My Husband’s Wife - Chapter 4

`The woman on his arm is an eyesore’ was my first thought as Yuwen walked into the meeting room. My second was ‘today’s work just went to hell’. I and the team from this subsidiary of the Xue Group were trying to put together a construction bid for the Mian Xu Garden project.

It had been a month since I received the details of this assignment and I had spent a full week acclimatizing myself to my assigned team’s atmosphere and familiarizing myself with its members. I had found that at least for now it was better to integrate with a team before commencing an assignment otherwise the difficulty of completing the project with first-rate results with only my status as secretary to the president and project supervisor to back me up would rise astronomically.

But now with Yuwen flaunting his latest girlfriend right in my face, the team members would be more interested in gossiping about me and my marriage than completing any constructive plans for the bid. It couldn’t be helped, the story was too titillating, I would probably have indulged in all the speculation and gossip pre-marriage into the Xue family.

That week had been devoted to building my credibility and assuring them that I was more than just the beautiful abandoned wife of the company’s heir. By dragging his latest girlfriend to this meeting Yuwen had undermined my authority and standing. He must have gotten too bored recently.

When I received this assignment, I had devoutly wished that wooing and conquering the current socialite that had caught his fancy would be interesting and exhilarating enough to fully occupy my husband until I completed the project, but apparently, that wish wasn’t going to be fulfilled. This wasn’t the first time Yuwen had frustrated my efforts and affected my work by fuelling the gossip mill. Very likely, it wouldn’t be the last either. It seemed to be one of his thrills.

Those empty-headed belles that he showed off in front of me often gazed at me with arrogance convinced of their superiority because they, not I, were on his arm. Sad to say, as his wife I can only feel pity for them. Those he brought to flaunt simply weren’t so fascinating that he forgot he was married to me while dating them. The women who truly enamored his senses almost never crossed my line of sight. Those women were the smart and talented or were special in some way. Just watching his choices was already half an apprenticeship in the appreciation and connoisseurship of women.

Though there had been the one, Ming Shi, I have no idea what Yuwen had seen in that one. For a while, he had been head over heels for her. She hadn’t even been all that beautiful though I will acknowledge that she had a presence best described by the word sophisticated. At least she was until you saw through her faade to the malicious being she really was.

Ming Shi who was at most the latest fling in a never-ending string of girls had actually slapped me, Yuwen’s true and legal wife. At that moment with my cheek still smarting, I felt my worldview get threatened. My palm had returned the slap before I even realized what I was doing. Yuwen didn’t know about the slap, I hadn’t told him about it and I couldn’t see Ming Shi ruining her own image by telling him, but he definitely knew about the contention that had sprung up between Ming Shi and me. We clashed every time we crossed paths because I just could not bring myself to tolerate her anymore. Now that I thought about it, it was possible that what Yuwen had liked so much about Ming Shi was her ability to rile up the wife he had been saddled with, it may even have been the reason he dated her so much longer than the others.

Although Yuwen’s mistresses’ birth, wealth, and social position were higher than mine, at least before my marriage to Yuwen, I was not a person they could look down on. I could tolerate their mocking and superciliousness but nothing more. I valued my dignity too much and couldn’t be bothered to tussle with them over my husband. Dignity was one of the reasons why I decisively chose to marry Yuwen after I ended things with that scum of the earth I once foolishly considered a future with.

Both my mind and self, were more at peace in this marriage, though it was a pity that I had to jump into the fire to avoid the frying pan. But at least Yuwen, for all his faults, was infinitely better than that man. All Yuwen’s women knew that he was married. They knew that it was against his will. They were simply imprudent in their eagerness to rescue him from misery and provide solace to him.

I was confident they erroneously believed Yuwen’s marriage had deprived him of the freedom to search for true love and at least half of them thought that they would be the one to finally capture this elusive gentleman and become his heart’s balm. I could only sigh at their misperception of our young master Xue. My husband fell in lust and often got infatuated, but there had never been and probably never would be a woman who would make him fall in love. It was why he chased so hard but only dated for short periods.

I couldn’t understand why those women were so foolish. What was so attractive about Yuwen that they all succumbed to him. Although I admit his looks were devastating and he had charm in spades but wasn’t his track record a clear warning about him? What was so mesmerizing about my husband that they acted like they were moths drawn to a flame? The why of it probably would eternally remain a puzzle to me.

Though, despite his playboy characteristics, Yuwen was still very much an exemplary gentleman. I had come to know by accident, okay I’ll be honest by eavesdropping, that Yuwen rarely ever slept with his girlfriends. He was no saint and was quite open to physical seduction from them but according to the grapevine, he didn’t initiate it. Yuwen dated both the innocent and the experienced and he left them as he met them; that was part of what made Yuwen so dangerous, his trophy of choice wasn’t their innocence but rather their hearts.