The Bride He Replaced novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: His Wife

I did not wait for Duncan to find me.

I walked straight out of the powder room, across the ballroom floor and into the cold night air at the front steps.

He caught up with me beside his grey sedan.

"Hannah."

"Get in the car," I said. "Drive me away from here, and then tell me everything."

"Rule four says after the gala."

"The gala is over."

He opened the passenger door and I got in.

He drove along the lake road until the lights of the hotel were small and yellow behind us, then pulled into an empty lot above the water and shut off the engine.

He did not turn to look at me.

"Camilla is my wife," he said.

I heard it, but it did not land anywhere.

"I'm sorry?"

"We married in Reno four years ago. Quietly, at a chapel with a drive-through window. We never told anyone." His voice stayed level. "Two years ago she emptied an account we shared, and she was gone by morning. I have never signed a divorce paper and neither has she."

The lake was black.

A wave hit the stones below us, and then another.

"She married Miles yesterday," I said.

"She did."

"So she's..."

"She's married to me," he said. "Which means yesterday's ceremony didn't marry her to anyone. And it means you are the only legal wife Miles Teasdale has."

I thought of the wedding band on its chain, and of the thin pale line on her finger.

Every time I had asked, she had said rings itched.

"You knew," I said.

"For two years."

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