family had no sense of propriety like the wastrel sons of new nobility. They really thought that the capital was the remote village they had lived in where they could do as they wished?
Gu Ru Jiu saw Sima Ling’s group and bent her knees in a bow to them. Sima Ling smiled and returned the greeting as though there was no conflict between the two families. The other misses exchanged greetings and smiled at each other without any awkwardness.
Only Sima Xiang felt her face was hot as she stood within the group. She regretted coming with the eldest branch to this place.
She should not have come. Coming also made her just a joke. She had a brother who was a killer. With what could she still enter the palace? But if she thought like this, the sobs of her mother sounded in her mind, the cries suffocating her.
“The empress dowager and His Majesty have come.”
“It really is His Majesty.”
She suddenly came back to attention and took several steps back along with the other misses. Then she saw a pair of black boots pass by her. Thinking of the means that her family had used in order for her to marry this man, she felt endless courage well up. She ignored her deportment and looked up directly at the emperor.
So it was him…
Sima Xiang thought of the young master she had once encountered on the streets and couldn’t help but grimace. No wonder those young masters of aristocratic families had followed behind him. So he was the emperor.