Trouble at the Wedding Read Online Free PDF

loyal, trustworthy, faithful friend who’d never come home drunk, gamble away the grocery money, or abandon her in search of goldmines.
    And Annabel definitely did not bring up her own experience with love eight years ago, how she’d sobbed on Mama’s shoulder after Billy John Harding had ripped out her heart, torn it to pieces, and stomped on it.
    She didn’t say any of those things. “I’m very fond of Bernard, Mama,” she said instead, “and he’s very fond of me. And I think that’s a better foundation for marriage than love could ever be, because love doesn’t last.”
    Henrietta looked at her with sadness. “Oh, Annabel.”
    Just that, just that soft little sigh of her name, and she felt it like the sting of a bee. “Please, Mama, let’s not talk about all this again,” she said, and turned away from the disappointment in her mother’s face.
    She didn’t understand, and she never would, why her mother of all people would want her to ever marry for love. Black Jack Wheaton had wandered off when Annabel was seven, never to come back, and she could still remember all the nights she’d heard Mama crying her eyes out after he was gone. And even though Henrietta was now married to another man, Annabel suspected that her heart still belonged to old Black Jack.
    Her mother already knew her views about her father, and thankfully, the elevator came into view before she was tempted to offer them again. “I know Uncle Arthur means well,” she said instead, as the liveried attendant slid back the wrought-iron door and she and her mother stepped inside the elevator, “but all he did by telling those lawyers not to make the changes I asked for was to get me riled up. I hate it when he does that.”
    â€œHe wants what’s best for you. He loves you.”
    â€œI know, Mama. I don’t have a particle of doubt about that. But sometimes, it feels like he’s just smothering me. First floor, please,” she added to the elevator operator before returning her attention to her mother and the topic at hand. “I’ve already told him a dozen times that I’m going to marry Bernard. I’ve absolutely made up my mind about it. Land sakes,” she added in exasperation. “He’s known me since I was born. Doesn’t he know by now there’s no talking me out of something once I’ve made up my mind?”
    â€œHe knows,” Henrietta assured her with a sigh as the elevator began sinking downward. “Believe me, darlin’, he knows.”

Chapter Two
    T he House with the Bronze Door was an illegal gentlemen’s club, meaning that unless it was raided, it stayed open until dawn. And since Christian’s luck at cards had seemed inclined to stick with him, he’d been happy to remain at the poker tables, so the sun was coming up over Manhattan by the time he tumbled into his bed at the Waldorf. He didn’t awaken until midafternoon, and only then because McIntyre woke him.
    â€œVerra sorry, sir,” the valet’s pleasant Scottish burr murmured beside his ear, “but Lady Sylvia Shaw is here.”
    Christian mumbled something he thought communicated his present lack of interest in that fact quite clearly, but caught in the heaviness of sleep, he must not have been clear enough. A few minutes after McIntyre departed the room, another person interrupted his slumber, a person far less inclined to consider his need for rest.
    â€œChristian, wake up.” He heard his sister’s insistent voice, but he kept his eyes tight shut and tried to ignore her. Sylvia, unfortunately, was not the sort to ever be ignored. “Good heavens, why do you always sleep like the dead? Wake up.”
    â€œLeave off, Sylvia, for pity’s sake,” he muttered, and rolled over, turning his back to her. “I’d have called on you at the Windermeres later. Why are you bursting in on me at