Read Chapter 32: A Proposal Without Ropes

The fog off the Seine had thinned to a gray drizzle by the time James found her on the balcony of the Hôtel Meurice. Eleanor had been staring at the rooftops of Paris without seeing them, her mind still turning over the morning’s meeting with her father’s creditors—three men who had looked at her like a ripe plum about to fall from the tree.

“You’ll catch your death,” James said from the doorway. His voice was rough, scraped raw by the fever that had wracked him for three days. He wore a dressing gown over his shirtsleeves, and the collar hung loose around his neck. He looked thinner than she remembered, the sharp lines of his jaw more pronounced.

“I’ve survived worse than a little damp.” She turned to face him. “You should be in bed.”

“I’ve been in bed. I’m tired of staring at the ceiling.” He crossed the balcony and stood beside her, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his skin. The fever was still there, lurking beneath the surface. “I need to ask you something, and I didn’t want to do it lying down.”

Eleanor’s chest tightened. “James—”

“Please. Let me say this before I lose my nerve.” He took a breath, and she saw the vulnerability flash across his face—the same expression he’d worn when he first handed her the forged documents in the bank vault, risking his career and his freedom on the faith that she would know what to do with them. “I’m not proposing a marriage of convenience. I’m not proposing anything that looks like the arrangement you fled. I’m proposing a partnership, Eleanor. In every sense of the word.”

She opened her mouth, but he pressed on.

“Your father is ruined. The earl’s associates are circling. You have a name that’s now tangled in scandal and a fortune that exists mostly on paper. What you don’t have is someone standing beside you who knows the law, who knows the markets, and who—” His voice caught. “Who loves you. I love you, Eleanor. I have loved you since the moment you looked at me across the dining car and asked if I was the kind of man who carried a weapon or a conscience.”

She remembered that moment. She had been furious, frightened, and utterly determined. He had been the only honest thing in a carriage full of lies.

“I’m not asking you to be my wife in name only. I’m asking you to be my partner in rebuilding everything those men have stolen—your family’s name, your fortune, your future. Mine too.” He reached for her hand, and his fingers were warm despite the cool morning. “I have my salary, my reputation, and a small inheritance from my mother. It’s not a kingdom. But together, we might build one.”

Eleanor looked down at their joined hands. His knuckles were pale, his grip steady. She could feel the fever thrumming beneath his skin, and it terrified her—not because she feared losing him, but because she feared needing him this much and watching him disappear.

“I believe you,” she said slowly. “I believe you mean every word. But I cannot say yes to you today.”

James’s hand tightened, then released. He didn’t pull away. “May I ask why?”

She turned to face the rooftops again, buying herself a moment. “Because I don’t yet know who I am when I’m not fighting for survival. For the past month, every decision I’ve made has been in reaction to someone else’s scheme—my mother’s plan, my father’s debts, the earl’s fraud. I haven’t once chosen something because I wanted it, purely for myself.” She glanced at him. “If I marry you now, even for love, I will always wonder whether I did it because I was afraid to stand alone.”

James was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was gentler than she expected. “Then I’ll wait.”

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll wait.” He leaned against the railing, arms crossed. “I’m not going anywhere, Eleanor. I’m not the earl. I’m not your father. I’m not going to trap you into a decision out of fear or duty or debt. If you need time to discover who you are, then I’ll be here when you’ve found her. And if you discover she doesn’t want me—” He shrugged, a shadow of his usual wry humor crossing his face. “Then I’ll have lost the best thing that ever walked into my life. But I won’t have lost my self-respect, and neither will you.”

The knot in Eleanor’s chest loosened, just a fraction. “You mean that.”

“I never say anything I don’t mean. You know that better than anyone.”

She stepped closer and touched his cheek. He was warm—too warm. “You need a doctor.”

“I need a lawyer first. Or rather, you do.” He caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “We still have to untangle the estate legally. Aubert may be protecting himself, but the earl’s arrest means the property holdings are in limbo. If we don’t move quickly, his associates will file claims and bleed whatever remains dry before you ever see a shilling of it.”

Eleanor’s spine straightened. The softness of the proposal faded into something sharper, more practical. “What do you suggest?”

“I know a solicitor in London—a man named Harold Finch. He’s honest, which is rare in our profession, and he’s handled several contested estates with exactly this kind of tangled ownership. If we transfer the legal work to him, we can put the assets in a trust that neither the earl’s associates nor your father’s creditors can touch without going through proper channels.”

“And that buys us time.”

“That buys us everything.” James’s eyes were bright despite the fever flush on his cheeks. “Time to sort the legitimate claims from the fraudulent ones. Time to identify which debts are real and which were invented by the earl to trap you. Time for you to decide what you want your future to look like—with or without me.”

Eleanor considered this. She had been so focused on surviving the immediate crisis—rescuing Isabelle, exposing the earl, confronting her father—that she hadn’t yet turned her attention to the aftermath. The estate was a tangle of forged documents, manufactured debts, and legitimate assets left in limbo by the earl’s arrest. If they didn’t secure it now, it would be picked apart like a carcass.

“Write to your Mr. Finch,” she said. “Tell him I want a full accounting within thirty days. And tell him I expect him to be worth every penny James has vouched for him.”

James smiled—the first true smile she’d seen from him since they fled the prison at Sèvres. “He’ll be delighted to hear you’ve set expectations.”

“Someone has to.” Eleanor paused, then added more softly, “And James—when I do decide what I want, I hope you’ll still be standing where I left you.”

“I told you. I’m not going anywhere.”

They stood together on the balcony, the fog beginning to burn off the rooftops, and for the first time since she had boarded the *Atlantic Princess*, Eleanor felt something that wasn’t fear or determination or desperate hope.

It felt like room to breathe.

A knock at the door shattered the moment. Isabelle’s voice came through the wood, urgent and low. “Eleanor. You need to come downstairs. There’s a man at the front desk—he says he’s Maître Aubert’s clerk, and he has papers that require your signature immediately.”

Eleanor exchanged a look with James. His face had gone carefully blank, the mask of a lawyer who had just smelled a trap.

“Did he say what kind of papers?” Eleanor called back.

“He didn’t. But he looks like he hasn’t slept in a week, and he keeps glancing at the door like he expects someone to follow him inside.”

James reached for his coat. “I’ll go down with you.”

“You’ll stay here.” Eleanor put a hand on his chest. “You’re burning up, and I won’t have you collapsing in front of Aubert’s clerk. I’ll handle this.”

“Eleanor—”

“I said I want time to discover who I am when I’m not fighting for survival.” She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “This feels like a good place to start.”

She left him on the balcony and walked downstairs to meet whatever the clerk had brought. The man was young, pale, and clutching a leather portfolio to his chest like a shield. When he saw her, he stood and thrust a document toward her with trembling hands.

“Madame Whitmore,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’m so sorry. Maître Aubert was found dead in his office this morning. The police are calling it suicide, but—” He swallowed hard. “But he left this for you. He said you would know what to do with it.”

Eleanor took the document. The seal was unbroken.

She opened it and read the first line. Then she read it again, because the words didn’t make sense the first time.

*In the matter of the estate of Margaret Anne Whitmore, deceased, the herein-named child, born December 1882, is the legal issue of Eleanor Whitmore and an unnamed father—*

She stopped reading. The date was wrong. The child did not exist.

But someone wanted her to believe it did.