Read Chapter 6: The Contract Draft

The morning light crept through the curtains of Eleanor’s bedchamber like an unwelcome solicitor delivering bad news. She had been awake for hours, sitting at the small escritoire by the window, a stack of foolscap spread before her, her pen scratching steadily against the paper.

Marriage settlements were, in her professional opinion, the most primitive form of contract law still practiced in the civilized world. Two families trading a woman like cargo, with clauses about pin money and jointures that read like a shipping manifest rather than a legal agreement. But if she was to be trapped in one, she would at least draft it with the precision of a corporate merger.

She wrote, crossed out, rewrote. The ink dried slowly in the cold air, and she had to pause between paragraphs to warm her fingers over the stub of a candle. Her maid had been dismissed hours ago, and Eleanor had told Mrs. Higgins, the housekeeper, that she was suffering from a headache and required solitude. The illness ruse at the ball had been a strategic failure in public, but she found it remarkably useful in private.

Clause the First: Property Management. All estates and holdings belonging to Lady Eleanor Ashworth, whether inherited or acquired during the marriage, shall remain under her sole direction and control, excepting only such sums as shall be mutually agreed upon for the maintenance of the Viscount’s household.

She paused. She didn’t actually own any property. The estate belonged to her uncle by default until she married, at which point it would pass into her husband’s hands by law. English coverture meant she was legally dead the moment she said “I do”—her identity subsumed into her husband’s, her property his, her earnings his, her very self his.

Ava Chen had spent seven years fighting for her clients’ rights to control their own assets. Eleanor Ashworth would not surrender hers without the fight of her life.

Clause the Second: Personal Freedom. The party of the second part—that is, Viscount Vane—shall not restrict the movements, correspondence, or activities of the party of the first part without just cause and mutual consent. Lady Eleanor shall retain the right to travel, to visit, to receive callers, and to conduct such business as she deems fit without requiring the permission of her husband.

She imagined Vane’s face when he read that one. He had been so amused at the ball, so theatrically charming, turning her illness into a declaration of devotion. He would laugh at this clause, she thought. And then he would try to negotiate it away.

She wrote faster.

Clause the Third: Financial Independence. An annual stipend of two thousand pounds shall be settled upon Lady Eleanor, to be disbursed quarterly and without condition, for her personal use and discretion. This sum shall not be subject to review or reduction by the Viscount or his agents.

Two thousand pounds. It was a fortune, more than most gentlemen earned in a year. But Eleanor knew precisely how much it cost to move unseen through the world, to buy information, to fund investigations, to hire solicitors who answered to her alone. If her father’s death had been suspicious—and her mother’s journal suggested it was—she would need every penny she could secure.

She dipped her pen in the inkwell and wrote the final clause, the one that made her hands tremble slightly as she formed the letters.

Clause the Fourth: Dissolution. Should either party seek to end this union through annulment or legal separation, the terms of this agreement shall be honored in full. Lady Eleanor shall retain her stipend, her property, and her freedom of movement, and no penalty or forfeiture shall be exacted against her for seeking such dissolution.

It was unthinkable, she knew. Annulment was scandal, and scandal was the death of a woman in this society. But she had learned long ago that the mere existence of an escape clause changed the dynamics of any negotiation. Even if she never used it, Vane would know she had the means to try.

She folded the papers carefully and tucked them into her reticule. Then she examined herself in the looking glass. The pale green gown suited her, she thought—simple enough to be unremarkable, fine enough to be respectable. Her dark hair was pinned neatly, and her mother’s emerald pendant rested against her collarbone.

The pendant. She touched it now, the cool stone a small anchor of memory. Her mother had been wearing it in the portrait that hung in the gallery, the one her uncle had tried to have removed after her father’s death. Eleanor had insisted it remain.

“Sentimental nonsense,” her uncle had called it. “Dead women’s jewelry.”

She had not disagreed aloud. But she had found the pendant in her mother’s jewelry box, hidden beneath a false bottom, wrapped in a letter addressed to “My Dearest Eleanor, When You Are Old Enough to Understand.”

She was understanding more every day.

A knock at the door startled her. “My lady?” It was Mrs. Higgins’s voice, deferential but firm. “The Viscount Vane is below. He asks to see you in the library.”

Eleanor smoothed her skirts, checked that the emerald pendant was properly displayed—she wanted him to notice it, wanted him to ask about it, wanted any excuse to steer the conversation toward her mother and away from her uncle’s tidy narrative—and composed her face into an expression of pleasant neutrality.

“Tell his lordship I shall be down directly.”

The library smelled of old leather and dust. Eleanor found Vane standing by the window, his back to her, examining the garden that was, at this time of year, mostly bare earth and skeletal rosebushes. He wore a dark blue coat that fit him very well, and his hair was a shade too long for fashion, curling slightly at his collar.

He turned when she entered, and his expression shifted from contemplation to something more alert. Amused, perhaps. She had not yet been able to decide whether his amusement was a weapon or a shield.

“Lady Eleanor.” He bowed, shallow and correct. “I confess I did not expect you to be so eager to meet with me, given your recent turn of health. I hope you are recovered?”

“Quite recovered, my lord. It was merely a passing indisposition.” She moved to the large oak table that dominated the center of the library, set down her reticule, and began to withdraw the papers from it. “I trust you are well?”

“Tolerably. Though I confess my curiosity is piqued.” He drifted toward her, and she caught the scent of something like sandalwood and rain. “You sent word that you wished to discuss the terms of our agreement with me. Personally. Shall I be flattered or alarmed?”

“Whichever you prefer. I only require your attention.” She laid out the folded sheets before her, smooth as a closing argument, and gestured to the chair across the table. “Please. Sit.”

He raised an eyebrow but complied, settling into the chair with an ease that made her think of a cat choosing a sunny windowsill. His eyes moved over the papers, taking in their sheer volume.

“Astonishing,” he said. “Is it my wedding contract or the peace treaty with France?”

“The former, I assure you. Though I confess I may have borrowed certain principles from the latter.” She slid the first page toward him. “I have taken the liberty of drafting a detailed marriage settlement. The solicitors will, of course, formalize it, but I wished you to see my terms before we proceed with the usual negotiations.”

Vane’s expression flickered—she caught surprise there, and then quickly hidden amusement. He took the papers and began to read. His face remained unreadable as he moved through the clauses. Eleanor watched his eyes track down to the second page, then the third.

He laughed. Actually laughed, a low sound that seemed too genuine for the careful performance he had given at the ball.

“Two thousand pounds a year,” he said, looking up at her. “Do you know what the average gentlewoman’s allowance is? Four hundred. Five, if she is very well-favored.”

“I know exactly what it is. And I know what it costs to dress, travel, and maintain one’s independence without having to beg one’s husband for every shilling.” She held his gaze. “I am not asking for luxury, my lord. I am asking for survival.”

His smile faded. For a moment, something sharp and real passed through his eyes, something that looked almost like recognition. She had surprised him, she thought. He had been expecting a pretty fool like the one he saw at the ball, perhaps, or a desperate victim like the women in the Gothic novels her cousin read aloud after dinner.

Instead, he had found a contract lawyer from the twenty-first century, trapped in the body of a Regency heiress, armed with nothing but a stolen journal and a very fine grasp of tort law.

“These clauses,” he said slowly, tapping the page. “Property management. Personal freedom. Financial independence. And here—” He pointed to the last clause, his voice dipping into something nearing respect. “Dissolution.”

“All marriages should have an exit strategy,” she said. “It concentrates the mind wonderfully.”

“You wish to marry me,” he said carefully. “And yet you have drafted documents designed to ensure you can leave me without penalty.”

“I wish to marry you because I have no choice,” she corrected. “But if I am to sign away my life, I will do it on my own terms.”

He was silent for a long moment. She watched him read the fourth clause again, then the first. His fingers traced the edge of the paper, and she saw his gaze drift, unexpectedly, to her throat.

The pendant.

He stared at it—at the emerald, dark and cool against the pale skin of her collarbone—with an intensity that made her skin prickle.

“That pendant,” he said, and his voice had changed, lower and more careful. “Where did you get it?”

Eleanor’s heart stuttered. She had been waiting for him to ask, had wanted him to ask, but now that he had, she felt an unexpected jolt of fear.

“It was my mother’s,” she said. “A family heirloom. Why do you ask?”

Vane’s jaw tightened. His gaze remained fixed on the pendant for another long moment, and she saw something complicate in his expression—calculation, surprise, and something else she could not name.

“No reason,” he said at last, but his voice was too even, and she did not believe him for a moment. He set down the papers and smiled at her, but it did not reach his eyes. “Shall I return with counter-proposals tomorrow afternoon? Three o’clock?”

“Three o’clock will do admirably,” she said.

He bowed and left, and Eleanor remained seated in the library, her heart hammering, her mother’s emerald cold against her skin. She had chosen to wear the pendant deliberately. She had wanted him to ask about it.

She had not been prepared for his reaction.

What, she thought, was the connection between a Viscount she had never met and a mother who had died before she could know her? And why, of all the words he could have said, had his voice gone so careful when he asked about her jewelry?

Tomorrow, she thought, rising and gathering her papers. Tomorrow I will find out. But first, she had a messenger to intercept.