I Don't Want Your Love Out of Pity novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Hidden Wife
Leandra watches her secret husband tell three thousand people she is someone he owes, then leaves the ranch and ends on Priscilla's engagement photo.
On Saturday night, three thousand people at a charity gala watched my husband kiss another woman's hand on a stage.
Nobody in that ballroom knew he was my husband.
I watched it from his ranch kitchen, on a tablet propped against the flour tin.
I was the only person in the house, which was how most nights went.
Two years ago, Conal Draper had married me at a courthouse, with his foreman as the only witness.
He had asked me to keep it quiet until the ranch was out of debt.
So I had kept it quiet, through every gala and every magazine photo of him with Priscilla.
At seven, my phone buzzed on the counter.
Conal had written: "Don't watch tonight. It's business, nothing else. You know what you are to me. Home Sunday."
I watched anyway.
Priscilla had been in this kitchen that afternoon.
She had driven out from the city with a tin of lemon bars, as she did every few weeks.
She always carried the tin in herself and set it where my chair could reach it.
"Conal worries about you out here," she had said, and squeezed my shoulder.
Then she had picked up the bottle of vitamins by the toaster and read the label.
I had taken the test that morning and told nobody.
"They're just iron," I said.
"Good," Priscilla said, and put the bottle back exactly where it had been. "You should look after yourself, Leandra."
On the tablet, the host of the gala held a microphone out to Conal.
"There's a rumor you keep a woman out at that ranch of yours," the host said.
The crowd laughed.
Priscilla laughed too, softly, with her hand on Conal's sleeve.
Conal did not look at her. He looked at the floor of the stage, and then at the host.
"Leandra Linwood," he said. "Her father was my foreman. She was hurt on my land, so I look after her."
The host nodded. "That's generous of you."
"It isn't generous," Conal said. "I owe her. I take care of what I owe."
Three thousand people clapped.
I had not stood on my own legs since the night of the barn fire three years ago, when I went back inside for him.
I had thought that was the worst thing anyone could take from me.
I sat in my chair and understood there was one more thing.
On the counter beside me, the phone buzzed again.
"Did you see? It's all a show. Love you. Home soon."
It was the second time that night he had told me what I was to him, and neither time had he said wife.
I turned the tablet face down.
Then I rolled down the hall to his study.
Every month since the fire, Conal had set a thick envelope from a clinic in Zurich on my breakfast tray.
I had never opened a single one.
The newest was still in the pocket of my chair, and I laid it on his blotter, unopened.
Then I took off my wedding ring and laid it on top.
In the locked drawer of his desk was our marriage certificate, and I knew where he hid the key.
I took that, because it was the only proof I had that I had ever been anyone's wife.
On a sheet of his ranch letterhead I wrote one line.
"I don't want your love if it's pity. Keep what you owe."
I packed a duffel with my sketchbook, my sewing shears and four thousand dollars I had earned selling dresses online.
I had made every one of those dresses at his kitchen table, and he had never asked what I did with my days.
My truck sat in the barn that had been rebuilt after the fire, with hand controls his foreman had fitted.
I lifted myself into the driver's seat and folded the chair into the back.
The cattle guard rattled under the tires at the end of the long drive.
I didn't look in the mirror.
I put my hand flat on my stomach, where nobody knew there was anyone.
"We're leaving," I said out loud. "It's just us."
So I left.
Forty minutes down the highway, the phone lit up on the seat beside me.
It wasn't Conal.
It was Priscilla, with a photo.
Conal stood backstage in his black suit with a ring box open in one hand and her left hand in the other.
Under it, she had written: "He asked me after the speech. Thank you for being so understanding about all of this, Leandra. Don't wait up."
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