Man and Wife

A young governess is seduced and then abandoned when her lover exploits a loophole in Scotland’s marriage laws, and the tangle that follows drags several lives into a legal and moral trap. Anne Silvester, her devoted friend Blanche, and the brutal athlete Geoffrey Delamayn find themselves bound by a careless promise nobody can unravel: who, under the law, is actually married to whom. Wilkie Collins built this sensation novel around a genuine legal scandal, using suspense to attack irregular marriage statutes and the Victorian worship of raw physical prowess. What opens as a courtroom puzzle darkens steadily into conspiracy and the threat of murder. Read it free in PDF and EPUB.