Read Chapter 35: The Emperor's Gift

The solicitor’s office on Rue de la Paix smelled of aged leather and ink, a combination Eleanor had come to associate with men who believed themselves indispensable. Today, she intended to prove them wrong.

“Sign here, and here.” Mr. Hollingsworth, the London solicitor James had summoned, slid two thick documents across the mahogany table. “The Whitmore and Beaumont estates are now merged into a single trust. You, Miss Whitmore, hold controlling interest. Mr. Beaumont serves as head of the trust’s operations.”

Eleanor’s father, seated rigidly beside her, made a sound like a punctured bellows. “Controlling interest. In a *Beaumont* trust.”

“The Beaumont estate is bankrupt,” Eleanor said without looking at him. “There is nothing to control but the privilege of rebuilding it correctly. I am paying for that privilege, and I will direct how the money moves.”

“You’re *buying* him.” Her father’s voice was low and furious. “You’re buying a husband like a bolt of cloth from a shopkeeper.”

Eleanor set down the pen and turned to face him fully. The morning light caught the silver in his sideburns, the deep lines around his mouth that had appeared in the months since the earl’s conspiracy had unraveled. He looked older than she remembered, and smaller.

“I am not buying James,” she said quietly. “I am making amends.”

Her father’s jaw tightened. “For what, precisely? For surviving the mess I dragged you into?”

“For assuming I could not survive it without you.” She held his gaze. “For believing that a father’s duty ended where his daughter’s judgment began. For every time I was told my only value lay in the name I married.”

The silence stretched. Hollingsworth had the grace to study his papers. James, pale but upright in the chair beside Eleanor, said nothing, though she felt his hand brush her sleeve—a gesture of solidarity, not restraint.

“You’ve made your point,” her father said at last, the words grinding out of him. He picked up the pen. “Where do I sign?”

---

Hollingsworth departed an hour later with the documents sealed and a promise to register the trust with both the London and Paris courts by week’s end. Eleanor’s father retired to his hotel, muttering something about needing air and a proper English breakfast. That left Eleanor and James alone in the solicitor’s conference room, the late afternoon sun slanting across the table.

James had not argued about the structure of the trust. He had stood beside her through the signing, adding his signature where required, offering quiet observations about tax liabilities and property valuations that made her want to kiss him and throttle him in equal measure. But now he sat with his collar loosened, a sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the cool room.

“You should be in bed,” Eleanor said.

“I was in bed. I was bored.” He smiled weakly. “The trust, at least, engages the mind.”

“The trust will be there tomorrow. Your fever will not.”

“You are the controlling partner now. Surely you can order me to rest.”

Eleanor stood and moved to his chair. She pressed the back of her hand to his cheek—still too warm, though not as scorching as it had been two days ago. “I am ordering you to rest. Immediately.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I will have Hollingsworth draft an amendment requiring you to obey your own physician. You signed the trust documents; you can sign that one too.”

A genuine laugh escaped him, cut short by a cough that rattled his chest. Eleanor’s stomach tightened. She did not show it. Instead, she knelt beside his chair and took his hand.

“James. Please.” Her voice cracked on the word. “I could not bear to lose you now. Not when I have finally found something worth building.”

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “Then I will rest. But only because you asked so prettily.”

“There is nothing pretty about negotiating a trust in a fever sweat, but I will take what I can get.”

---

It took four servants and a footman to wrestle James up the stairs to his bedroom in the safehouse. Eleanor supervised until he was settled, his coat removed, his boots unlaced, a cool cloth pressed to his forehead. Only when his breathing evened into something resembling sleep did she allow herself to retreat to the small sitting room on the ground floor.

The letter was waiting for her on the silver tray by the door. Cream-colored envelope, a New York postmark, the handwriting unmistakably Margaret’s—round, unsteady, still the hand of a girl who had learned to write in a cramped orphanage classroom and never quite believed she deserved more space on the page.

Eleanor broke the seal and unfolded the sheet.

> *Dearest Eleanor,* > > *You will not believe it, but I am writing this from a room that looks out over Washington Square. My rooms. My own rooms, with a lock on the door and a fire I light myself, when I want it, and a wardrobe full of dresses that fit me properly and do not smell of other people’s sweat.* > > *Mrs. Ashworth—the real one, the one who came to New York with the earl’s second wife—found me a position at a ladies’ journal. I am to write about fashion, of all things. I told them I know nothing of fashion, and they said that was precisely why I was perfect, because I would report honestly on what was wearable and what was not. I have already written three columns declaring that corsets are instruments of torture and that any man who insists his wife wear one does not deserve a wife.* > > *They have not fired me yet.* > > *I owe you everything. You know that. You refuse to hear it, but I will keep saying it until you do. And I will write to you every week until you grow so tired of my letters that you order me to stop. I will not stop.* > > *Be happy, Eleanor. You deserve it more than anyone I have ever met.* > > *Your friend, always,* > *Margaret*

Eleanor read the letter twice. Then a third time. When she folded it carefully and slipped it into her pocket, her hands were trembling.

“Good news?” The voice came from the doorway. Eleanor turned to find the clerk—Aubert’s clerk, the nervous little man who had been hovering at the edges of this affair since the beginning—lingering in the hall, his eyes darting between Eleanor and the staircase that led to James’s room.

“A letter from a friend,” Eleanor said. “What do you want?”

The clerk cleared his throat. “I have been thinking, Miss Whitmore. About Mr. Aubert. About how he died.”

Eleanor went still. “You said it was suicide. You identified the body.”

“I said the *authorities* ruled it suicide.” The clerk stepped closer, voice dropping. “But I have been going through his papers. The ones no one else thought to look at. And I found something that may interest you.”

He withdrew a folded document from his coat—yellowed, creased, sealed with a broken ribbon. Eleanor recognized the type of paper used for legal notices in the French courts.

“What is that?”

“A petition,” the clerk said. “Filed three weeks before Mr. Aubert died. On behalf of one Marie-Anne Beaumont, age eleven. Claiming to be the legitimate daughter of James Beaumont, and therefore entitled to a portion of the Beaumont estate.”

The floor seemed to shift beneath Eleanor’s feet. “That is impossible.”

“I would have thought so too.” The clerk held out the document. “But the petition includes a copy of a marriage certificate. James Beaumont, married in Marseille, 1883, to a woman named Annette Perreau.”

Eleanor took the paper. Her hands were very steady now. “James was in New York in 1883.”

“Was he?” The clerk’s eyes met hers. “His own father’s diaries say otherwise. I found those too. Would you like to see them?”