Married to a Stranger

Vivian's stepsister sets her up at her father's birthday banquet, with the stepmother in on it, and Vivian wakes the next morning in a stranger's bed. Her fiancé breaks off the engagement. The whole city treats her as a joke. Then her mother falls seriously ill and needs money for an operation, and her father tells her flatly how to get it: spend a night with an old man who will pay. Vivian's answer is to marry a stranger who has offered to cover her mother's treatment in exchange for the wedding. He is the same man she woke up beside after the banquet. She takes him for an ordinary husband, a little better looking than most. He indulges her in everything. "We met late," he tells her. "The rest of my life is for you alone." He is in fact the most powerful man in the city, a magnate with a great deal about him kept hidden.