“Clara, your dad’s saying all this for your own good. You need to think it through. If you marry Mortimer Adams, you’ll be one of the Adams family. Your status will be different then. Who’d still dare lay a finger on you?”
“If you refuse, then just wait for the days in the cattle shed. You were raised soft since childhood. Can you really bear that kind of hardship?”
“When your mother was dying, she held my hand and kept talking about you. The only thing she couldn’t let go of was you. I promised her I’d protect you no matter what. I’ve been carrying this whole mess of the Whitfield family on my own, all so you wouldn’t suffer. Otherwise, how would I have the face to meet her after I’m dead?”
“You know perfectly well what kind of family the Adamses are. They’ve got a solid foundation. Mortimer is a steady, proper man, just a little older, that’s all. Thirty-three. But his background is spotless, and he’s got the organization behind him!”
“If you marry into that house, you’ll be the lady of it. Servants, maids, people to wait on you—more than enough. You won’t have to touch a single bit of work. You’ll still live like the pampered young miss you always were. Who’d dare show you a sour face?”
The middle-aged man’s voice seeped through the thin wooden door. Every word sounded sweet on the surface, but underneath it was poison wrapped in honey. It made Clara Whitfield’s skin crawl, and a cold shiver ran straight down her back.
She jerked upright at once, her mind in total chaos.
Wait...
Hadn’t she worked herself to death in the office?
That cubicle stuffed with files, the fluorescent lights blazing all night long, that sudden crushing tightness in her chest, that awful feeling of not being able to draw a breath...
Her temples throbbed as if needles were stabbing back and forth through them. Strange memories, one after another, came flooding into her head in a messy rush, broken and tangled, yet soaked through with a grief so heavy it was hard to name.
“Tch...”
Clara Whitfield clutched her head in both hands, brows knotted tight, forcing herself to sort through and absorb those memories bit by bit.
Several minutes later, she slowly lowered her hands. Her face was white as paper, and her heart dropped clean to the bottom—
She had transmigrated into a book.
Not just any book, either, but a period novel called Marrying the Commander in the Seventies and Being Spoiled Rotten. And she had become the cannon-fodder cousin in it, the one with the exact same name as her, the one who died early and died miserably.
And of all times to land here, she had come at the very moment everything began sliding into the abyss.
It was 1975. The Whitfield family was among the last batch of red capitalists to be purged.
The original Clara had believed every sweet lie her stepfather Herbert Stanton fed her. She had handed over the respectable job her mother left behind, then obediently married that old pervert Mortimer Adams—the one everyone praised to the skies as “honest” and “well-off.”
And after that?
Less than seven days after the original Clara was married off, word came that she had thrown herself into a well.
Her mother had been stunningly beautiful. Back when she was young, no matter how her family tried to stop her, she insisted on following an educated youth into the city. Before they were even properly married, she was already pregnant with her.
When the original Clara was three, word came that her birth father had gone out on some mission and never made it back. What he did leave behind, though, was enough money to last several lifetimes, plus this grand little Western-style house that looked rich from top to bottom.
From then on, her mother kept thinking about him day and night, and her health just kept slipping.
Later, when the girl started school, the other children laughed at her for not having a father. Her mother panicked then, and hurriedly brought Herbert Stanton in as a live-in son-in-law. She wanted nothing else from him, really—just that her daughter could at least say she had a "father" to back her up outside.
But when the original Clara turned ten, her mother let go and passed away.
Not even a month later, Herbert Stanton dropped the act for good. He packed his whole family from the old village into the Whitfield house—his parents, his brothers, the lot of them.
They tore through every chest and cupboard looking for valuables. They scraped up anything worth a coin, even stomped over the floors like they wanted to pry the whole place open, dead set on digging out the stash they believed Clara’s mother had hidden somewhere.
From that day on, the young lady of the Whitfield family became the Stanton family’s unpaid servant, called whenever they pleased, beaten and cursed whenever they liked, with nowhere to go and nobody to hear her out.
The cheerful, lively girl she used to be got worn down little by little, till all her spirit was gone. She learned to read faces, to keep her head down, to shrink back before anyone even raised a hand.
The only reason she managed to hold on until twenty was because the Stanton family still had their eyes on the last bit of profit left in her—when she married, her mother had arranged for a dowry to be given to her.
"Clara? Clara, open the door... bang, bang, bang!"
Herbert Stanton was still outside, talking on and on, his voice carrying that naked sound of calculation. "You turn twenty tomorrow. That means you can go register the marriage. I asked around and had someone check the dates. The day after tomorrow’s a lucky one, just right. We’ll get everything done in one go! Once this is settled, your old man can finally breathe easy."
"Times are changing fast now. One day it’s this, the next day it’s that. The wind outside’s getting tighter and tighter, all this talk of being investigated and stripped clean—I’ve had my heart hanging in my throat every single day! If your marriage isn’t settled, then when I go underground one day, I won’t even have the face to meet your mother. Ah..."
He put on such a tearful, heartfelt show, but the hand pounding on the door got harder and harder, until the whole thin door panel buzzed and shook.
Clara Whitfield stood in front of the old mirror, studying the body reflected there—nothing but skin and bones. She lifted a hand and brushed aside the heavy bangs hanging over her forehead, revealing a delicate oval face made even sharper by how much weight she had lost.
Years of going hungry and being trampled on had long since drained all color from that face. She was pale as paper.
Only those eyes were different now.
The soul inside them had changed, and they were shockingly bright.
She tugged at the corner of her mouth, then let her bangs fall back into place, hiding the cold glint in her eyes.
Since fate had dumped her here by some strange mistake, she had no intention of walking the same dead road as the original Clara.
She valued her little life far too much for that.
A perverted old man? Not a chance.
Since they’d praised him like he was some heaven-sent treasure, then fine—let the one the Stanton family doted on, the real heroine of this story, her “good cousin” Cecily Stanton, marry him instead!
Crash—the shabby wooden door was yanked open.
At one glance, Clara Whitfield saw Herbert Stanton’s long, sour face. The impatience on it hadn’t even faded yet. Behind him stood Mrs. Stanton, hands on her hips, chin lifted high, dressed up in a fresh set of clothes like she was showing off.
Herbert clearly hadn’t expected the door to swing open so suddenly. One hand was still raised in the air, and he froze there for a second, caught off guard.
"Cough... cough, cough, cough..."
Clara immediately covered her mouth and let out a string of coughs, one after another. Her face flushed red from it. Then, sounding weak and short of breath, she said, "Dad, yesterday I got soaked in the rain washing clothes for the family. I think I’ve come down with a fever. I only just forced myself up... You—you just said I’m to marry into the Adams family tomorrow? My head’s spinning. I didn’t hear clearly..."
The moment those words fell, Mrs. Stanton blew up.
She had on a crisp synthetic blouse, shiny leather shoes polished bright enough to reflect light, and even a string of pearls hanging around her thick, stubby neck. Her barrel waist shoved forward, and spit nearly flew straight into Clara’s face as she barked, "Oh, you ungrateful wretch! You do a little work for this family and now you feel wronged? Your mother died early and nobody taught you manners. I, your grandmother, tried to teach you how to behave, and you’ve still got the nerve to hold a grudge?"
"What a thankless little she-wolf! If I’d known, I should’ve let you fend for yourself all those years ago!"
The more Mrs. Stanton talked, the more worked up she got. She lifted that broad, fan-like hand high in the air and swung it hard at Clara’s face, the slap cutting through the air with a sharp whoosh.
There was real force in it. She was not holding back at all.
Herbert stood right there beside them, hands in his pockets, watching with cold eyes, with no intention of stepping in.
In his mind, if his old mother wanted to teach this disobedient girl a lesson, that was only natural. Why should he interfere?
Clara’s gaze turned cold in an instant. Her body moved faster than thought. She suddenly shot out a hand and yanked Herbert hard in front of her!
Smack!
The slap landed solidly. The sound cracked through the sitting room, sharp and clean, and for a second even the air seemed to freeze.
Herbert was hit so hard by that unexpected slap that stars burst in his vision. Half his face swelled at once, red enough for the clear shape of a handprint to show.
Clara shrank behind Herbert’s back, showing only her eyes. They were already rimmed red, and her voice came out trembling, thick with tears. "Grandma! No matter how angry you are, you can’t hit my dad that hard! If my face really got ruined, how am I supposed to go out and face people tomorrow?"
Herbert’s shoulders jerked. The anger in his chest shot up at once. He was just about to start cursing when the words "face people" stopped him cold. He swallowed back what was at the tip of his tongue, pressed one hand to his burning cheek, then turned and roared at his mother, "Mom! What are you doing? Yuqing may speak carelessly, but that’s no reason to hit someone!"
Mrs. Stanton herself hadn’t fully come back to her senses after that slap. Her palm was still tingling from the impact. Now, hearing her son say that, she got so mad her blood rushed straight to her head. She jabbed a finger at Clara, her voice going shrill. "It was her! That damned girl dragged you over to block it! You heartless fool, and you’re still speaking up for her? Today I’m going to beat that troublemaking wretch half to death!"