Gu Zhao had not spent much time in the manor growing up. Thinking back, he indeed occasionally encountered scenes where female physicians came to diagnose his grandmother.
Those who worked as female physicians were generally women in their forties or fifties, around the age of senior maidservants. Because of their advanced age, they had few taboos when practicing medicine outside.
Since it was the female physician who had previously treated Old Madam Gu, Gu Zhao remained noncommittal. He simply replied that he understood and did not inquire further.
After finishing the account book and forming a plan for his audience with the Emperor the next day, Gu Zhao hastily ate his late-night snack. However, as he lay in bed, he found it difficult to fall asleep.
He had always prided himself on being prudent and disciplined. How could he have been so careless this time as to mistake her identity?
Why had he taken it for granted that it was her? If it wasn't her, then who was she?
She had appeared at his grandmother's place, yet with her talent and beauty, she was not among his grandmother's candidates. It was clear that her status was not suitable for her to be his bedmaid.
Recalling their two encounters, he was glad he had not acted frivolously or flirted with her. Otherwise, if word got out, it would be seen as him losing his mind over lust and ruining his own future.
Fortunately, he realized his mistake early, and no one had noticed anything amiss. It was just two brief meetings, a mere misunderstanding. In a few days, he would surely forget about her entirely, letting the matter scatter to the wind and vanish like smoke.
In the front courtyard's study, Gu Zhao tossed and turned in the dead of night, unable to sleep.
Meanwhile, in the Fu'an Hall of the rear courtyard, Zhu Qingyu had stayed up all night tending to the patient without closing her eyes.
Halfway through the Yin hour, Old Madam Gu's fever finally broke. Her breathing steadied, and she was no longer in danger.
After leaving a prescription for her recovery, Zhu Qingyu bid farewell to the Duchess of Dingguo.
The Duchess of Dingguo urged her to stay:
It has been hard on Doctor Zhu to make this special trip and work tirelessly all night. How can we let you leave so hungry, thirsty, and exhausted? It would make us hosts seem too ignorant of etiquette. Please, Doctor Zhu, have some breakfast and wait until dawn before leaving. I will have the steward arrange a carriage to take you back.
Zhu Qingyu politely declined:
Thank you for your consideration, Madam. It is not that I am being ungrateful or putting on airs, but my husband and I are leaving the capital to return to Yangzhou today. We have already booked a boat, and I must hurry back to pack our luggage, lest we miss the departure time.
Since she had urgent matters, the Duchess of Dingguo did not insist. She had a senior maidservant prepare the consultation fee and escort Zhu Qingyu out of the manor.
The Gu family's steward was about to arrange a carriage, but as soon as they stepped out of the main gate, they saw the Zhang family's carriage already waiting outside.
Hearing the sound of the Duke's manor gates opening, Zhang Shen, who had also stayed awake almost all night, quickly got out of the carriage and hurried forward:
My wife.
After bidding farewell to the escorting maidservant and the steward, Zhu Qingyu got into the carriage carrying the bag of consultation fees. As soon as she sat down, she opened the bag to look.
Zhang Shen held up a lantern to give her light, eagerly peering into the bag as well, and said:
I was worried to death. You went out for a consultation and didn't come back even at midnight. The messenger from the Gu family didn't explain things clearly either, just saying you had to stay for a night consultation. I wanted to come find you, but I couldn't get through because of the curfew. I had to wait painfully until the Yin hour when the curfew ended before coming out. Oh, ten taels of silver! As expected of a Duke's manor, truly generous.
This time, she was invited from Yangzhou to the capital for a consultation, a round trip that took two months. The Gu family was indeed very generous. When paying the fee, they included Zhu Qingyu's travel expenses, two months of lost wages, and the consultation fee itself. Previously, for curing Old Madam Gu's waist injury, the Gu family had paid Zhu Qingyu a full one hundred taels of silver.
With today's additional ten taels, it had surpassed one hundred taels. When Zhu Qingyu treated patients at the Gu family, she only provided prescriptions, not the medicine, as the Gu family had their own herbs. Therefore, this hundred-plus taels of silver was essentially pure profit. Even running her clinic for a whole year, Zhu Qingyu couldn't save up this much money.
Moreover, the Gu family was not only generous but also very refined. Whether it was Old Madam Gu, the Empress Dowager's mother, or the Duchess of Dingguo, despite their noble status, they were extremely polite when speaking to Zhu Qingyu, a female physician from a merchant family. They could basically be called dream patrons.
Therefore, even though she had barely slept all night and was hungry and exhausted, having cured the patient and dealt with such wonderful patrons put Zhu Qingyu in an excellent mood. She closed the bag, leaned against the carriage wall, hugged her money pouch, and said cheerfully:
A share for everyone who sees it! I've made a fortune this trip. When we get back to Yangzhou, I'll make new clothes for you.
Although ten taels of silver was not even a drop in the bucket for Zhang Shen, he probably wouldn't even bend down to pick it up if he saw it on the side of the road on a normal day, but he had been staring eagerly just waiting for her to say this. He laughed and said:
Then please have mercy, my wife. Could you not be so stingy this time? Since you've made a fortune, be a bit more generous. Buy a few more feet of cloth and make a few more sets for me. I don't even have any inner garments left to wear; the old ones are all full of holes.
Although they were husband and wife, Zhu Qingyu had always kept her finances strictly separate from Zhang Shen's.
Because they had initially agreed to just be a cover for each other, in the beginning, Zhu Qingyu only took the allowance Zhang Shen gave her, twenty taels a month, treating it as her salary. As for the Zhang family's wealth, she never felt it had anything to do with her.
She treated the clothes and jewelry Zhang Shen bought for her as work uniforms. When she went out socializing as First Madam Zhang, she would wear the fine silks and gold headpieces. But when she went out for medical consultations as Doctor Zhu, she wore the cotton clothes she bought herself and did not wear any jewelry.
Later, after spending more time together, she began to see Zhang Shen as family. Returning his kindness, she no longer wanted to just use his money; she wanted to use the money she earned to buy things for him and treat him better.
She couldn't afford anything too expensive, and anything too cheap wouldn't suit Zhang Shen's status as a wealthy merchant. After much thought, she bought some cotton cloth, learned from the manor's seamstresses, and made a few sets of inner garments to give him.
After all, outerwear required fine materials, precise tailoring, and embroidered patterns, which she definitely couldn't handle.
As for inner garments, they were worn underneath where no one could see them anyway, and they didn't need embroidery. She just had to cut the cloth and sew it together. Zhu Qingyu spent some time on it, and although she still didn't do a great job, she had finally learned how.
Furthermore, it didn't matter if they weren't made perfectly; giving him clothes was mainly a way to express her affection. Who would have thought that Zhang Shen, a young master raised in the lap of luxury, would actually quite like wearing cotton clothes? He wore those few inner garments in constant rotation.
Accused by Zhang Shen of being too stingy, Zhu Qingyu was so exhausted that she closed her eyes and almost fell asleep. She argued groggily:
You can't blame me for that. Could the house possibly be short of clothes for you? Your silks and satins are piled up like mountains! Every time the seasons change, the seamstresses always prioritize making your clothes first. The finished clothes are stacked in box after box, yet I never see you wear them. You just stick to wearing those few cotton pieces every day...
Zhu Qingyu's voice grew softer and slower, and before she could even finish her sentence, she had fallen asleep.
Zhang Shen took a blanket and covered her. He looked at her silently for quite a while, and only when he was certain she was truly asleep did he say softly:
That's different.
