The Double

"What do you mean?" Jiang Li sensitively picked up on the other implications in her words.

"Second Miss, this matter has been buried in my heart for many years," Maternal Aunt Hu said with a bitter smile, "Everyone in the residence avoids me like a plague, and I haven’t been able to share this secret with anyone else. But now that you are here, I think it’s right that you should know about this too. Actually, the lady’s death was not an accident."

Upon hearing this, Jiang Li felt as if she had been doused with a bucket of cold water in the already cold weather, chilling her to the bone. Her smile vanished completely, and she simply asked, "Maternal Aunt Hu, you must clarify what you are saying."

Maternal Aunt Hu, as if she hadn’t noticed the change in Jiang Li’s face, continued on her own, "Initially, when Lady Ji entered our home, at first, I thought that if I acted gentle and submissive, Lady Ji would spare my daughter and me from trouble. Back then, I would often try to please Lady Ji, bringing her food I made and embroideries. One day, I overheard Lady Ji talking with her mother, saying that the doctor who had treated the lady had now returned to Yanjing City and that they needed to silence him."

"What did you say?" Jiang Li frowned, "Didn’t my mother die because she was weakened after giving birth to me?" She had heard that the real Miss Jiang the Second blamed herself severely for this reason. If she hadn’t struggled so hard to give birth to herself, Ye Zhenzhen wouldn’t have had to die so early.

"Weakening health could be restored slowly with care," Maternal Aunt Hu said. "But the lady’s health kept declining over that half year. We didn’t think too much of it at the time, but one day, I suddenly sensed something was wrong. After the lady died, her personal maids left the Jiang Residence for various reasons, either returning home to care for sick mothers or leaving to get married, and we heard nothing from them half a year later. Even the maids that the lady left for you, Second Miss, are no longer around."

"Now that I think about it, it might have been Lady Ji who bought off those maids and the treating doctor, tampering with the lady’s medicine and causing her demise."

Jiang Li shook her head: "But there was no need for that. My father took a fancy to Lady Ji only after my mother’s death. At that time, Lady Ji was still an unmarried woman. In the whole Yanjing City, given the Ji family’s status, although they couldn’t match the high-ranking Jiang Family, any ordinary Official Family’s sons would have been sufficient. She didn’t need to remarry into this family as a second wife."

"That is what I also do not understand," Maternal Aunt Hu said, her face showing some confusion, "To say that Lady Ji had already taken a liking to my lord and used such vicious means doesn’t make sense. Lady Ji and my lord had not met each other before."

Jiang Li fell silent.

"After knowing this, I dared not speak out, fearing the more secrets I knew, the quicker I would die," Maternal Aunt Hu said, "I thought, as long as I could protect Yueer until she grew up, all these matters should be left unknown, rotting in my stomach. Little did I expect..." She let out a bitter laugh: "This is the punishment from the heavens for me. The lady was so kind to me on normal days, yet I couldn’t avenge her, and that’s why I deserve to lose Yueer. It’s this wrong of my own doing."