Reborn to Dodge the Bad Marriage novel Chapter 55

Chapter 55 The Room Next Door

Olivia’s head came up. How can he do this to me?

Nora looked over at him, thoroughly pleased. “My husband is doing very well tonight.”

Fired

She hadn’t had to lift a finger. Julian had cut Olivia’s sweet talk off at the root himself. She liked a man with a palate for artificial sweetener, not one who swallowed three sugary sentences and picked a fight with his wife over them.

Olivia had taken all she could, and she turned to Constance. “Grandma Weston, have you told Nora about the arrangement between Julian and me?”

Nora’s hand stopped halfway to the blue cheese.

She looked over at Julian. “Are you taking Olivia on as a second wife?”

Julian’s mouth twisted. “How exactly would that work? This country allows one wife at a time, and I have one. You.”

“So you’re keeping her, then. As a mistress.”

That did make him angry, and the warmth went out of his voice. “Nora. Stop joking.”

Nora put on a wounded look. “I’m not the one joking. Miss Blithe made it sound like a soap opera. The woman he keeps across town turns up at the house and asks his grandmother to make it official. What was I supposed to think?”

Olivia’s face went white, then a shade worse than white.

She’d phrased it that way on purpose, to make Nora think exactly that.

What she hadn’t expected was for Nora to land on mistress and say it out loud in front of the room.

Constance said, “Olivia is going to be living here. Her room is next to yours, so she’s close by if he needs her.”

Nora’s head came up and she looked right at her. “You really are moving in to be kept?”

Plenty of rich men had one wife on paper and a whole line of women in practice.

The wives stayed for the money, never filed, and in some houses lived alongside the second woman and the third.

A few of them even put the mistress on an allowance and paid to raise her children.

If Olivia really was moving in to be kept, Nora had no objection at all. She’d simply stop giving him his medicine, let him die sooner, and inherit sooner.

Julian was genuinely angry now, and his face went cold. “Nora.”

Constance saw the two of them about to go at each other and stepped in fast. “That isn’t it at all. Olivia is moving in as our family physician, so it’s easier to keep an eye on Julian.

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Chapter 55 The Room Next Door

“You know what his condition is, and he’s getting worse. With a doctor living in the house, if anything

pens we won’t lose the minutes that matter.”

Nora frowned. “Why? Weren’t we looking for Snowbell?”

Constance looked her in the eye. “Cordelia Blithe is Snowbell. And the course of treatment for Julian is something she has only ever taught to Olivia, which is why Olivia has to be the one to give it.”

Nora went still. “Cordelia is Snowbell?”

Then what does that make my grandmother? Those were Snowbell’s own notebooks she put in my hands.

Constance nodded gravely. “She is. I only found out recently, and I’m telling you and nobody else. Cordelia keeps it quiet. She doesn’t want people knowing what she is.”

That day Cordelia hadn’t answered the question about where Snowbell was. She’d come to Constance privately afterward and said she was Snowbell, and that for personal reasons she no longer used the name

Cordelia had also said Julian could be cured completely, on one condition. Olivia had to move into the Weston house and be the one treating him.

Nora took in how serious Constance looked. She had her doubts about Cordelia being anything of the kind, and she also understood that she was being told, not asked.

Julian’s life was on the table. Nobody in that house was going to talk Constance out of it, least of all Nora, and not Julian either.

Nora shrugged. “As long as the soundproofing is good, I’ve got no problem with it.”

Olivia looked at Constance. “Grandma Weston, barring anything unexpected, I can treat him. And if I can’t, my grandmother will step in. My grandmother is Snowbell.”

Nora scoffed and didn’t bother pointing out who the unexpected thing was supposed to be.

She stayed in the living room a while longer, finished the fruit, and went upstairs.

Julian came up right behind her. “Are you going to be angry?”

“About what?” Nora looked at him, lost.

“Olivia moving in.”

They’d reached the second floor, and the staff were setting up Olivia’s room.

Nora raised an eyebrow. “No. She’s a doctor and you’re a patient. What am I supposed to be angry about?”

“Really?” Julian said.

“What, were you hoping I’d be angry?”

Julian looked at her and said nothing at all.

Nora laughed lightly. “I’m really not. To a doctor, a man’s body and a woman’s body are both a pile of meat

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Chapter 55 The Room Next Door

and organs.

• ཤ

Finished

get sick someday and the only surgeon who can operate is a man, are you going to keep him off me and stand there watching me die?”

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