“T-Then… Then who is this?!”

Brendan clenched his fists. “The year when you objected to our marriage, Lena got into an accident and went into a coma. No one knew if she would ever wake up again, but I knew you would never let me marry an unconscious woman. The only means I had was to find someone else to pretend to be Charlene. And that impostor… was Deirdre McKinnon.”

Madame Brighthall had not liked Charlene the first time Brendan had brought her home. The older woman had prided herself on her acute judgment of character and had known based on the greed and ambition in her eyes that Charlene would only be the start of a nightmare.

Naturally, she had objected to her son’s marriage.

But then, one day, Charlene had just… changed.

Madame Brighthall had been befuddled to see the same calculating woman carrying her on her back through the snow when the older woman had had a heart attack. She had been bewildered to hear about that schemer nursing her to health for days on end. She had