Freezing My Love for You

In Shorestone City, Madeline Snow and Isaac Chance were once the model couple everyone envied, their childhood promise to marry taken for granted. Yet six years pass with no wedding, and Isaac returns from abroad with another woman, Rachel Livingston, and her daughter Queenie, parading them before society and turning Madeline into a laughingstock. When her grandmother falls gravely ill, Madeline agrees to a shotgun marriage with a stranger, the soldier Elijah Quilton, and leaves city hall already wed to a man she has known less than a week.

Returning to pack her things, she is confronted by Isaac, who assumes she is merely throwing a tantrum and asks her to prepare a room for Rachel and Queenie. Madeline agrees without protest, keeping her own news to herself, and lets him rush off at Rachel's call. As the bitterness of his indifference settles over her, a hospital call summons her to an emergency surgery, and she rises at once to go.