Chapter 396 — The Li Family

"He twisted and turned this way and that, and by the fifth day he had gained the post road to the capital and was coming straight for it.

"Once he reached the capital, that is our ground — the Embroidered Uniform Guard's.

"My men followed him, and very soon they had found Li Liang."

Dou Yan sat up sharply. "Where does the Li family live now?"

Chen Jia smiled. "The Li family lives in Comb Lane, not far from Wanming Temple."

Dou Yan raised an eyebrow.

She knew the place.

Since the whole street was lined with shops selling combs, the alley behind it had come to be called Comb Alley. During her time in the capital, she had once gone there with Zhao Zhangru and bought a great many combs.

"I did not expect it either." Chen Jia was not surprised by such a result, but seeing that Dou Yan looked somewhat taken aback, and mindful of Dou Zhiwei's feelings, he too put on a show of astonishment. "Though Comb Alley and the Li family's old residence in Second Lane lie one to the south and one to the north, only two main streets separate them. Who would have thought Li Liang would live there?"

"Perhaps because that place holds the most memories for him," Dou Yan said. "Why else is it that when people grow old, they all long to 'let the fallen leaf return to its root'?"

"That is precisely the way of it, just as you say, my lady," Chen Jia said with a smile. "The Li family moved several times over the years — most likely because their hopes of official success came to nothing. Only five years ago did they move back to the capital."

Dou Yan gave a slight nod and said, "What is the Li family's situation now? Is Li Liang's mother still alive? The family's fields have been all but sold off — how do they make their living now?"

Chen Jia said, "Li Liang's mother passed away four years ago. These days Li Liang earns his living as a bookkeeper for a trading firm dealing in north-south goods, and has changed his name to Li Xun. Every year after the first month he heads south with the firm's second steward, and does not return until the twelfth month. His wife and children live with him in the south; in the house at Comb Alley there is only a cousin of his — a woman who came to depend on him in earlier years, and who, having lost her husband and with nowhere else to go, keeps house for him and brings along a daughter of her own."

A widowed cousin?

Dou Yan's heart gave a leap, and she said, "Have you looked into this cousin's background?"

At this Chen Jia's expression turned somewhat unnatural, and he gave a light cough. "According to the neighbors, that widowed cousin of his is not entirely above reproach... The neighbors all suspect that this so-called cousin living in Li Liang's house is either his concubine or a woman with whom he has a private affair. Since Li Liang's mother passed away, his wife and children have followed him to the south and never once reappeared. Li Liang himself is hardly ever at home. At first the widowed young woman was somewhat circumspect, but these past two years she has grown bolder and bolder — she once kept a merchant from the northwest lodging in the house for some days. This spring the merchant came again. Li Liang may have got wind of something, for no sooner had the merchant stepped through the door than Li Liang came back on his heels; had the merchant not run off so fast, Li Liang would have caught him red-handed.

"Even so, the two had a tremendous quarrel, and Li Liang seems to have come to blows, beating the widow badly enough that she went and bought medicinal wine for bruises.

"The man I sent spent a night lying on the roof of their house and discovered that although the two do not share a bed, Li Liang comes and goes from the widow's room with no scruples at all, as freely as he pleases — nothing like the conduct of a proper widowed cousin and her male cousin."

Dou Yan frowned deeply and said, "Does Li Liang's cousin have no concern at all for her own daughter?"

Chen Jia said, "Li Liang's cousin's daughter was married off far away to Baoding last autumn. It was said to be a match arranged since childhood, to a distant nephew of the Li family, and Li Liang himself escorted the bride. The reason Li Liang's cousin has grown more and more brazen is also that her daughter is now married and gone."

Everything sounded perfectly normal, yet a faint unease stirred in Dou Yan's heart.

She said, "How old is this cousin of Chen Jia's? And how old is the daughter the cousin brought with her?"

Chen Jia said, "Li Liang's cousin is quite strikingly beautiful — she looks no more than twenty-five or twenty-six. But her daughter was already fourteen when she was married off. I would say she must be twenty-eight or twenty-nine at the very least..."

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