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Chapter 72: Imogen's Visit
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2026-08-08 00:16:24
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HIS CONVENIENT BRIDE Chapter 72: Imogen's Visit
Imogen called on a Saturday morning with the directness Cara had come to expect from her."I am back in London," she said. "The survey finished early. Are you free this afternoon?""Yes," Cara said. "Come for lunch."A pause."Your flat?" Imogen said."The kitchen table," Cara said. "It has a short leg and my mother will be there and it is where everything important happens."A brief silence that sounded like someone deciding something."I will bring food," Imogen said.She arrived at one with Lebanese food from a place in Stockwell that she had apparently discovered on her last visit and had been thinking about since.Margaret opened the door.Looked at Imogen.Looked at the food.Stepped aside.Which was the highest welcome Margaret offered anyone on a first visit to the flat.They sat at the table. The food between them. The January garden visible through the window. The rose stems bare and waiting.Imogen looked at the kitchen with the professional attention she brought to spaces.
HIS CONVENIENT BRIDE Chapter 71: The Notebook
Ethan went to Richmond on a Wednesday.Cara had a studio session. He went alone which felt correct. Some things needed to be received privately before they could be shared.Eleanor had the notebook on the kitchen table when he arrived.Small. Dark green cover. The edges soft from handling. The kind of object that had been touched many times over many years.She had not opened it.She had been waiting for him.He sat at the table.She made tea.Put it beside him.Sat across.He picked up the notebook.Looked at it.Then he opened it.He called Cara at four.She was between studio and the tube. She heard something in his voice immediately. Not distress. Something quieter than that. The specific quality of someone who had received something and was still finding the shape of it."The notebook," she said."Yes," he said."What is in it?" she said.He was quiet for a moment."Everything," he said. "The early years. The company. Ideas he had. Problems he was working through." He paused. "Vi
HIS CONVENIENT BRIDE Chapter 70: January Again
The new year came without ceremony.They spent it at the Brixton flat. No party. No occasion engineered around a countdown. Just the four of them because Ethan had been there since the twenty-eighth and had not left and nobody had suggested he should.Eleanor called at midnight exactly.Not to say happy new year. To say she had found something in Robert's study while clearing a shelf. A notebook. Early nineteen eighties from the look of it. His handwriting throughout.She said she thought Ethan should have it.He said he would come to Richmond in the week.She said she knew he would.She rang off.Cara watched him put his phone down."A notebook," she said."From the early years apparently," he said."The Blackwood Hale years," she said."Possibly," he said.She looked at him."How do you feel about that?" she said.He thought about it honestly."Like I am still learning things about a man I thought I knew completely," he said. "Which I find I do not mind." He paused. "He keeps arrivi
HIS CONVENIENT BRIDE Chapter 69: What Stays
They left Eleanor's house at eleven.Not dramatically. The way good evenings ended. Gradually. People finding coats and saying goodbyes that took longer than expected because nobody quite wanted to be the first to make the leaving final.Maya had woken at nine with the impeccable timing she always had and had spent the last two hours telling anyone who would listen about the penguins documentary with the energy of someone who had been saving it up.James had carried her to the car at ten thirty. She had kept talking until the door closed.Eleanor had stood at the door and watched each person leave with the particular attention of someone cataloguing something they wanted to remember accurately.When Cara hugged her at the door Eleanor held on slightly longer than usual.Said nothing.Which said everything.The car was quiet on the way back to Brixton.Margaret in the back. Cara beside her. Ethan driving.The October city moving past the windows.At some point her mother said, "the foo
HIS CONVENIENT BRIDE Chapter 68: After the Garden
The reception moved inside at five.The October light had done what October light did. Given everything it had and then withdrawn quietly without making a drama of it.Eleanor's sitting room and dining room had been opened into each other. Tables arranged so people could move between them freely. Robert's rule about assigned seating observed without anyone needing to say so.Mahmoud's food appeared in the way good food appeared at good occasions. Without announcement. Simply there when people needed it.Cara moved through the room the way she moved through all rooms.Present. Unhurried. Not performing anything.She talked to Adaeze who had brought a gift that was a set of architectural drawing tools in a wooden case and had presented it with the directness she brought to everything. She talked to David who was indeed insufferable about being invited and was also genuinely moved which he managed with the specific discomfort of a CFO experiencing an emotion at a social occasion.She sat
HIS CONVENIENT BRIDE Chapter 67: Eleanor's Garden
The car turned into the Richmond road at half past two.Cara looked out the window at the familiar street. The houses. The particular quality of a Richmond October afternoon that had always felt like it belonged to a different, quieter version of the city.Her mother sat beside her.Neither of them spoke.The car stopped at the gate.Cara looked at the house.Every window with a candle in it. The climbing rose on the south wall dense with the last of the season. The garden lights threaded through the stone walls visible even in the afternoon. The wreath on the door that Eleanor changed every year and somehow always got exactly right."Ready?" her mother said.Cara looked at the house.At the warm lit windows.At the gate she had walked through so many times now that her hand knew the latch before she reached it."Yes," she said.Priya was at the door.She had arrived early by her own insistence and had apparently spent the morning making herself useful to Eleanor in ways that Eleanor
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