Home / Romance / The Substitute Bride Of The Blackwood / Chapter 30: The First Secret

Share

Chapter 30: The First Secret

Author: Ivy Rose
last update publish date: 2026-07-13 21:00:29

POV: Charlotte

He asked me to sit down in the same small room where he’d laid out the rules of our marriage all those weeks ago, and something about that choice told me before he’d said a single word that whatever was coming had been decided on deliberately, the same way everything Damien did was decided on deliberately.

“I told you once that I’d tell you eventually,” he said, sitting across from me, no notes, no phone, nothing in his hands at all.

Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App
Locked Chapter

Latest chapter

  • The Substitute Bride Of The Blackwood    Chapter 63: The Apology

    POV: CharlotteHe knocked at half past ten.Not the tentative knock of someone hoping I’d already fallen asleep and they could tell themselves they’d tried. Three quiet, deliberate knocks, the kind that said I’m here and I’m not leaving until you answer, and I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t standing on the other side of this door waiting for exactly this.I’d been sitting on the edge of the bed since I came upstairs, the room dark except for the lamp on the bedside table, the hollow feeling from the corridor settling slowly into something more complicated than anger, something that had more grief in it than I’d expected.I got up and unlocked the door.He was still dressed, which meant he hadn’t been to bed, which meant he’d been somewhere in the house since I came upstairs sitting with whatever the corridor had left him with, and something about knowing that, about the fact that he hadn’t simply moved on to the next thing the way he sometimes moved on to t

  • The Substitute Bride Of The Blackwood    Chapter 62: What He Didn’t See

    POV: DamienI stood in the corridor for a long time after she went upstairs.Her door closing at the top of the stairs was the quietest sound I’d heard all day and somehow the loudest thing in the house.I went to my study.I didn’t open my laptop. I didn’t pick up my phone. I sat in the chair behind my desk and looked at the wall, which was something I almost never did because looking at walls produced nothing useful, and yet here I was, doing it, because the alternative was admitting that I needed to sit somewhere and be wrong for a few minutes before I could figure out how to be right.My first instinct had been defensive.The Morrison account was legitimate. Victoria’s involvement had professional justification. Nathan’s call had been framed cleanly and I’d responded on those terms. Dozens of decisions crossed my desk every week that never came home with me. That was simply the reality of running a company at this level.I held that position fo

  • The Substitute Bride Of The Blackwood    Chapter 61: The First Fight

    POV: CharlotteI heard the front door at half past six.I’d been in the library for three hours, not writing, just sitting in the reading chair with the notebook closed in my lap and the afternoon light shifting slowly across the floor and the specific low hum of someone waiting for something they’re not sure how to begin.His footsteps in the entrance hall. Helen’s voice saying something brief. His footsteps again, heading toward his study the way they always did when he came home, the reliable geography of his evening routine.I got up.I met him in the corridor outside his study before he reached the door, and something in my face when he turned and saw me made him stop walking immediately.“Charlotte,” he said.“Victoria is meeting you here on Thursday,” I said. “At two o’clock. For the Morrison account.”He didn’t say anything right away, and I watched him process it, watched the moment he understood that I knew and understood how I’d fou

  • The Substitute Bride Of The Blackwood    Chapter 60: Helen Knows

    POV: CharlotteThree days after the kitchen call I’d told myself was just business, I was walking down the corridor toward the library when I heard Helen’s voice from the small office near the entrance hall where she managed the household scheduling.The door was half open.I wasn’t trying to listen. I was simply walking past at the wrong moment, or the right one, depending on how you looked at it.“Thursday at two would work well,” Helen was saying, in the efficient unhurried tone she used for scheduling calls. “Mr. Blackwood has his morning blocked but his afternoon is clear. If you could confirm the location preference from Miss Whitmore’s side we can finalize the room arrangements here.”I stopped walking.“Yes,” Helen continued. “Victoria Whitmore. The Morrison account meeting. That’s correct.”The corridor was very quiet around me.I stood there with my hand not quite touching the wall beside me and my notebook under my arm and the sound

  • The Substitute Bride Of The Blackwood    Chapter 59: Just Business

    POV: DamienNathan Whitmore’s voice on the other end of the line was the voice of a man who had decided this was a straightforward call and was going to keep it that way regardless of what might complicate that framing.“Damien.” Warm. Professionally warm, the kind that existed specifically for business relationships rather than personal ones. “I appreciate you taking the call.”“Of course,” I said.I was standing in the corridor outside the kitchen, close enough to the closed door that I was aware of Charlotte on the other side of it, and I moved a few feet further down the hall, not because I was hiding anything but because the call required the kind of focus that proximity to distraction didn’t help.“I’ll get straight to it,” Nathan said. “We have the Morrison refinancing coming up next quarter. You’re aware of the existing structure, it connects both our families’ interests at the asset level, and we’ve been looking at who from our side has the right pr

  • The Substitute Bride Of The Blackwood    Chapter 58: After

    POV: Charlotte He didn’t let go of me after the kiss. He stayed close, his forehead still resting against mine, his hand warm at my jaw, and I stayed too, neither of us rushing toward anything, just sitting in the quiet of what had just been said and what had just been confirmed between us without either of us needing to label it out loud. Then he kissed me again. This one was different from the one before it. The one before had been an answer. This one was something else, something that started slow and deepened by degrees, his hand sliding from my jaw into my hair, mine finding the front of his shirt the way they always found it, like they remembered where to go without being told. I pulled him down with me. He came without hesitation, his weight settling over me, and I felt the difference immediately from every time before, some last remaining tentativeness gone from both of us, replaced by something more settled,

More Chapters
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status