Reborn to Dodge the Bad Marriage novel Chapter 179

Chapter 179 Twenty Minutes

Yterday or today. Cordelia had never once been in a room with Julian.

Sly old fox. There wasn’t a crack anywhere in that answer.

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Nora laughed softly and turned to Olivia. “From the moment you took that call to the moment you walked through that door, how long was it?”

Olivia had no idea why that mattered. “About 20 minutes.”

“Good,” Nora said. “That’s everything I wanted.”

Cordelia saw the smile that came with it, and something in her chest dropped.

Olivia brightened. “My grandmother and I have nothing to hide, and neither of us would ever hurt Jules. Can we go up now?”

Sienna cut in, delighted. “Olivia, she still owes you the apology on her knees. And I’ll take those 100 slaps for you.”

Nora didn’t blink. “No. Because the two of you look a great deal like the people who poisoned him.”

She turned that look on Cordelia. “Ordinary ghostbloom pollen isn’t poisonous at all. Correct?”

Cordelia’s face closed up. “You’re the one who called it poison, and now you say it isn’t. If you don’t know medicine, stop clowning in front of people who do.”

Nora didn’t rush. “Why the hurry? I hadn’t finished.

“For most people it’s harmless. Julian is a special case, because he was poisoned first with larkspur, which looks like blackroot in everything it does to a body.

“Larkspur and ghostbloom react against each other. Together they put a man unconscious and bring up blood, and the pulse crashes, which looks exactly like somebody dying in front of you.

“The window to reverse it is 30 minutes. Miss it, and even if he lives, the brain damage leaves him a vegetable. Except…”

Nora’s eyes stayed on Cordelia. “Larkspur that potent is rare, and almost nobody around here can get it, unless they come out of a medical family like yours.

“And the ghostbloom antidote takes three hours to prepare. You heard about the poisoning 20 minutes before you came through that door. So how did you have it ready?

“Your house is a five-minute drive from here at the very least.”

Then, she added one more thing. “And the pollen came in on Gideon. The road here runs under the ghostbloom tree, so he was always going to carry some of it inside with him.”

Every line of it pointed one direction, and Olivia turned to stare. “Grandma?”

Constance was just as stunned. “Cordelia?”

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15:52 Thu, Oct 1 ·

Chapter 179 Twenty Minutes

She couldn’t take it in. Julian had been sick since the day he was born, and Cordelia had poured herself into

ting him the whole time.

And now nobody in that room could get around the question.

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Cordelia didn’t move under all those eyes. “I’m a physician and a pharmacist. I keep a range of antidotes prepared. Is that strange?

“He happened to be poisoned with ghostbloom, and I happened to have that one on hand.

“Your reasoning is good. You have no proof, and I have no reason to hurt him.

“Meanwhile you’ve dragged this out and burned the time he has left, which says a great deal more about your motives.

“And since you won’t apologize on your knees and you won’t take the slaps either…”

Nora cut across her. “One ingredient in that antidote has to be picked fresh and simmered the same day. Surely the great Dr. Blithe knows that?”

It was a brutal question.

Say she didn’t know, and her skill was a lie. Say she did, and she had just confirmed that she poisoned him, because nothing else explained an antidote started three hours ahead of time.

Cordelia stared at her, at the tailored dress, at that cold, commanding presence, at the way every word out of her landed as true.

It was like looking at somebody she used to know, the one they had always measured her against, the one who had beaten her every time.

Nora felt the violence coming off her and pushed anyway. “Well, Dr. Blithe? Do you know, or don’t you?”

Something heavy hit the ground outside the room.

One of the staff ran in, white-faced. “Ma’am, Della jumped. She’s alive, but she needs help right now.”

Constance turned to Nora. “Della Fenn is the one who came screaming that Julian was bringing up blood.”

Constance had suspected Della of something and had her watched, and the jump settled the question.

“I’ll take her.” Cordelia was on her feet and out the door before anybody else moved.

Della was bleeding internally, with a broken rib driven into her lung, and she needed surgery, so Cordelia rode out with the ambulance.

With a life on the line, Nora had no grounds to stop her.

Still, after everything that had been laid out in that room, Constance was never going to trust Cordelia the way she once had.

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