Chapter 133 - I Will Marry You, Lady!
Chapter 133 I Will Marry You, Lady!
"..." Qiu Yelan cursed in his heart. She stood up and kicked Jiang Yashang heavily, ''That's why you want to get rid of me while we are drinking? You must know that you would be defeated at last! I thought you could drink much, but you can’t instead. I should have done it by myself if I had known it in the first place."
Qiu Feng did not respond to her words. He asked directly, "Where is his home? I will send him home. Your Grace, you should go home too." This was a fiasco.
"He doesn’t need you to send him. Here is his home!" The fact proved that Qiu Yelan's sympathy was as much as Jiang Yadan's. After realizing that Jiang Yashuang would be alive, she went back to her seat indifferently. "Let's continue. I will follow you!" screamed she.
Certainly, Qiu Feng would reject it.
"Your Grace, stop!" he warned with a frown.
Qiu Yelan did not respond to him. She ran to the corner, getting another bottle of wine in her hand. She opened it and drank the wine like a whale drinking seawater before Qiu Feng did something to stop her.
"Stop!" shouted Qiu Feng, leaving Jiang Yashuang alone and rushing to her after seeing her action. However, in seconds, Qiu Yelan had drunk most of the wine in the bottle. Seeing Qiu Feng running toward her, she stopped to wipe her mouth, "Do you think I am drunk?" asked she, disdainfully.
Qiu Feng was stunned by her question. He looked at her up and down. She was sober and full of energy. If she could be regarded as a drunken person, there would be no sober men in the world!
"Now I understand why you want to compete with me?" asked Qiu Feng with a relief. Jiang Yashuang had been drunk, lying on the ground. Whether to send him or not, Qiu Feng did not care at all. But Qiu Yelan was a girl. He neither dared help her up himself as he must touch her nor asked somebody else to help. He had no idea what to do. This was why he tried to stop her from drinking too much. In fact, if Jiang Yashuang had not been here, he certainly would not have competed with a little girl.
Qiu Yelan said proudly, "So, are you a man or not? You have drunk three bottles of wine, including the one hanging on the persimmon tree behind my room. How about this, I don't want to take advantage of you. I will drink three bottles too. And then, we begin to compete!"
With Qiu Feng standing still and glaring at her, Qiu Yelan drank three bottles calmly and unstoppable. Only did her arm tremble a little because she held the bottle too long.
No drops of wine were wasted.
Now looked at her. The more she drank, the better she got! The more she drank, the soberer she became! She behaved just like she just began to drink.
She wiped her mouth, put aside the third bottle dismissively, and asked Qiu Feng aggressively, "Now, dare you to compete with me?"
Qiu Feng sighed and said, "Okay!" He was a man who liked to drink. Otherwise, he wouldn't be carrying a bottle of wine at midnight, hanging around. True to his nature with responsibility, he was undoubtedly sure of his drinking capacity, seeing Qiu Yelan who was, despite young but with good drinking capacity, he couldn't help being competitive at this moment though he was composed!
After a long time, Jiang Yashuang woke up in a daze. He had a headache and his ears seemed to buzz from time to time. He subconsciously ran his inner strength to make himself sober, which made him feel better. Then he found himself lying on the cold, damp floor. His dress was wet too.
"Twenty... twenty-three bottles!" Jiang Yashuang hardly helped himself to get up and heard a loud sound suddenly, "Really? Twenty-three bottles?"
"Nonsense! I am sober. I don't make mistakes. You count the bottles around us: one, two, three... twenty-three. You think that I was you? Eight bottles have made you drunk!" The clear voice which Jiang Yashuang was familiar with made Jiang Yashuang sober completely. He raised his head and then was stunned....
There, Qiu Feng and Qiu Yelan sat against each other on the table. They were staring at each other while they were holding bottles, drinking. Many empty bottles were lying on the ground in an enormous mess behind them. The fact that drove Jiang Yashuang crazy was that the bottles behind Qiu Yelan were much more than the bottles behind Qiu Feng. It was a fact that nobody would doubt it.
"Eight, eight bottles!" said Qiu Feng. He became a drunken man just like other drunken persons. His behavior and politeness were gone away with the wind. He even could not speak clearly. Some wet places on his chest, obviously, were stained by wine. He was trying to keep himself sober, "Well, well. So, you mean, you drank fifteen bottles? How is that possible?"
"Yes, definitely. It's possible!" Qiu Yelan said arrogantly. "Long ago, I was called a girl who could drink thousands of glasses. Look at you. You are a loser. I can defeat eight or ten persons like you at the same time. No pressure at all..." Speaking of this, she recognized a man standing beside her. She was so shocked that she almost threw away the wine bottle! Staring at the man, she recognized it was Jiang Yashuang. She relieved and said with anger, "How dare you! Why did you not inform me when you woke up? I almost jumped out of my skin!"
It was normal reaction to a weird stuff that went up from nowhere when someone was recalling her past. Fortunately, she did not take him as a zombie, or she would have thrown the bottle on his head.
Looking at himself and his messy dress, Jiang Yashuang smiled bitterly. He explained, "I am a little dizzy. I did not mean to scare you." He paused for a second and continued, "Yelan, I never heard that you are so good at drinking wine. Why didn’t you tell me before?"
"Because I am a humble person!" Qiu Yelan said with complacency. Then she calmed herself down and said, "It's a joke. A joke. You didn’t get it?"
She was concerned that he would continue to ask her more questions. So, she grunted and proceeded immediately, "You, on the contrary, are an annoying man. You can't drink a drop of wine if you don't use your inner strength. But you dared compete with him. Fortunately, I neither rejected nor accepted your challenge. Or I would have lost the competition badly!"
Her words made Jiang Yashuang awkward, "I thought that you couldn't drink too much, just like me. I was concerned about you. Too much drink may hurt your health."
"I am not so stupid to put forward a competition that I am not good at!" said Qiu Yelan coldly. "I win if I can drink more than he! If I lost, well, I would get the evidence to sell him to my brother. The man he sent to me had a competition with me about wine at midnight. So, my cousin won't believe in every word he said!"
"...!!!"
Jiang Yashuang and Qiu Feng who almost fainted were shocked deeply by her words. After a long silence, Qiu Feng murmured, "So, you don't know how much you can drink, right?"
She did not drink wine before. She certainly did not know how much she could drink. But she never got drunk before even after she drank thousands of wine glass… Qiu Yelan drank all the wine of the bottle held in her hand. Jiang Yashuang rushed to hold her and put the wine bottle on the ground. She asked, "I won, right? If you don't think so, you can finish the rest seven bottles. Then we can continue our competition!"
"You won!" said Qiu Feng, trembling to stand up. After speaking of this, he did not lose conscience. Instead, he used his inner strength. In a second, his whole body is steaming with a strong wine smell. In a minute, his red face faded, turning to be a normal color. He opened his eyes which became bright again. Glaring at Qiu Yelan for a moment, he said, "You are so awesome!"
"So, what about tonight?" asked Qiu Yelan, smiling courtly at him.
"As I bet, I accept the result." said Qiu Feng promptly.
That’s why people loved to do business with straightforward men! Hearing his words, Qiu Yelan relieved. She smiled and said, "Thank you!"
"But you'd better not contact General Jiang in private anymore." Qiu Feng said, brushing aside Jiang Yashuang who was nearby. "I promised you that this is the last time I cover you. After tonight, if I saw you playing with him, I would tell your brother!"
Jiang Yashuang said immediately, "I have told my parents that I will marry her as soon as her mourning period is over! If you don't believe what I said..."
"You should tell him what you said to me. I am not in charge of this!" said Qiu Feng, shaking his hand to stop him. Then he turned to Qiu Yelan, "Based on the news your brother got, the reason the couple of the Duke of Xihe promised to return Old Princess Lian's and Princess Ruan's dowries to you quickly is that they thought Old Princess Lian's stuff might secretly relate to the property hidden in the Prince's Mansion of Xihe. But over the past days, they must have figured out what’s going on. They regretted deeply to give you their half part of the property to you! In one word, you should be alert on everything!"
"It's easy. I will..." said Jiang Yashuang. He was interrupted by Qiu Feng, "General Jiang, do you want Commandery Princess Ningyi's reputation to be bruised completely? You must remember, she is in her mourning period now!"
Jiang Yashuang did not respond for a second. "Okay, I will wait until her mourning period is over!" Prince's Mansion of Xihe was still a Prince's Mansion, even if it did not have real power. The Prince could not get things done without being noticed by others. There were many officials keeping eyes on everything everywhere.
If a Grace had an affair with others and indirectly killed her uncle and aunt during her mourning period, she would be gossiped to death. If that were Qiu Yelan's result, she would definitely not be allowed to marry anyone in the Jiang Family, though many men in the Jiang Family did not have a good reputation either. As Jiang Yashuang's parents were not living in the capital. His elder members of the family, including Marquess Qin, would not allow it to happen because to allow Jiang Yashuang to marry a girl whose reputation was bruised was a bad fact that was difficult to be explained to his son and daughter-in-law.
We could assume that even if Jiang Yashuang married Qiu Yelan, she might not get a decent status in the family.
So, they had to hold back their emotion until Qiu Yelan's mourning period was over. It was, by then, the right time to deal with the Prince's Mansion of Xihe without hurting others.
Qiu Feng brushed aside Jiang Yashuang, and reminded Qiu Yelan, "It's almost dawn. Let's go! I must go and report to Ruan Qingyan after sending you home!"
The next day, Qiu Yelan smelled a hint of Yuelin Fragrance beside her pillow while she was lying down. She searched for the source, finding out a note under her pillow. Out of curiosity, she put it in the light of the candle, seeing many strong but soft Chinese words. It's a poem named Love Reminiscences:
In the bright moonlight, the flowers bloomed, beautiful and lovely.
I held your dress which was whiter than snow and shadowed peach and plum.
Your black hair and expressive eyes shot out glances that reflected your animation.
Drank thousands of bottles but still smiled in the wind. My heart had been moved!
Several words were written after the poem, "I still remembered what happened last night. Do you still have a headache? If yes, please try this recipe." Following the line was a recipe for sobering up. Qiu Yelan read it happily, pursed and said to herself, "I don't have a headache. You must have one! I certainly will not have a headache because I can drink much without being drunk!"
She leaped out of bed, preparing a pen. She was confident that she could write a reply readily...
After several minutes, Qiu Yelan wrote nothing but tens of balls of wasted paper. Now she pulled at her hair with a fierce grimace and shouted, no confidence at all, "Why are you writing a poem to me? Huh? Don't you know I learned a little... I don't know how to write in an old language. Now how can I give you a reply? I am a smart girl. I can’t accept to do copy one of our ancestors!"
"I give up!" said Qiu Yelan after pondering for a long time. She smacked her hand down on to the table and then wrote words flashing in her head right now. After writing, she put the paper on the table and went back to her soft bed. "I'll let you know I am not one you can mess with!"
Then, Jiang Yashuang got her letter. There were one-line words only, "I want peaches and plums now!"
As Qiu Yelan expected, Jiang Yashuang stopped his smile. He must get a headache, "Now is autumn. Peaches and plums are the fruits of the summer... What should I do?"
After half a day, Qiu Yelan received two boxes of preserves: one box of preaches and one box of plums. There was a letter inside with apologizing words...
"I said I want fresh ones! Do you understand?" What Jiang Yashuang did could not satisfy her! As soon as Jiang Yashuang came that night, she was mad at him, "Who told you I want preserves! If I wanted preserves, I would send somebody to buy!"
"But now it is autumn. How can I get them for you in autumn? How about next year. Next year, I will get you as much as you want..." Jiang Yashuang tried everything to get her happy. However, that's not what Qiu Yelan wanted to hear. "I want them now! I don't want them next year!"
Jiang Yashuang glared at him, smiling at her, "Are you giving me a hard time on purpose?"
"Objection?" Qiu Yelan growled.
"Easy, girl. I will marry you as soon as your mourning period is over!" said Jiang Yashuang, stroking her long hair affectionately. "I won't forget you..."
Qiu Yelan was stunned to be still. Then she said hurriedly, "Do you think I'm ridiculous because I'm afraid you'll forget me? How dare you! You are such a... a... silly man!!!"
"Two years will pass soon..." Jiang Yashuang said, giving her a sweet smile. He continued softly, "I really, really won't forget you. You see, I am here now... Whoa, don't hit my head..."