Chapter 1059 A Servant Girl Found a Bracelet, It Looked Familiar?
It was a very thin gold bracelet. When Yujie pulled it off her arm, it was twisted, so this original round gold bracelet was no longer round.
This bracelet was thin without any patterns.
“Where did you get this gold bracelet?” Shao Wanru asked.
“My… my mother left… left it to me,” the maid said in a panic.
!!
“Since it’s from your mother, why bother hiding it? It’s not appropriate for you to wear it like this. Weren’t you afraid of losing it when working?” Shao Wanru asked softly.
However, the little maid became more panicked and shook her head hurriedly. “No… I wouldn’t lose it. I… I’ve been cautious. It’s just a memento left by my mother. I was afraid that others might see it and think it belonged to the mansion, so I put it on carefully inside!”
“How could your mother give you such a valuable thing! You must have come from a decent family. Let Nanny Yu check it out and see what her family background is and if she has such a biological mother. If there is nothing wrong, give the gold bracelet back to her,” Shao Wanru said, handing the bracelet back to Yujie.
Before the mansion accepted each servant, their family background would be clearly recorded for future reference.
Such a bracelet was enough to buy a few servant girls like her.
“I… It’s true… Your Highness, please spare me. It was really from my mother. I hid it secretly because I feared someone would take it away. Your Highness… Your Highness, I’m telling the truth,” the little servant girl kowtowed and cried.
“Since it is true, what’s wrong with checking it out? Can’t we investigate it?” Qu Le deliberately said, “I’ll ask Nanny Yu to come over now and find out your background. See? This bracelet carries weight. Only well-off families can own it.”
“No, it’s not mine. Your Highness, it’s not mine. I picked it up.” Seeing that Qu Le was about to leave, the servant girl was so scared that her face changed dramatically. She burst into tears and stammered to confess.
“Not yours? Where did you find it?” Once again, Shao Wanru’s eyes fell on the bracelet made of very thin gold threads without any patterns. Unlike those exquisitely-made bracelets, it was unappealing at first glance. If the servant girl hadn’t acted nervously, Shao Wanru wouldn’t have suspected her.
“I… I picked it up there. It… it was behind the flower… the place where I stood!” The servant girl pointed somewhere ahead while crying.
She was terrified.
Shao Wanru walked forward, and the servant girl hurriedly got up to follow her. They came to the back of the bushes — there was a tree in blossom. Some flowers had withered and fallen to the ground. The pink petals were lovely, but now they had been ground to dust and scattered into the mud.
“Your Highness, I found it here. When I took it, you and several sisters came over, so I wanted to leave as soon as possible. But you saw me, anyway.” The servant girl wiped her tears timidly and said.
After confiding her secret, she became much less nervous.
There seemed to be a small hole under those flower petals, fallen leaves, and branches.
“Your Highness, see? This bracelet was buried here. Only a small part was above the ground. I saw the gold and dug it out, leaving this small hole.” The servant girl was afraid that Shao Wanru did not believe her, so she explained while pointing at the small hole under branches and leaves.
“Did you just dig it up?” Shao Wanru stared at her and asked again.
“Your Highness, I didn’t lie. I saw you and two sisters just after I got it from the hole. I wanted to hide and leave after you walked away.” The servant girl said in fear with tears falling. She looked at Shao Wanru expectantly with a pleading face.
“Had you seen anyone here before that?” Shao Wanru asked.
“I didn’t. When I came here, I saw no one around and didn’t even notice Your Highness and two sisters. After I dug out the bracelet, I was overjoyed. But at that time, you happened to come over!” The little maid burst out crying again, feeling scared. She thought she had hit the jackpot, but it seemed that getting this gold bracelet was not a good thing. It was obviously a lethal misfortune.
If she had known this earlier, she wouldn’t have been greedy. If she had handed the bracelet to Princess Chen, nothing terrible would have happened to her.
“Was there really no one else?” Shao Wanru pondered for a moment and said to Yujie, “Bring her back and make a thorough investigation!”
“Your Highness, I really didn’t see anyone.” The little servant girl’s face turned ashen with fright. Her legs went weak, and she was about to kneel again — but Yujie pulled her up.
“My Lady ordered you to go back with us. Then just shut up and follow us,” Yujie scolded.
The little servant girl trembled and collapsed on Yujie, who brought her back.
Shao Wanru observed the gold bracelet on the table, deep in thought.
“Is there anything wrong with this bracelet?” Yujie asked. She and Qu Le had looked at it for a long time, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. The bracelet was so simple that there was no flower pattern on it. Those who didn’t look at it closely might think it was a tiny copper bracelet.
It was unremarkable.
Though they were both servant girls, Shao Wanru rewarded them with a lot of items, including gold bracelets. Different from this humble one, their gold bracelets were heavier and more exquisite.
“This newly-made gold bracelet is of high purity, but it looked overly thin and simple.” Shao Wanru’s eyes were still on the gold bracelet, which looked strangely familiar to her. She seemed to have seen something similar before but couldn’t recall it at the moment.
Yujie said disapprovingly, “How could such a gold bracelet be newly-made? Could it be possible that you made a mistake? The original one must be ugly to the extreme. Otherwise, no one would have considered making this one from it.” This bracelet was the most graceless one she had ever seen. The fine gold was wasted when made into this bracelet.
“My Lady, could it be recast from something else?” Qu Le thought of another possibility and asked.
Shao Wanru reached out to pick up the bracelet and shook it between her fingers before saying softly, “It’s possible. Who accidentally dropped it or deliberately buried it there?”
“Don’t worry, My Lady. Before I came in, I had secretly asked Nanny Yu to keep an eye on that place!” Yujie said.
Right after they were back, she told Nanny Yu about it. Then Nanny Yu quietly left to watch the spot in person.
“My Lady, don’t you have a similar pair of simple bracelets?” Qu Le’s eyes suddenly lit up.
“Is that so?” Shao Wanru was slightly stunned and immediately remembered her pair of simple gold bracelets. No wonder she felt this bracelet looked familiar. When she was in the Huaguang Temple, Chu Liuchen gave her a pair of simple gold bracelets.
“Go and get them!” Shao Wanru ordered.
Qu Le took out a box from the bottom of the dressing table. There was a pair of gold bracelets in it. They were simple but heavy ones without any patterns, which were weighty and quite valuable at first glance. The two bracelets that appeared solid and rough were too heavy for Shao Wanru to wear, and thus they were only suitable for collection.
Shao Wanru picked up the pair of heavy gold bracelets from Chu Liuchen with one hand and the gold bracelet as thin as a thread with the other.
They were both solid. One was broad and heavy, and the other was thin and light, but they had the same color.
It meant the two kinds of gold bracelets were almost identical in purity. Or, this larger solid gold bracelet could be remade into at least a dozen pairs of thin gold bracelets like the smaller one.
“My Lady, why would you guess this thin gold bracelet was reforged?” Yujie suddenly asked.
“The gold looks very new and has been polished. Although it is dusty, it can be wiped clean,” Shao Wanru said, her willowy eyebrows frowning slightly. “Bring her in.”
Yujie answered and left. Then she returned with the little servant girl trembling with fear.
“Your Highness, please forgive me.” The little servant girl was so scared that her face turned pale. As soon as she entered the door, her legs buckled, and she knelt on the ground with a thump and begged.
“Are you a child of a servant in our mansion?” Shao Wanru asked, fluttering her long eyelashes.
Princess Chen seemed to know everything, so the servant girl didn’t dare to hide anything. She nodded repeatedly and said, “Your Highness, yes. My mother belongs to this mansion and is in charge of the flowers and trees in that area. I help her take care of those flowers and trees.”
“Is your mother Lady w.a.n.g who is in charge of the flowers and plants over there?” Qu Le, quite familiar with the mansion’s affairs, asked in surprise after thinking for a while, sizing up the little servant girl.
“Yes, my mother is Lady w.a.n.g. If you don’t believe me, you can call my mother over and ask her about it.” At this time, the little servant girl no longer dared to talk nonsense and spoke everything honestly.
“Are you Qing Lian?” Qu Le asked again with a strange look on her face.
“Yes, yes, I’m Qing Lian. Sister Qu Le, you know me, right?” The little servant girl asked hurriedly. Many people in the inner court knew the several princ.i.p.al maids around Princess Chen. Though these people had few dealings with them, they had seen Qu Le and the others from a distance.
Qu Le bowed respectfully to Shao Wanru and said, “This servant girl should be called Qing Lian, the daughter of Lady w.a.n.g managing the flowers and plants. Lady w.a.n.g has told me that she alone couldn’t look after those flowers and trees, so she wanted her daughter to help. Her daughter was a rough servant girl who did the cleaning.”
“But your mother could do the job alone before. Why is she so busy now?” Shao Wanru asked curiously.
“She did before. But recently, a few precious peonies were sent and planted in the place under her charge. She feared she couldn’t take good care of these valuable flowers, so she begged you to send me over. In this way, she could get more time and energy to care for those precious peonies.”
Shao Wanru rolled her liquid eyes and asked, “Are there new peonies in the mansion?”
“I don’t know either. I’ll inquire about it later!” Qu Le said.
“Since there’s nothing else, I should let you go. But what will you tell others after you go back?” Shao Wanru asked meaningfully with a smile.