Deep in the quiet night, most of the escort agency's lamps had gone out. Only a few guards remained, strolling outside the walls on patrol.
There were plenty of rooms in the agency's rear courtyard, including quarters for wives and concubines, but Ye Jingtang had lived here alone with his adoptive father since childhood and had never used them. They had only been cleaned out after Dongfang Liren arrived.
The Empress Dowager had only just returned and had retired early. Hongyu, staying in a side room, had already entered dreamland.
But around midnight, the Empress Dowager, who had already been fast asleep, rolled over in bed and opened her almond-shaped eyes to gaze at the moonlight on the window paper. Every sort of emotion filled her eyes, except sleepiness.
As the saying went, it was easy to go from frugality to luxury, but hard to go from luxury to frugality. A sense of security was probably much the same.
Over the past several days, the Empress Dowager had mostly slept on horseback, held in Ye Jingtang's arms. When they stopped to camp, she had also rested wrapped in a blanket, leaning against his chest.
Sleeping like that had indeed been uncomfortable, but she had felt perfectly safe. Aside from being a little embarrassed, she had had nothing to worry about.
Now she lay in a spacious room on soft bedding. Comfortable it might have been, but her heart felt distressingly empty, as though something were missing.
The Empress Dowager gazed at the window paper. She knew her state of mind was wrong and that she should not think about these things, yet she could not stop feeling unsettled, silently grumbling:
*You even said you cared about me as much as your beloved, yet you abandoned me as soon as we