Read Chapter 27: A Bargain with the Devil

The summons arrived at dawn, written on cream stationery with a Beaumont seal Eleanor had come to despise. A footman in the earl's livery waited in the hotel lobby, expressionless as marble, holding the envelope as though it carried a royal decree.

Eleanor read it twice, then a third time, her gloved fingers pressing crescents into the paper.

*Meet me at the Café de la Paix at noon. Come alone. I offer you something you want more than revenge. Your cousin's whereabouts will be made known to you upon your arrival.*

The signature was unmistakable: *Ashworth Beaumont, Earl of Harrington.*

"The devil himself," James said from the bed, where he lay propped against a mountain of pillows, his face pale beneath the bandages. "He's in Paris. He's not hiding in London overseeing his empire. He came himself."

"Because he knows I have the promissory note." Eleanor folded the letter with deliberate calm. "He knows what I found in my father's vault. The leverage I hold."

"You hold a piece of paper that proves his scheme. He holds Isabelle, the necklace, and a network of thieves who anticipate your every move."

"Which is precisely why I must go."

James struggled to sit upright, a grimace distorting his features as the wound in his side protested the movement. "Eleanor, this is a trap. You know it's a trap. He'll demand the note, you'll refuse, and he'll produce Charlotte from behind a curtain to prove he knows every confidence you've ever shared."

"Then I give him what he wants." Eleanor crossed to the window, staring out at the rain-slicked Paris streets below. The city glittered and shrugged, indifferent to the drama unfolding in her life. "I give him the note."

Silence stretched between them, taut as a wire.

"Eleanor Whitmore." James's voice was low and dangerous. "You just told me that note is the only proof of your father's debt being fraudulent. Without it, you have nothing to hold over the earl. No leverage. No future. You'd be handing him your entire inheritance on a silver tray."

"I know what I'm doing."

"Do you?" He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, wincing. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're about to sacrifice everything we've bled for—quite literally, on my part—because the earl waved a letter in front of you like a hunk of meat before a starving dog."

Eleanor turned to face him, and James went still at whatever he saw in her expression.

"I am not a starving dog," she said quietly. "I am a woman who has been hunted across an ocean by a man who believes me to be a commodity. He took my necklace. He took Isabelle. He took my father's honor and twisted it into chains." She lifted her chin. "He asked me to come alone, but nothing in his letter said I had to come empty-handed."

James stared at her for a long moment. Then a slow, reluctant smile crept across his lips. "You intend to deceive a professional deceiver."

"I intend to negotiate from a position of apparent weakness while concealed strength waits in the wings." She retrieved the copy they'd made of the promissory note—a faithful reproduction, down to the ink blot near her father's signature—and held it up. "He believes the original resides in my private effects. He does not know I have learned to make duplicates."

"The original is safe?"

"At Moreau et Fils, sealed in a vault that requires two keys: mine and the director's. He cannot access it without drawing attention that would destroy his credibility." She tucked the copy into her reticule. "I will offer him this. He will believe he has won. And Isabelle will walk free, because his pride will not permit him to renege on a bargain in which he believes he has bested me."

James considered this, then shook his head slowly. "You're asking me to trust that a man who falsified a nobleman's death, engineered a fraudulent debt, and stole your jewelry in broad daylight will honor the terms of a gentleman's agreement."

"I'm asking you to trust that I know men like him. They are collectors. They want the prize on display, not destroyed. If he takes the note and releases Isabelle, he believes he has checkmated me completely. He wants me to live with the knowledge that he owns my future." Eleanor smiled, and there was iron in it. "That is precisely the moment he will be most vulnerable."

James pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly before steadying himself against the bedpost. "Then I'm coming with you."

"You can barely stand."

"I can stand well enough to hold a pistol from a carriage window." He met her eyes. "You said concealed strength waits in the wings. I intend to be that strength."

Eleanor studied him, the pallor of his skin, the set of his jaw. He was burning through his reserves like a candle in a draft, and she knew—with a certainty that settled like a stone in her stomach—that this rescue might cost him more than he could afford to pay.

But she also knew she could not stop him. And, perversely, she did not want to.

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The Café de la Paix was a cathedral of gilded mirrors and crystal chandeliers, its marble floors reflecting the opulence of Second Empire Paris. Eleanor arrived precisely at noon, dressed in her plainest traveling gown, a deliberate contrast to the finery surrounding her. Let the earl see her diminished. Let him believe hardship had worn her down.

He was seated at a corner table, visible through the windows before she even entered. Ashworth Beaumont, Earl of Harrington, had the weathered handsomeness of a man who had spent his youth outdoor and his adulthood indoors, accumulating sins in ledger books instead of battlefields. His gray eyes tracked her approach with the patient attention of a predator who had already decided the outcome of the hunt.

"Miss Whitmore." He rose, extending a hand she did not take. "You look well, considering the circumstances."

"I look the way I look, my lord." She seated herself without waiting for invitation. "You have something I want. I have something you want. Let us dispense with the pleasantries."

The earl's eyebrows rose. "Direct. I admire that, even in a woman who has proven so troublesome."

"I am not troublesome. I am inconvenient, which is an entirely different category of problem." Eleanor removed the folded copy of the promissory note from her reticule and laid it on the table between them. "You want this. It proves your scheme against my father's company is built on lies. In my hands, it is worth two hundred thousand pounds. In your hands, it is worth nothing but the peace of mind that comes from knowing I cannot use it."

The earl's gaze dropped to the paper, hunger flickering behind his carefully composed features. "You came alone?"

"My companion is indisposed. His wound has worsened, and I left him in the care of a physician." Let the earl believe James incapacitated. Let him grow complacent.

"I heard about your unfortunate troubles in London." The earl's voice was silk wrapped around steel. "A shame about the necklace. It would have looked lovely at my wife's throat."

Eleanor ignored the barb. "Isabelle. Where is she?"

"Safe. Unharmed. Treated with the respect due her former station." The earl leaned forward. "Here is my offer, Miss Whitmore. You give me that note, and everything else you have gathered in your brief and ill-advised investigation. In exchange, I release Isabelle into the custody of a solicitor of your choosing, and I call off my associates. You will have your freedom, and I will have my marriage contract annulled, which spares us both an arrangement neither of us truly desired."

"And my father's debt?"

"Your father's debt was always a fiction. I engineered it to force your hand." The earl shrugged, as though admitting to a harmless parlor trick. "Remove the note, and the fiction disappears. The company remains Whitmore's. You may marry whomever you choose—preferably someone without ties to my family."

Eleanor studied his face, searching for the lie beneath the velvet. Her father's letter had confirmed the debt was real, at least in origin. The earl was clever enough to conflate the two narratives, to make it seem as though the entire scheme had been his invention, when in truth he had discovered her father's weakness and exploited it.

But she had not come to catch him in falsehood. She had come to free Isabelle.

"Your word on the wardship," she said slowly. "Your word that Isabelle will not be harmed or pursued after her release."

"You have my word as an English peer."

"A vow that has proven hollow before."

The earl's smile sharpened. "Then you are welcome to test its strength. Here is my added inducement, Miss Whitmore." He reached into his coat and withdrew a photograph, sliding it across the table. Eleanor's breath caught as she saw Isabelle's face—pale, bruised, but unmistakably alive, staring at the camera with the fixed defiance of a woman who had survived worse things than imprisonment.

"She is being held in a private residence outside Sèvres, as you correctly deduced. The woman you intend to rescue." The earl tapped the photograph. "I offer her to you freely. Take the note and walk away, and she is released within the hour. Refuse, and I will relocate her somewhere you will never find her—and your companion's wound will progress from unfortunate to fatal with remarkable speed, given the right intervention."

The threat hung in the air between them, naked and unashamed.

Eleanor made herself breathe. Made herself seem to waver, to weigh her options, to be exactly the frightened, cornered woman the earl believed he had captured.

Then she pushed the folded paper across the table.

"You will release her tonight. At dusk, by the river gate at Sèvres. I will be there to receive her."

The earl's fingers closed over the note. "A bargain, then."

Eleanor rose, gathering her composure around her like a cloak. "A transaction, my lord. Nothing more." At the door, she paused, looking back. "Do you know what I have learned about you, in our short acquaintance?"

The earl's eyes glinted. "I suspect you will tell me regardless."

"You collect things. Brides, debts, evidence, trophies. But you do not understand that some things"—she met his gaze steadily—"were never yours to hold."

Then she walked out into the Paris afternoon, heart hammering, the original note still sealed in the vault at Moreau et Fils, and a plan taking shape that would make the earl's victory very brief indeed.

James waited in the hired carriage across the street, face pale but eyes sharp. "Did he believe you?"

"He believed what he wanted to believe." Eleanor settled beside him, pulse still racing. "He thinks I am defeated. That is the greatest gift a fool can give his enemy."

James allowed himself a thin smile. "Then let us make him regret his generosity."