Read Chapter 6: The Missing Letter

The knock came at half past six, sharp and insistent, and Elodie knew before she opened the door that the flat beyond the landing would be empty.

She had lain awake most of the night, turning over the terms of their fragile accord, drafting and redrafting the boundaries she would set when they met at Duke Humfrey's at nine. But the knock was not James. It was Mrs. Okafor from the ground floor, holding a folded note in the exact shade of Oxford-cream paper that James used for his lecture notes.

*Gone ahead. Found an earlier train. Meet me at the Chartres archive — I'll have the reading room booked by the time you arrive.*

No apology. No explanation. Just the casual assumption that she would follow.

Elodie stood in her hallway in her dressing gown, the note trembling slightly in her hand, and felt the old familiar heat rise in her chest — the one that came whenever James Stratford decided the rules applied to everyone but him. They had agreed. They had shaken hands on it. They had negotiated, in that stuffy pub, like two nations carving up disputed territory, and she had extracted his promise to travel together, to present a united front to Henri Beaumont, to share whatever they found in Chartres before either of them so much as drafted a footnote.

And he had nodded, and lifted his glass, and lied.

She checked her phone. Six forty-three. The first direct train to London left at seven-fifteen; the connecting service to Paris departed from Gare du Nord at ten past eleven. If she moved, she could still beat him to the archive, or at least arrive close enough behind that he would have to explain himself.

She dressed without thinking, threw her research bag together on autopilot, and was out the door in eleven minutes flat. The Oxford morning was grey and damp, the kind of cold that settled into the bones, and she ran the last hundred yards to the station, her coat flapping behind her like a sail.

The train was mercifully on time. She found a window seat in an empty carriage, pressed her forehead against the cold glass, and watched the spires of Oxford slide away into the flat, unremarkable countryside. Her phone vibrated in her coat pocket.

She expected James — a defensive preamble, perhaps, or worse, a breezy assumption that she would understand. But the message was from Henri Beaumont.

*Élodie. Bad news. The Eleanor letter — it is gone.*

She read it three times, each pass colder than the last.

*The owner allowed me to photograph it yesterday. I left it in the reading room, locked in the archive cabinet, as we agreed. This morning, the cabinet was open. The letter is missing. Nothing else was touched. Not the other documents, not the coins, nothing.*

A pause in the text, as if he had hesitated before typing the final line.

*I am told an English scholar requested access to the private collection yesterday afternoon. A tall man. Dark hair. He asked very specific questions about the letter's provenance.*

James.

Elodie stared at the screen until her eyes watered. The train rocked gently beneath her, carrying her toward London, toward Paris, toward Chartres, toward a confrontation she had not planned and could not now avoid. She thought of the way he had hidden the silver bookmark. The way his jaw had tightened when she caught him. The way he had agreed to her terms in that pub — so quickly, so smoothly — while already knowing he would break them before sunrise.

Was that what this was? Sabotage? A man so desperate for the fellowship that he would steal a document from a private archive to keep it from her? Or was it something more complicated — a misstep, a misunderstanding, a game of scholarship played too fast and too loose?

It did not matter. Not yet. What mattered was that Henri had trusted her, and she had brought a wolf into his fold, and now the Eleanor letter was gone.

She typed a reply with shaking fingers.

*I'm on my way. Don't tell anyone. I'll handle it.*

The miles unspooled. The train was fast, the connections merciful. She moved through London and Paris like a woman possessed, her body on autopilot while her mind churned through every possible version of what she would say when she found him. By the time the regional train from Paris deposited her in Chartres, the afternoon light had gone thin and amber, and the cathedral rose above the town like a promise carved in stone.

The archive was a modest building tucked behind the cathedral's south flank, its facade unremarkable save for a narrow iron gate that had been closed and locked. A small placard hung from the handle, handwritten in French: *Fermé pour événement privé.*

Closed for a private event.

Elodie stood at the gate, her breath short, her bag heavy on her shoulder, and felt the last of her composure crack. She had crossed two countries on a guess, on a thread, on the slender hope that she could catch him before the damage spread. And now this.

She turned, ready to march to the hotel and demand answers at the front desk — and stopped.

James Stratford stood on the far side of the street, leaning against the stone wall of the cathedral close, his collar turned up against the cold, a folio-sized leather case tucked under his arm. He looked as though he had been there for some time. His hair was disheveled from the wind, and there was something almost boyish in the way he straightened when he saw her — then went carefully, deliberately still.

He did not look like a man who had stolen anything. He looked like a man who had been caught, and who had not yet decided how to play it.

Elodie crossed the street slowly, her heels clicking on the cobbles.

"James."

"Elodie." His voice was cautious, measured. "You got my note."

"I got your note." She stopped three feet from him, close enough to see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, the tension in his shoulders. "And I got one from Henri Beaumont."

Something flickered in his eyes. "What did he say?"

"The Eleanor letter is missing," she said, and watched his face change. "Stolen from a locked cabinet last night. And the only English scholar who requested access to that collection yesterday afternoon was a tall man with dark hair."

James said nothing for a long moment. The wind lifted a strand of his hair, and he did not blink.

"That's not me," he said finally. "I was in Oxford all day yesterday. I have witnesses."

"Witnesses you paid, or witnesses who matter?"

His jaw tightened. "Elodie —"

"Don't." Her voice cracked, and she hated herself for it. "Don't stand there and lie to me. You lied about the train. You lied about the plan. You lied about everything we agreed to. Why should I believe you now?"

He opened his mouth to answer, and behind them, the iron gate of the archive rattled as a custodian emerged to unlock it for the evening. Neither of them moved.

The gate stood open. The choice sat between them, cold and sharp as the cathedral's shadow.