All Chapters of His Unchosen bride : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Her father’s study smelled like leather and old cigars, the same as it always had. Arabella sat in the chair across from his desk, spine straight, hands folded in her lap, while Edward Hart paced behind her like a man deciding how to discipline a business partner who’d breached a contract. “Do you have any idea,” he said, “what you’ve done?” “I haven’t done anything.” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “I didn’t ask him to say that.” “Then why would he—” Her father stopped himself, pressing his fingers to his temple. Through the study door, she could still hear the muffled hum of the gala continuing without them, the quartet picking back up as though nothing had happened. “He’s thirty-nine years old, Arabella. He needs a wife who can stand beside him at a board meeting, not one who’s barely finished growing up.” “I’m twenty-four. Not a child.” “You know what I mean.”She did. She’d heard the shape of it her whole life, dressed in different words. Not polished enough. Not

She met him in the garden rather than let him back into the house. It felt safer, somehow—open air instead of walls that had witnessed too much tonight already. The night had turned cool, mist curling low over the hedges, and the party’s noise had thinned to the sound of cars pulling away down the long drive. Adrian stood near the fountain with his jacket unbuttoned, hands in his pockets, looking less like a CEO and more like a man who had also had a very long night. “You didn’t have to come back,” Arabella said. “I wanted to make sure you weren’t left to manage the aftermath alone.” He studied her for a moment. “Your sister has a talent for making a room feel smaller than it is.” “You heard.” “Some of it. Enough.” He didn’t elaborate, and she was grateful for that—grateful he didn’t ask her to relitigate whatever cruelty had leaked through the door. “I should have asked you before the gala. Before I said anything. I didn’t, and that wasn’t fair to you.” It wasn’t an apology exac

The clip was already at four hundred thousand views by the time Adrian's assistant pulled it up on the office's second screen. Vivian sat across from a daytime talk show host, dressed in soft blue instead of the armor-ivory she'd worn at the gala, her hands folded with the practiced stillness of someone who'd rehearsed looking like she hadn't rehearsed anything."I don't blame my sister," Vivian was saying, her voice trembling in a way that read as vulnerability rather than performance to anyone who hadn't grown up across the dinner table from her. "Arabella has always struggled to find her place in our family. I think, in a strange way, this is good for her. She needs the structure. The guidance."The host leaned forward. "Some people are saying Mr. Blackwood's choice was... unconventional."Vivian's smile turned sad, indulgent, the smile of a woman being generous about a painful subject. "Adrian has always had a soft spot for people who need rescuing. I think he sees Arabella as some

The boxes arrived on a Tuesday, stacked flat and unassembled in the hallway outside her bedroom, and Arabella stood looking at them for a long moment before she let herself begin — the particular procrastination of someone who understood, on some level, that the act of packing would force her to reckon with exactly how little of her old life felt worth carrying forward. It should have been simple. Twenty-four years of belongings, most of which she'd never chosen for herself — furniture selected by her mother's decorator to match a room's overall scheme rather than her own taste, clothes bought to fit an idea of what a Hart daughter should wear rather than what Arabella actually liked, books gifted by relatives who'd clearly never asked what she read. She started with the closet, sliding hangers across the rod one by one, and found, within the first hour, that most of what she owned didn't feel worth taking at all. "You're keeping surprisingly little," Vivian said, appearing i

The kitchen staff warmed to her almost immediately — Mrs. Alvarez, delighted by anyone who complimented her cooking with genuine enthusiasm rather than polite restraint, and within a week Arabella found herself welcome to linger at the counter while sauces simmered, trading easy conversation that asked nothing of her beyond simple presence.Mrs. Alvarez had a habit of narrating her own cooking as she worked, half to herself and half to whoever happened to be nearby, and Arabella found the sound of it oddly soothing, a kind of running commentary that filled the kitchenwith warmth in a way that had nothing to do with the ovens. The household staff, by contrast, took longer. She noticed it first in small things — a maid's eyes flicking over her at the breakfast table with an assessment that felt uncomfortably familiar, the particular attention paid to which pastries she chose from the tray each morning, a pause before someone addressed her that suggested careful recalibration of h