Reborn to Dodge the Bad Marriage novel Chapter 97

Chapter 97 The Second Daughter

Finished

Everything Olivia showed the world was flawless, right down to the poised, gentle manner she wore.

That was only what she showed, of course. Having spent time around her, Nora knew Olivia was completely gone on Julian and half out of her head about it.

Julian answered with a question of his own. “Is this jealousy?”

Nora huffed at him. “Why would I be jealous? We have an arrangement. I was the one who proposed it, and that’s the only reason you married me.”

Julian caught the color climbing the back of her neck, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “No. I never felt anything for her, and I’ve only ever wanted one person.”

He said the last part low and rough with his arm around her waist and his mouth at her ear, and it came out sounding like a confession.

Her heart skipped, and she grabbed for something else to talk about. “Is Olivia really that perfect?”

“Nobody is,” Julian said. “Old families are very good at building an image. That said, so far there’s nothing damning in there.”

Nora went back through the pages, found nothing suspicious, and gave up. “Some people are just born into the right family.”

Born into a line of doctors, she wouldn’t have been stuck with the scraps Rosalind had taught her. She would have had all of it, and she wouldn’t be hiding what she knew and treating people in the dark.

What Rosalind was so afraid of was still a mystery to her.

After Olivia’s history came half a page on her parents, and turning that page brought her to Cordelia.

She glanced up. “Her parents only get half a page?”

Julian nodded. “There’s nothing to tell. They lived very quiet lives.”

Nora skimmed the half page, and quiet was putting it kindly. They had married on schedule and had a child on schedule, without one bump in the road, like dolls somebody else was moving around.

Cordelia’s section came next, packed with degrees, honors, and the kind of achievements that end up in textbooks. She had developed new drugs, pushed surgical technique forward, and once signed the entire Blithe fortune over to a national relief effort.

It was a spotless record. One look at it and anyone would respect Cordelia, admire her, and be a little afraid

of her.

She had a child without ever marrying, and she stayed unmarried her whole life. If anyone wanted to call those flaws, they were the only two on the page.

Most people still believed a woman was supposed to marry and have children in that order.

“She never married and had a child anyway?” Nora looked up at him.

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Chapter 97 The Second Daughter

Julian nodded. “That’s right.”

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Finished

No ran her eyes over the page again. “There’s nothing here about the man. Nobody could find him?”

“I asked my grandmother,” Julian said. “All she knows is that Cordelia spent one night with a stranger, woke up the next morning to find him gone, and that was how Olivia’s father came along.”

That was why Olivia carried Cordelia’s name.

Nora had assumed Olivia’s father took his wife’s name when he married, or that Olivia had been given the

Blithe name because of her talent.

She went back over Cordelia’s file more carefully and found nothing wrong with any of it, nothing that raised a question.

After that came the rest of the family, and every last one of them was a serious doctor, a pharmacist, or a supplier of medicines.

The Blithe ancestors had served as court physicians to the crown of Valmora, so a century of medicine in the family was no exaggeration.

One entry stopped her, though. “The second Blithe daughter has no name and no photograph?”

The page was laid out as a family tree.

“Is she Cordelia’s sister?” Nora asked.

Julian turned to the page on the second Blithe daughter. “Her cousin. My grandmother has never heard of her, so there isn’t much here. She died at around twenty.”

Nora had a good memory, and the date landed immediately. “She died the same year the Blithes gave away their fortune.”

Her recall surprised him, and he nodded. “She did.”

Nora checked the cause of death, which was listed as illness.

The file also said the second Blithe daughter had been slow since childhood, unable to look after herself.

Julian asked, “Is any of that what you were looking for?”

Nora shook her head. “I couldn’t tell you yet.”

She had wondered for a while whether Rosalind was connected to the Blithes, and this one page had put the question back in front of her.

Could Grandma be the second Blithe daughter?

Something would have made her fake her death, walk away from all of it, and start over as Rosalind Blythe.

The trouble was that the second Blithe daughter couldn’t look after herself, and the file didn’t even give her

a name.

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