The Real Heiress Returns Five Brothers on Their Knees novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: By Blood

Winslow's POV

My great-grandmother kept the family papers in a glass case in her study.

She had never once let me touch it.

That evening she unlocked it with a small brass key and laid a single yellow page on the desk.

"Read," said Winifred.

I read.

The paper was fifty years old.

It had two signatures at the bottom, my great-grandfather's and old Mr. Livingstone's.

Between them was a pressed ink stamp of a lighthouse.

*We, the heads of the Taft and Livingstone houses, agree that the eldest great-grandchild of Taft and the first daughter of the Livingstone house, by blood, shall marry when of age.*

I read it twice.

Then I read the last three words again.

"By blood," I said.

"The old fool who wrote it was fond of precision."

"It says the first daughter of the Livingstone house, by blood."

"It does," said Winifred.

"I'd like you to say the next sentence out loud, because I am ninety-two years old and I have waited a long time to hear it."

I looked at her.

The pact had been put in front of me when I was nineteen.

I had refused to look at it.

I had refused to go to a single dinner, and I had not asked the name of the girl.

I had never once read the page.

"Brynn isn't a Livingstone by blood," I said.

"No."

"Coralie is."

"Yes."

"I'm engaged to Coralie."

"You have been engaged to Coralie since the morning she was born," said Winifred.

She smiled so widely that I had to look away.

I sat down.

My legs had stopped working.

"Does she know?"

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