Reborn to Dodge the Bad Marriage novel Chapter 40

Chapter 40 Three Hours

Nora smiled. “Good. That’s everything I wanted.”

Cordelia saw that smile, and something dropped in her stomach.

Olivia sounded relieved. “My grandmother and I have nothing to hide, and neither of us would ever hurt him. So can we see him now?”

Sienna cut in, thoroughly enjoying herself. “Olivia, she still owes you the apology on her knees. And those hundred slaps, I’ll handle those for you!”

Nora’s eyes went cold. “No. Because the two of you look a lot like the people who poisoned him.”

She turned that cold look on Cordelia. “Ghostbloom pollen isn’t poisonous on its own. Is it?”

Cordelia stared back, flat and cold. “A minute ago you were telling this room ghostbloom pollen is deadly and now you say it isn’t. If you don’t know medicine, stop standing there making a clown of yourself.”

Nora’s voice stayed cold. “What’s the hurry? I hadn’t finished.

“Ghostbloom pollen does nothing at all to a healthy person. Julian isn’t a healthy person. He was dosed with larkspur first, and larkspur presents almost exactly like blackroot.

“Larkspur and ghostbloom pollen react against each other. Together they put a person under, bring up blood, and drop the pulse until it looks like he’s dying in front of you.

“After that, you get thirty minutes to clear it. Past that, if it doesn’t kill him, the brain damage leaves him a vegetable. Except…”

Her eyes came up sharp and settled on Cordelia. “Larkspur is rare. In this country it’s almost impossible to get hold of, unless you happen to be the Blithes.

“And an antidote for ghostbloom pollen takes three hours to prepare. You heard about the poisoning twenty minutes before you walked in here. So when exactly did you mix it?

“And your house is what, a five-minute drive from here?”

“Oh, and one more thing,” Nora added. “The ghostbloom pollen came in on Gideon Vance. There’s a ghostbloom tree over the only road to this house, and he had to drive under it.”

Every step of it pointed at Cordelia, and Olivia turned to her, stunned. “Grandma?”

Constance couldn’t take it in. “Cordelia?”

It didn’t seem possible. Julian had been sick since the day he was born, and Cordelia had poured herself into keeping him alive the whole time.

But after what Nora had just laid out, nobody in the room could help wondering.

Cordelia sat there without moving an inch. “I’m a physician and a pharmacist. I keep a range of antidotes made up at all times. Is that so strange?

Chapter 40 Three Hours

“It simply happens that Julian was poisoned with ghostbloom pollen, and it simply happens that I had the antidote for it.

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

“What you do have is a lot of noise, and every minute of it has kept him from treatment. I’d call that the suspicious part.

“But since you won’t get on your knees, and you won’t hit yourself…”

Nora cut her off, cold. “One ingredient in the ghostbloom antidote has to be picked fresh and boiled down. Surely the great Dr. Blithe knows that much?”

The question had teeth. If Cordelia said she didn’t know, she was admitting she wasn’t much of a doctor

If she said she did know, she was confirming she’d poisoned him, because nothing else explained having the antidote finished three hours ahead of time.

Cordelia watched her. Standing there in that tailored dress, cool and untouchable, Nora made every word she said sound like fact.

It was like looking at a woman she hadn’t seen in forty years, the one person Cordelia had spent her whole life being measured against and losing to.

Nora could feel how badly she wanted to hurt her, and she pushed anyway. “The famous Dr. Blithe. Do you know it or don’t you?”

Something hit the ground outside the doors with a heavy, final sound.

A servant ran in, white-faced. “Ma’am, Della Fenn went out an upstairs window! She’s alive, but she needs a hospital!”

Constance looked at Nora. “Della is the maid who came screaming through here about Julian coughing up

blood.”

Constance had suspected her from the first minute and had her held somewhere in the house. Going out a window only made her look guiltier.

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

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

A life was a life. Nora could hardly stand in her way.

One thing was certain, though. After everything Nora had laid out, Constance would never trust Cordelia the way she had that morning.

Olivia was pale as she turned to Constance. “Grandma Weston, my grandmother isn’t like that. You know what the two of us have given up for Julian.”

Constance nodded once, and nobody could tell whether she believed it.

The quiet was making Mandy frantic. “Is Julian all right or not? Is somebody taking him to a hospital?”

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