My Husband Postponed Our Wedding Nineteen Times for His Mistress

Celestine Grimes has waited through nineteen weddings. Each time, Clayton Briggs walks away from the altar for Verity Tanner, the cousin he says he owes a lifelong debt: she arrived from the countryside, her heart felt uncomfortable, she had nightmares. Celestine endures it all, because ten years ago, when sudden memory loss wiped her clean every morning, Clayton was the only one who stayed, telling her each day that he was her husband.

On the nineteenth attempt, she finally reaches the ring exchange. In the dressing room she finds Clayton and Verity together, and hears the truth: she is merely a means to give him a child, and once the baby is born he will abandon her and marry Verity properly. The ten years of care were a ten-year scam, kept up only because Verity's heart illness stops her from bearing children.

Celestine flees the venue and calls her father, refusing the marriage and vowing to keep the baby and remove the father. When Clayton later asks her to let Verity move into the attic where he once proposed, she hides a divorce contract among papers needing his signature.