Read Chapter 23: The Ghost of Isabelle

The convent sat on a narrow street off the Rue de Sèvres, its stone walls the color of old bones, its windows shuttered like closed eyes. Eleanor had expected something grander—a fortress of faith with spires and gardens. Instead, the Maison de Sainte-Croix was a modest building that looked more like a warehouse for the forgotten.

James leaned against the gatepost, his face pale beneath the Paris morning light. The physician they'd found in the Marais had bandaged his side with stern warnings about infection, but James had dismissed them with the casual arrogance of a man who had never been seriously ill in his life. Eleanor noticed the way his hand pressed against his ribs when he thought she wasn't looking.

"This is it," she said, clutching the letters. "The last one mentioned a garden of white roses and a bell that rang nine times before dawn. The letters were postmarked from various cities, but the paper—" she held it up, "—has a watermark. Sainte-Croix. Cross of the Holy."

James raised an eyebrow. "Clever. Posting from different locations to hide the trail, but the convent's own stationary gave her away."

The gate was unlocked. They slipped through into a courtyard where gray-clad nuns moved like shadows between rows of vegetables. A woman with a face like carved marble met them at the refectory door.

"Visitors are not permitted during morning prayers."

Eleanor stepped forward, producing the letter with Isabelle's handwriting. "I come with correspondence for a sister who lives here. It's urgent—a matter of life and inheritance."

The nun's eyes flickered to the letter, then back to Eleanor's face. Something passed between them—recognition, perhaps, of a woman who had also been cornered by circumstance.

"Wait here."

The refectory was sparse: long wooden tables, a crucifix, light falling through plain glass. Eleanor paced. James lowered himself onto a bench with a grunt she pretended not to hear.

"You should be lying down," she said.

"And you should be marrying Lord Ashworth in two weeks' time. We're both disappointing expectations." He smiled, but it cost him. "Tell me again why we're trusting the word of a woman who faked her own death."

Eleanor stopped pacing. "Because she's the only one who wrote me the truth when everyone else was lying. Because the earl made her disappear when she started asking questions about his finances. Because she knew about the necklace, James. She knew before I did."

"And you think she'll testify against him?"

"I think," Eleanor said slowly, "that a woman who staged her own death to escape has nothing left to fear. And everything to gain by watching her tormentor burn."

The door opened. The nun returned, and behind her walked a woman so changed that Eleanor almost didn't recognize the portrait she'd built from letters and rumors.

Sister Marie-Thérèse was small and severe, her hair hidden beneath a white wimple, her face stripped of the cosmetics that had once marked Isabelle Ashworth as a London beauty. Her eyes were the same, though—sharp and watchful, the eyes of a woman who had learned to count every exit in a room.

She looked at Eleanor, then at James, then at the letter in Eleanor's hand.

"You'd better come with me."

The convent's garden was a hidden square of green, walled on all sides, with a single bench beneath a lime tree. Isabelle—Sister Marie-Thérèse—sat with her hands folded in her lap, betraying no emotion.

"The earl was never violent," she said, answering the question Eleanor hadn't yet asked. "That was the horror of it. He was methodical. He moved money the way other men moved chess pieces, and I was just another piece. When I discovered that he'd been embezzling from the estate—his own family's estate, mind you—he didn't rage. He simply began planning my disappearance."

Eleanor leaned forward. "But you're not dead."

"I am to the world." Isabelle's mouth twisted. "I paid a doctor to find a body in the Thames that no one would claim. I paid a lawyer to manage my burial. I paid the church to take me in without questions. And I've been here for three years, watching from a distance as he presented himself as a grieving widower."

"He's not just embezzling from his own estate," James said. His voice was tight. "He's created a front company—Harrow and Finch, Ltd.—to absorb the assets of legitimate businesses through fraudulent debts."

Isabelle's eyes sharpened. "Harrow and Finch. I know that name."

Eleanor's heart seized. "How?"

"Because I found the ledgers before I left. He kept them in a locked cabinet in his study—I'd made a copy of the key years earlier, when I still trusted him." She paused. "Harrow and Finch was listed as the recipient of a loan he'd made to a New York shipping firm. Two hundred thousand pounds, if I recall correctly."

"Whitmore Shipping," Eleanor whispered.

"Yes." Isabelle looked at her with something like pity. "That was the name. I didn't understand the connection then. I thought he was merely diversifying his investments. But now I see—he was planting the seeds of a takeover."

James shifted on the bench, wincing. "If you have the ledgers—"

"I have copies. Hidden." Isabelle's voice dropped. "In a safe-deposit box at a bank in Lyon, under the name of my late mother. I was saving them as leverage, in case he ever came looking for me."

Eleanor's throat tightened. "Will you testify?"

The silence stretched. A bell rang somewhere in the convent, marking the hour. Isabelle looked at her hands, and for a moment, Eleanor saw the ghost of the woman she might have been—a woman who had once laughed at parties, danced at balls, believed in a future.

"I've been hiding for three years," Isabelle said. "Praying for forgiveness, convincing myself that my silence was penance for my own sins. My marriage. My vanity. The way I turned a blind eye to what he was doing." She looked up. "But you're here, asking me to speak. And I find that I want to speak very badly indeed."

"Then come with us," Eleanor urged. "To London. To the solicitors. Tell them what you know."

"Tell them what I know?" Isabelle smiled, a thin and knowing expression. "I can do better than that. I can show them the ledger copies. I can show them the transfer records between Harrow and Finch and the earl's personal accounts. I can prove—" Her voice broke. "I can prove that he tried to have me killed when I threatened to expose him."

Eleanor reached out and took Isabelle's hand. The woman stiffened, then slowly relaxed, allowing the contact.

"Then we'll go together," Eleanor said. "You, me, and James. We'll find a way to travel safely, and we'll bring him down."

Isabelle nodded, but her eyes were distant. "He'll have people watching. He has always had people watching. Even here, I've seen strangers near the gates—men who look too long at the building, who ask questions of the sisters. I've been careful to avoid them, but—"

"Then we don't give them time to act." James rose, swaying slightly. "We leave tonight. Miss Whitmore, we'll need to secure a carriage—"

The sound of hooves and wheels in the street cut him off. Eleanor moved to the garden wall, peering through a gap in the stone. A black carriage had stopped before the convent gates.

A man descended. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a dark suit that screamed money. He spoke briefly to the gatekeeper, who shook her head, but the man pressed something into her hand—coins, perhaps, or a threat.

"Ashworth," Eleanor breathed, recognition dawning cold in her chest. "Lord Ashworth is here."