Chapter 1

When I was taken to the Chancellor’s Residence, the man whose child I carried was taken along with me.

His name was Li Mang. Before we were found, he had been about to catch a chicken for me to eat.

Then the chancellor’s men arrived, and the two of us were carried off like chicks instead.

The stately, richly dressed Madam Ren looked me over from head to toe through tear-filled eyes.

First she seized my wrist to inspect the birthmark, repeating, “You truly are my child.” Then she gazed tenderly at my slightly rounded belly and said, “It is a blessing that you grew safely to marriageable age.”

Next Madam Ren turned to the man beside me. “Is this my son-in-law? Since you are already married, our family will naturally accept you. From now on, you may live here with my daughter…”

“No.” Li Mang shook his head at once. “I’m not your son-in-law.”

Madam Ren looked puzzled. “The child she is carrying isn’t yours?”

“It is.” Li Mang gritted his teeth. “But your real son-in-law is someone else. She and I are only bound by a wife-leasing contract. Once the child is born, we won’t live together anymore.”

I spoke up myself. “He leased me as his wife.”

At those words, everyone in the residence—the lady of the house, the young masters and mistresses, even the servants—stared in shock.

But there was nothing to hide.

Li Mang had indeed leased me to bear him a child.

Before that, though, Li Mang had been married.

He might have looked like a scholar, but he could wield a broadsword on the battlefield. That was precisely why he spent years away from home, and his wife ran off with another man.

Worse still, while he was gone, his relatives swallowed up most of his farmland, leaving him only one or two scattered plots.

That was how Li Mang became a penniless bachelor.

He was strong and healthy, so some women were interested in him all the same.

But the moment they heard he had been expelled from the army for a grave breach of military discipline, they fled too.

The village aunties advised him to lease a woman, get himself an heir, and leave it at that.

So Li Mang sold his remaining land and exchanged the money for a wife-leasing contract.

The terms were written plainly in black and white: Li Mang and I were to live as husband and wife for two years. If I bore a child in that time, the child would stay with him. If I failed to conceive, we would have to accept our fate.

The money I received was put to use that very night.

It was needed to save a life.

Earlier, my husband Zhao Zisong and I had encountered a wolf in the mountains. He fought it to protect me, and it tore his left leg open to the bone.

No matter how many folk remedies we tried, the wound kept festering until the flesh rotted.

Zhao Zisong had not slept for three days from the pain. He had wasted away to a shadow of himself.

Unable to bear his suffering, his mother took out rat poison, determined that the two of them should die together.

I had already made up my mind. I told them I had a way.

We had to hire a physician. As for the silver to pay him, I would get it somehow.

The means was hardly unheard of. It was an old practice, and everyone had seen it before.

I had already married once. There was no shame in marrying again.

The money arrived that night, along with the contract.

Zhao Zisong had to press his fingerprint to it.

I inked his finger red, held his hand steady, and pressed it hard against the paper.

Zhao Zisong sobbed in broken gasps. The anguish in his eyes seemed to seep into the coarse sheet beneath his hand.

I said nothing more. I packed my bundle and went to Li Mang’s home.

Two months after I married him, I conceived.

When I was four months pregnant, a group of people came to the door. They said I was the chancellor’s daughter, lost long ago, and they meant to take me away.

A chancellor. A noble daughter. Both ideas felt impossibly distant from me.

Yet they behaved with such solemn certainty that they left me dazed.

According to them, I had gone missing at the age of four. Before that, I had been the second daughter of the Chancellor’s Residence, Ren Suixi.

I had an elder brother named Ren Jinying.

After I disappeared, the family adopted another girl and told the outside world she was me.

Once I returned, her name was changed to Ren Suihuan.

After I explained the wife-leasing arrangement, Ren Suihuan pinched her handkerchief between delicate white fingers and covered her parted lips. Still, she could not help saying, “How could anyone do such a thing? What of fidelity? What of dignity? Did none of that matter?”

Her words left me blank. I did not know what to say, so I stared woodenly at her hands. They were smooth and supple, plainly the hands of someone raised in comfort.

Then Ren Jinying, who had been silent until then, spoke sharply. “Mind your manners.”

Ren Suihuan surrendered at once and hid behind Madam Ren. “Mother, I should not have spoken out of turn.”

Madam Ren patted her arm, then looked back at Li Mang and me. “Take my son-in-law to the guest room we prepared. Suixi, you stay and talk with your mother for a while.”

Li Mang said warily, “I should return to the village.”

Madam Ren’s face hardened. “Your wife and child are here. Where do you think you’re going?”

Li Mang gave an awkward smile. “All right, all right. I’ll stay.”