Crimson Fetters

Within These Four Walls

Qingli's Bedchamber, Yang Estate | 18:55 PM.

The moment the limousine came to a stop at the front of the estate, Qingli who had been making herself as small as possible against the car door for the entire journey threw it open and was out before the engine had fully settled, leaving her heels on the seat behind her. She ran barefoot across the entrance hall and up the stairs without looking back.

Bang.

She drove the door shut and slid the bolt home, pressing her back against the cold wood, heart hammering so hard it ached in her chest. She stood there in the dark, struggling to pull her breath into any kind of order.

"What is… what is wrong with me," she murmured to no one, one hand drifting to her lips where she had, in a moment of extraordinary recklessness, pressed them against his. Then down to her sternum, feeling the percussion of her own pulse. "Why does it feel like this."

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Three heavy blows against the door from outside. She flinched from her own skin, the colour draining from her face certain, for one terrible second, that he had come to collect what she owed him.

"Qingli! Change out of that dress and give it back and take your wretched shoes with you. Running around without looking where you're going, honestly"

She exhaled so hard her knees nearly went. "Right, yes, I'll bring it now!"

She pushed off the door and went to the wardrobe. Her bags had been unpacked and put away while she was out, she noticed. She changed quickly, muttering to herself under her breath, pressing the anxiety down by volume.

"You don't have to break the door down. A knock would have carried perfectly well. Mood swings like a man twice his age no wonder my wonderful father was perfectly content to send me here instead of his precious darling." She cracked the door open a fraction and held out the midnight blue qipao.

"Your mother's dress," she said quietly. "Returned."

Yang Bei took it without a word. He tossed her heels through the gap in the door, his face unreadable, sharp and still as something carved from stone. His eyes moved to the pallor of her face for a moment just a moment before he turned and walked away without a sound.

Qingli closed the door. Turned around. Lowered herself onto the sofa and let out a very long breath. "All right, Qingli."

She said softly to the room. "You don't get to choose. So you'd better learn to live with it."

She gave a short, dry laugh aimed entirely at herself. "Don't be ridiculous about it. There's no one who wants to hear it anyway."

The grey eyes settled and went still ice forming over the surface so nothing could break through. She put the puppet back on. Sat in the encroaching dark and let herself become perfectly blank.

After a while she reached for her smart phone and looked around the room the cloying pink, the lace, the sweetness of it and decided she'd had enough.

The six-figure sum her late mother had arranged to transfer the moment Qingli registered the marriage was sitting in her account. She opened the interior design app on her phone without hesitation.

"New curtains. New bedding. A proper investment, Qingli if you're going to have to live here, at least make it liveable."

*** ***

Yang Bei's Study, Yang Estate | 21:00 PM.

The study was dark and thick with cigarette smoke, the lamplight barely making an impression. Yang Bei sat at his desk half-listening to a status report from Pan An, his expression flat and remote.

"The shipment arrives tomorrow morning, Boss but we need to reroute to the dock on the other side. The original location's attracting too much attention now. Your wedding put the whole city on alert and the wolves have been circling the wrong end ever since."

"Sharp noses." Yang Bei smiled thinly and swivelled his chair to face the window, regarding the darkness outside. "Then send a tonne or two of something interesting to the original dock as a distraction. Give them something to sniff. And put someone on Yang Chan Da-ge's beloved eldest."

The smile didn't change. "Don't let him out of sight for a moment."

"Yes, Boss." Pan An noted this with visible confusion he was careful not to express, given that Yang Chan's household already had its own protection detail.

Yang Bei turned back to the desk. He picked up his pen, then set it down.

"What is Qingli doing?"

He asked it casually. His tapping finger stopped mid-rhythm to wait for the answer.

A second man stepped forward. "Since she returned, the housekeeper says the mistress has been in her room, Boss. She has the housekeeper helping her… ah… remove the bedding, and is in the process of demolishing the pink room with some enthusiasm."

Yang Bei was still for a moment. His brows drew together. "Removing the bedding. Demolishing the room."

He thought of her asking, the night before, whether there was another room available. Whether the housekeeper might inquire. He let out a brief, involuntary sound in his throat not quite a laugh and reached for his cigarette.

"Pan An find her a contractor before that woman tears the entire estate down to the foundations."

*** ***

Qingli's Bedchamber, Yang Estate | Same time

The room that had once been a confection of pink silk and layered lace looked like the aftermath of something decisive. Qingli stood with one hand on her hip surveying the bare mattress, the curtain rods empty, the assorted pink ornaments in a pile by the door. The housekeepers were gathered at the edges looking shell-shocked.

"Better." She examined the bare mattress with the satisfaction of someone who has removed a splinter.

"I can actually think in here now. If I'd had to sleep another night under all that sweetness, I'd have had nightmares until I died." She gestured at a housekeeper. "The smoke-grey set I ordered can we have it made up tonight?"

"And the curtains tomorrow. Appalling colour." She paused, surveying the damage with a thin smile. "Yingying would have loved it, of course. She'd have walked in and wept with joy."

The clean severity of the new dark bedding being shaken out across the mattress settled something in her chest that the expensive softness of the original had never touched. She lowered herself onto the chaise longue and began scrolling through furniture, pointing at things with one finger while the housekeepers moved around her.

Pink trinkets went into the bin without ceremony.

"What do you think you're doing." The voice arrived before he did.

Yang Bei stood in the doorway taking in the wreckage of what had been a very expensively appointed room, and for a moment he simply stared at it with the expression of a man recalibrating his understanding of what this woman was capable of.

"Changing the bedding," Qingli said simply, not looking up.

The vein at Yang Bei's temple jumped. He repeated it back to himself in a tone of careful, dangerously contained restraint. "Changing the bedding."