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홈 / Romance / Married in Her Name / Chapter 78: Lydia Pierce

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Chapter 78: Lydia Pierce

작가: May Che
last update 게시일: 2026-06-12 20:28:44

By midnight, Lydia Pierce had become both a name and an absence.

Arden searched from Richard’s private office at Westbridge because it was the only room close enough to Helen’s floor and secure enough for the records he was pulling. Daniel had refused to move Leah away from her family, and Leah had refused to sleep while another girl’s life sat buried in systems that still had power over her own.

So they worked there, under low lamps, surrounded by files, coffee cups, hospital silence, and the
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  • Married in Her Name   Chapter 90: Lessons in Daniel’s World

    The next morning, Daniel turned the west study into a classroom.Not officially.There was no announcement, no lesson plan, no careful phrase about preparation. But by ten, the long table near the window had been cleared of ordinary work and covered with guest lists, seating charts, donor notes, family connections, old charity programs, and three slim folders marked in Elaine’s exact handwriting.Cole Arts Board Reception. Helena Voss. Relevant Public History.Leah stood in the doorway and looked at the table.“This looks like an interrogation wearing stationery,” she said.Daniel, who was placing a marked page beside the seating chart, looked up. “That is not entirely inaccurate.”Elaine sat at the far end of the table with her tablet and a cup of coffee. “It is preparation.”“People keep saying that before sending me into rooms where everyone smiles strangely.”“Then preparation has been correctly identified,” Daniel said.Leah gave him a look.He almost smiled.Almost.That small

  • Married in Her Name   Chapter 89: Robert’s Condition

    Robert Cole sent his follow-up at eleven the next morning.Not too early. Not late enough to seem hesitant. Eleven was a civilized hour, chosen by a man who wanted pressure to arrive dressed as courtesy.Elaine brought the message into the west study, where Daniel had been working since breakfast and Leah had been sitting near the window with her notebook open, though she had not written anything for nearly twenty minutes. The room had been quiet in a way that made every page turn sound deliberate.Daniel looked up before Elaine spoke.“Robert?” he asked.“Yes.”Leah’s fingers tightened around her pen.Daniel noticed.He always noticed now, and after the morning before, that had become both comfort and threat.He had guessed too close. He had said your mother, then stepped back so quickly and carefully that Leah had not known whether to be relieved or terrified. Truth is not property, he had said. Not even when it can be guessed.The sentence had stayed with her all night.Elaine plac

  • Married in Her Name   A Door Left Open

    Daniel did not return to the small sitting room until nearly an hour later.By then, Leah had washed her face, hidden the safe phone beneath the folded shawl in her wardrobe, then taken it out again because hiding it felt too much like fear winning. She placed it instead in the drawer beside the tin box, not inside it. The box was for paper, for old notes and unsent apologies, for small things that could survive by being folded.The phone was a door.Doors needed to be reached.She was sitting near the window when Mrs. Turner knocked softly and entered.“Mr. Cole asks whether you will join him downstairs.”Leah’s first instinct was to refuse.Not because she did not want to see him.Because she did.That was becoming the difficulty.After Noah’s call, after hearing his voice break and harden and promise he would not call her name again, Leah felt stripped of every false layer she had worn that day. She was no longer Mrs. Cole from the Westbridge photographs. She was not Olivia Grant w

  • Married in Her Name   Tomorrow Night

    Tomorrow came too quietly.Leah had expected the day to drag itself toward evening with claws. Instead, it moved softly through the house, disguised as ordinary hours.Breakfast arrived.Daniel was in the morning room with two newspapers, neither of which he seemed to care about. Mrs. Turner poured tea, placed toast near Leah’s hand, and said nothing about the safe phone that would ring only if courage survived until night.The foundation reports remained on the side table, closed.Westbridge did not call.Margaret did not call.No courier arrived from the Grant mansion with folded cream paper and black ink.Nothing happened.That was becoming the most dangerous phrase Leah knew.Nothing happened, and yet she spent the entire day listening for consequences.She repaired the shade cloth in the glasshouse before noon.Peter took it down for her, standing on a ladder while Daniel held the base without comment, though Leah suspected he had not originally intended to be useful in that way.

  • Married in Her Name   Chapter 27: The Woman Who Remembered

    Leah’s body remembered before her mind could prepare.The old trees. The long drive. The white stone house appearing through rain and shadow. The windows glowing gold as if nothing terrible had ever happened behind them.Tonight, the mansion was too bright.Cars lined the drive in a polished row.Daniel saw them at the same moment she did.“More than family,” he said.Leah’s hand tightened around her small evening bag. “Margaret lied?”“Margaret edited.”“That is not better.”“No.”The car stopped beneath the covered entrance.For one moment, Leah remained seated.The last time she had entered this house, she had worn a gown made for another woman and left married under another woman’s name. The memory rose in her body with such force that the pearls seemed suddenly too tight.Daniel got out first.Peter opened Leah’s door.She stepped down carefully, and Daniel was there beside her.Not touching.Present.“Ready?” he asked.“No.”His gaze moved to her face.Leah forced herself to bre

  • Married in Her Name   Chapter 26/1

    The pearls remained on Leah’s table all night.Mrs. Turner had taken them away once, after Leah asked her to return them to the safe, but the memory of them stayed where the velvet case had been. Three pale strands. Smooth, perfect, expensive. Harmless to anyone who had never learned that beautiful things could carry instructions more clearly than words.Wear the pearls.Margaret had written nothing else about them. No explanation. No sentimental claim. No mention of family, tradition, inheritance, or affection.That was what made the command worse.Leah woke the next morning with the sentence still in her mind.She did not know why those pearls mattered. Not fully. She only knew they had arrived before the order, which meant Margaret had prepared the trap before Leah knew there was one. That was Margaret’s way. She never pushed a person toward a wall until she had first measured the room.At breakfast, Daniel did not mention them.He sat across from Leah in the small morning room, re

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