Belated Love? I refuse!

Zinnia Smith's family were nobles until her mother died and the household lost everything. Quentin, a poor student her mother had once helped, took her in when there was nowhere else. He was sick and there was no money for his treatment or for the imperial examination, so Zinnia went into a pleasure house and earned there for three years, on her singing and playing. Quentin passed the examination at the top of the list. He then married another woman and told Zinnia she could come into his household as a maid of the bedchamber. Instead she accepted an offer of marriage from a customer who had kept his name back. He was Silas Xenia, the Emperor, and he remembered her from the palace when they were both children, when she had shown him a kindness. Zinnia was raised to Empress. Quentin and his wife worked against her from there.