?Chapter 1372:


    She couldn’t live like this. This wasn’t the life she had envisioned for herself. She didn’t want her days to blur together like this, quiet and confined and full of waiting.


    The sound of approaching footsteps startled her. She turned quickly, shoulders tensing, only to find Jewell standing behind her.


    Relieved, she let out a small breath. “Oh… Dr. Vance. It’s you.”


    Jewell walked over and pulled out a chair beside her. With a faint chuckle, he said, “You sound disappointed. Were you hoping it was someone else?”


    She didn’t respond, but the silence between them was answer enough. It wasn’t disappointment she felt anymore—it was something heavier. Something closer to resignation.


    He watched her for a moment, then stood. “Go change your clothes. I’m taking you out.”


    She blinked, startled. Thest time he had taken her out had been done in secret, behind William’s back. Was he trying to do that again?


    Sensing her hesitation, Jewell rified, “It’s not for shopping this time. I’m taking you to the hospital.”


    Her brow furrowed. “The hospital? Why?”


    “You’ve been feeling nauseous on and off these past few days,” he replied. “William wants you checked out.”


    Back when she first started feeling sick, William had forced her to take a pregnancy test. It hade back negative. Since then, the nausea had faded, though her stomach still cramped from time to time, never quite settling.


    But she was more confused about how Jewell even knew any of that.


    “Even though he hasn’te back,” Jewell said with a shrug, “the servants report your condition to him every day.”


    That answernded with a bitter rity.


    L?tеst chαpt?rs in g??lnovels.??m


    Of course they did. Of course he knew everything.


    He probably even knew she’d been snooping around his study.


    Her fingers tightened around the arms of the chair. “Dr. Vance… I’m not pregnant. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”


    She could barely even say it out loud. The thought of pregnancy, under these circumstances, was unbearable. Being forced, then having to undergo medical checks afterward—it felt like another kind of vition.


    But Jewell didn’t give her an out. “I can’t do anything about it. Orders are orders.”


    Reluctantly, Ste rose from her chair and went back to her room to change. She returned a short whileter. “Let’s go.”


    She didn’t know why William was so insistent on the tests. Did he not believe the earlier result? Or was he simply trying to confirm it with clinical certainty?


    Jewell had treated her before, but that had been at the vi, and he hadn’t had the tools to do any kind of in-depth examination. Now, with her sitting in the passenger seat of his car, her thoughts churned. Her fingers fiddled with the hem of her sleeve as her difort simmered just beneath the surface.


    The fact that William had asked Jewell to take her to the hospital meant he had told him everything.


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