TheWifeTrap Read Online Free PDF

touch, wrapping her in a large fluffy towel the instant she
climbed dripping from the tub. Sleepy and depressed, Jeannette sat in front of
the fire, bundled into her warmest nightgown and robe. She sipped a comforting
cup of hot tea, nibbled on the delicious buttered biscuits and cold sliced
chicken that had been sent up to her, while her maid combed dry her waist-length
hair.
    Then it was to
bed, the sheets crisp and cool and smelling sweetly of starch and lavender. She
buried her face into one plump feather pillow and shed a few more tears.
    She missed home.
And England.
    She missed her
parents and sister.
    She even missed
her brother, Darrin, who seemed to do nothing these days but make a profligate
young fool of himself.
    Right now, she
would trade anything to have them all back, to be at home in her own bed with
things as they used to be. But nothing would ever again be the way it used to
be, those days were now long gone.
    She couldn’t
fathom why she felt homesick. Silly really, since she’d spent several months
living in Italy with her great-aunt Agatha before her return to England a few
weeks ago. She hadn’t been homesick then. The trip part of the adventurous lark
she’d enjoyed after trading places with her twin, when on the morning of her
own wedding she’d refused to marry the duke to whom she’d been engaged. Violet
had married him instead—pretending to be Jeannette. She supposed the deception
had been very wrong of them both, but as it turned out, all had come right in
the end. At least it had for Violet and Adrian, who were nauseatingly besotted
with each other and expecting their first child later this year.
    No, she was the
one who’d suffered. She was the one who’d been sent away in disgrace and
misery, and all for the sake of love.
    Ah, Toddy,
she sighed,
why did you have to
play me false?
    What a naive dupe
she’d been to let an experienced cad like Theodore Markham toy with her
affections. When she’d tossed Adrian over, she’d done so believing Toddy to be
her one, true love. He’d whispered such pretty words to her, words of undying
adoration and everlasting devotion, and like an idiot she had believed them. He’d
flattered her, telling her how beautiful she was, all the while showering her
with the kind of gallant, dutiful attention she had craved but rarely received
from her own fiancé—Adrian, who was too busy with his duties and his friends
and his own pursuits to see to her needs.
    But Toddy had
wanted her. Loved her. Or so she had thought until Italy, where he had learned
there would be no fat dowry if he wed her. After that, he’d cast her aside like
so much rubbish. Off, as she’d soon discovered, to hunt and seduce other,
wealthier feminine prey.
    She squeezed her
eyes closed, fought as she had for so many long weeks to banish him from her
mind. She no longer loved him; she was well and truly done with any tender
feelings in that regard. But she had to admit he’d wounded something vital
within her. Love, she now knew, could be unutterably cruel. Better not to love
at all than to suffer such pangs and sorrows. Better to find solace in the
things that counted for something in this world—wealth, position and dignity.
    She would marry a
title as she’d planned to do from the first. No charming cads this time to
steer her from her course. Some rich old man perhaps who, if she was lucky,
would die shortly after their nuptials and leave her a wealthy, young widow,
free to live her life any way she chose. And once she returned to civilization
she would set about finding him.
    She’d ensnared
one duke, she could surely catch another.
    Sighing again,
she snuggled beneath the bedclothes and forced herself to relax, forced herself
at last to sleep. But her slumber was rife with dreams…
    She sat alone
in the stationary barouche, the wheels sunk deep into the mud. Without warning
the carriage door was thrust open, a man’s solid form blocking the sunlight
that poured inside on a