It began, of course, in the kitchens.
As any seasoned domestic will confess, the heart of any noble house is not the grand hall, nor the study, nor the patriarch's chambers—it is the kitchen, where gossip simmers hotter than the soup cauldrons and news travels faster than fire. It was there that the first whispers took root.
"Did you hear?" said Old Cook Li, a woman with arms like tree trunks and a nose for scandal sharper than any knife in her drawer. "She's sleeping in the west wing guest quarters—alone!"
A collective gasp rose from the assembled scullery maids.
"Alone? But she's a woman!"
"A thief!" hissed another, scandalised and thrilled.
"And not just any thief," muttered the laundress, who was forever elbow-deep in silk and whispers. "They say she's Minister Mu's daughter! I remember her from a lantern festival—so pretty she was, like a painted fan."
"Pretty won't mend honor," Cook Li snapped. "And I'll wager she's as slippery as an eel in oil."
Yet none dared confront her directly. For Miss Mu Lian walked the halls of the Gu estate not with the timidity of a beggar saved from ruin, but with the quiet dignity of a woman who had once known silk sheets and sandalwood scroll boxes—and remembered how to carry her head as if they were still hers.
She rose early, always before the sun, and could be found outside stretching her limbs in poses unfamiliar to the sword-trained sons of the house. She moved like wind over water—graceful, yes, but coiled with tension, like a string pulled too tight.
The guards watched her, at first, with derision.
"She's all wrist," grunted the young swordsman Jin Tao, whose strength outstripped his wisdom. "A bird's bones. She won't last a week."
Yet she did.
By the second week, she had taken to practicing with the wooden staff—awkwardly at first, striking the air like someone unsure whether to dance or fight. But Gu Yan Chen watched silently from the pavilion, offering neither correction nor praise. He simply observed. And somehow, that stung more than insult.
By the third week, she was bruised. Her palms bled. Her pride smarted.
But she did not stop.
It was then the household began to shift—imperceptibly at first, but undeniably.
The steward, Mr. Peng, an austere man with a penchant for dust-free ledgers and impeccable manners, voiced his concerns in a letter sealed with jade wax.
"My Lord," it read, "while I defer to your judgment in all things, I must humbly raise my unease regarding the presence of the... young woman. There are murmurs. The servants are uneasy. Her origin, though noble once, is stained. I fear her continued presence will bring unrest, if not danger."
Gu Yan Chen replied with a single sentence:
"Unrest is often necessary where complacency thrives."
The maids began to soften, if only because Mu Lian treated them not with superiority, nor with the groveling gratitude of one rescued from the streets—but with directness, and on occasion, wit.
She helped carry water when the pump was stuck, even when her hands were blistered from training. She found a lost hairpin for the shy kitchen girl and returned it without fanfare. Once, she scolded a stablehand for mistreating a nervous colt—her voice sharp, her stare sharper—and the boy, red-eared and chastised, never struck another animal again.
The old gardener, who spoke to no one and pruned the trees as if they were ancient friends, nodded once at her passing by the peach tree. That was more praise than he'd ever given the third son of the house.
But not all hearts were swayed.
Madam Lu, Gu Yan Chen's aging aunt and self-proclaimed keeper of propriety, called her a blemish in silk's disguise and warned of ruin, seduction, and spiritual rot. "She's come to twist the young master's heart," she said, "and when he is wrapped 'round her little thief-fingers, she'll sell the house brick by brick and vanish into the night."
The household priest declared her inauspicious. The painter said she had the eyes of a storm. The falconer claimed one of his hawks refused to fly when she was near.
Still, she remained.