Review: Runaway Wife

Runaway Wife by Charlotte Lamb

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I did not like the hero.
He dropped the heroine at their home in the country and continued his life in the city. And the secretary accompanied him in all social functions in the city and in his travels.
He dispatches their son to boarding school against the will of the heroine.
If he lived practically alone in London in my opinion he did not even care about his family. It was another sign of social status.
In my opinion he must have cheated on her at some point. He is too arrogant and too aggressive and in no time I felt that he really loved her. She is more of a possession.
Our heroine is a doormat and does nothing against the other woman. She should have marked her position from the start and not been passive.
She should have imposed her position as a partner in the company and put the secretary in her place or demanded that the bitch be fired.
Keeping the secretary was more important than keeping his marriage.
She should have kicked the hero's ass and ripped off the other woman's hair.

It was the last straw when Oliver could not make it home for their 10th wedding anniversary.

Miss Sylvester wasn’t there. She was in Wales with Mr Ransom, Francesca was informed.

Francesca wished she had someone to talk over problems with, someone she could trust the way Oliver trusted Miss Sylvester.

He hadn’t taken her seriously for years; she had merged with the wallpaper of his life, along with Lambourne, Jon, even his father. The things that really mattered to Oliver were up here, in London. This was where Oliver lived. Their home in Sussex was a place he visited, and she and Jon people he visited; they were peripheral to Oliver’s real world, the business world in which Miss Sylvester and Matt belonged and where Oliver most truly existed, was most himself, a self Francesca did not know.

he shook her backwards and forwards so violently that her hair came tumbling down, the long blonde strands flying around her face and tangling in his fingers.

She hadn’t been imagining things; there was something going on between Oliver and Janice Sylvester. Humiliation stung in her throat. It was bad enough that he had cheated on her, but for everyone to know about it made it seem worse.

You’ve been flying about all over the world with Janice Sylvester for years and getting away with.

Matt looked at him then. ‘You’re the one who keeps forgetting . . .that’s why she left you!’

Oliver might not realise it, but by taking Janice instead of her to this party he was practically making a public announcement to the staff, and Janice feverishly wanted him to commit himself.

Janice was not having coffee. She was sitting on Oliver’s lap, her arms around his neck, kissing him passionately.

She had begun to wonder months ago, puzzled by Oliver’s lack of interest in her, by his long absences and his cold remoteness, picking up the malice and dislike in Janice’s voice whenever they spoke on the telephone. It had all pointed to one answer--that Oliver was having an affair with his secretary--and everyone had been dropping hints since she started work here. Matt had betrayed his suspicions by his unhappy...

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