The Bride He Replaced novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Every Husband

Duncan walked to the stage with a folded paper in his hand.

Nobody stopped him.

He set it on the podium, under the lights, and flattened it with his palm.

"This is a marriage certificate from Reno, Nevada, four years old," he said. "Duncan James Westergaard and Camilla Anne Lowell."

"That isn't," Marguerite began.

"The county has no divorce on file. Neither of us ever signed one."

A man's chair fell over at the back of the room.

Miles stared at Camilla.

She stood on the stage in her gold dress with the deed in both hands, and she did not look at him.

"Cam," he said. "Tell them it isn't true."

"It's true."

Her voice carried.

"I didn't marry you, Miles. I couldn't have. I was already married."

The room made a noise I had never heard a room make.

I stood a few feet from her with my hand on the microphone stand, and I watched Miles's face go slack.

"And I'm the only wife you've got," I said.

"The clerk has one license on file for you, and it has my name on it."

He turned his head to me.

He opened his mouth, and nothing came out.

Then a voice said from the double doors:

"She married me, too."

A grey-haired man in a rumpled suit stood in the entrance with the shop woman beside him.

I had paid for his flight out of my own savings, and Duncan had never known.

"Naples," the man said. "Six years ago. I'm what she left in a motel with a bill."

"Please don't," Camilla whispered.

"I wouldn't have come," he said.

"That lady called me, and she said a pregnant woman could use somebody telling the truth."

Camilla looked at him, then at Duncan, then at Marguerite.

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