Reborn to Dodge the Bad Marriage novel Chapter 27

Chapter 27 The Same Name

; ་།

Fuashed

Inter last life she went to her grave without ever treating another soul. Is she making an exception now?

The worry came with it. Her grandmother’s medicine was a secret she guarded closely, and breaking that silence might bring trouble down on her, or something worse.

Julian took Nora’s hand, held her gaze for a long moment, and gave Rosalind his word. “You don’t need to worry, Grandma. I’ll hold Nora above my own life.”

Nora’s brow went up. He has days left on that life.

Letting her grandmother expose herself was not on the table, so Nora smiled and headed it off. “Don’t worry about him, Grandma. His grandmother found him a miracle worker. He’ll be well soon enough.”

Rosalind smiled and let it go.

The two of them sat with her a while longer and then left.

On the way out, Julian took an extra look at the name on the chart.

Once they were in the car, he asked her, “Your grandmother’s name is Rosalind Blythe?”

Nora answered without looking up while she worked her seatbelt, and once it clicked she asked, “Why?”

Julian started the car. “She looked familiar the moment I saw her, like I’d seen her somewhere before, and the name brought it back.”

“Meaning?” Nora had no idea what he was getting at.

“Dr. Blithe’s name is Cordelia Blithe. There’s a resemblance between the two of them.”

He glanced over at her. “You learned medicine from her.”

He said it as a fact rather than a question.

That brought Nora’s head up. “My grandmother looks like Dr. Blithe?”

The names sat close together too, and the surnames sounded identical with only the spelling between them.

Her grandmother practiced medicine, and the Blithes were a medical dynasty.

Is there actually a connection between them?

Julian confirmed it. “There’s a photograph of her on my phone. I’m driving, so take it and look for yourself.”

Nora was far too curious about that face to hesitate, and she picked up his phone.

“The passcode is your birthday.”

She looked at him with a head full of questions. “My birthday?”

“I changed it when the certificate came through. Add your fingerprint while you’re at it.”

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13

Chapter 27 The Same Name

Nora had no idea what to say to that.

– “ཤག Finished

It Aft her a little speechless. This was a marriage arranged in days, and they had known each other for three of them.

He had changed his passcode to her birthday without a second thought and then told her about it.

“Aren’t you worried I’ll steal your company secrets?”

Julian kept his eyes on the road. “You’re my wife. Nothing I have is a secret from you.”

Trust delivered that completely sent something rolling straight through her chest.

What made it land was that he said it while watching the road, with no manufactured gravity in his voice and no soulful look aimed at her.

He said it plainly, as though he were stating something obvious.

Her pulse picked up, and she unlocked the phone and started scrolling to cover it, and the question came out anyway. “Would you trust anyone you married this much?”

Mandy had stolen exactly those secrets the first time around.

By then he was already dead, though, and by Mandy’s own account she never once laid eyes on him before she was widowed, so passcodes and trust had never entered into any of it.

They had stopped at a light, and he turned those deep eyes on her and held the look while he answered.

“No.”

“Oh.”

Something in her scattered, and she bent over the phone with heat climbing into her face.

There were not many photos in his library, and everything she could see at a glance was work.

“There’s nothing in your photos.”

“Then it’ll be in the thread with Olivia.”

Nora opened his messages and found her own thread pinned to the top, saved under the name “Mrs. Weston”.

She opened Olivia’s thread and scrolled up through a very short history of polite exchanges, with his replies running to almost nothing. Yes. All right. Understood.

The photograph turned up quickly, taken in a lab with Cordelia mixing a compound, sent along as a progress report on medicine she was preparing for him.

Looking closely, there was a resemblance around the eyes. Money had clearly kept Cordelia well, with far fewer lines on her face and thicker, glossier hair, and she read as much younger than Rosalind.

In bearing. Cordelia read as generations of scholars behind her, a wealthy woman who commanded a careful sort of respect, while Rosalind carried the bones of someone who had been beautiful and wore it as

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15:19 Thu, Oct 10.

Chapter 27 The Same Name

easily as the grandmother next door.

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