James POV
The silence in the car is suffocating.
James doesn't look at Eleanor. He can't look at her without feeling rage climb up his throat like something alive. He keeps his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road and pretends the woman next to him doesn't exist.
She's shaking so badly he can hear her dress rustling. She's wearing white. White like a bride. White like someone who belongs in his life. White like a lie.
James thinks about the girl he was supposed to marry. Eleanor Ashford. That Eleanor had blonde hair and went to Yale and grew up knowing exactly which fork to use at dinner. That Eleanor died five years ago before she could become his wife. That Eleanor was at least a person he understood.
This Eleanor is a stranger in a white dress who probably works at a convenience store or cleans other people's houses. This Eleanor is someone his family hired to trick him. This Eleanor is the reason his uncle Richard is suddenly unavailable and his phone has been off all day.
The drive to the penthouse takes thirty minutes and James spends all of it planning how he's going to destroy whatever scheme this is.
When they arrive at the building, the valet opens Eleanor's door. Eleanor stumbles getting out of the car like her legs don't work. Good. Let her be terrified. Let her understand that this marriage is going to be the worst decision she's ever made.
James guides her to the elevator with a hand on her elbow. His touch is hard. Possessive. He wants her to feel the difference between a husband and a captor. He wants her to understand that she's his now and he owns every moment she spends in his home.
The elevator rises.
Eleanor stares straight ahead. Her hands are still shaking. Her jaw is clenched so tight James thinks she might crack her teeth. She's wearing his ring now. That's the only thing that's real about this day. She's wearing a diamond ring that cost more than she makes in five years and she's married to him and there's nothing either of them can do about it.
The elevator doors open and James steps out without waiting for Eleanor to follow.
He walks directly to his household manager, a woman named Patricia who's worked for him for eight years.
"Give her the east wing," he says. "Get her whatever she needs. Clothes. Food. Everything. I don't want to see her for the rest of the night."
Patricia's eyes widen. She knows what James's tone means. It means something has gone catastrophically wrong.
Eleanor finally moves. She walks out of the elevator looking like she's walking to an execution. She looks at James and he can see something break in her expression when she realizes he's serious about abandoning her.
"James," she starts.
"Not now," he says. "Patricia will take care of you."
He walks away before Eleanor can say anything else. He doesn't go to his bedroom. He doesn't go anywhere that requires him to pretend everything is normal. He goes to his office and locks the door.
The office is dark and cold and exactly the right place for a man who feels like ice.
James pours whiskey. Top shelf. The kind that burns on the way down. He sits at his desk and pulls out a file that's been sitting in his drawer for five years. Inside are photographs.
Eleanor Ashford.
The girl he was supposed to marry looks back at him from every picture. Blonde. Elegant. Dead.
She died in a car accident that was ruled an accident but never felt like an accident. Her car went off a bridge. No witnesses. No explanation. Just Eleanor Ashford hitting the water at sixty miles per hour and not surviving the impact.
James was supposed to marry that girl.
His uncle spent five years managing the fallout. His uncle spent five years telling him not to worry, the contract would be honored, the marriage would happen eventually. His uncle lied.
His uncle sent him a poor girl in a white dress instead.
James drinks the whiskey and feels nothing.
He thinks about the brown eyes. He thinks about the way Eleanor looked at him like she was waiting for him to hit her. He thinks about how small she looked standing at the altar in a wedding dress she clearly didn't know how to wear.
He thinks about all of this and reminds himself that it doesn't matter. She's a con artist. She's someone his family hired to fulfill a contract they couldn't otherwise fulfill. She's not real. She's not important. She's just a piece in a game he doesn't understand yet.
But he will understand.
By the time he's done, she'll tell him everything.
Eleanor follows Patricia through hallways that seem to go on forever.
The penthouse is cold and modern and nothing like the Nash mansion. The Nash house felt like a museum of old money. This place feels like a museum of power. Everything is glass and steel and angles that cut.
Patricia stops at a door and opens it.
"This is your bedroom," Patricia says carefully. "Mr. Ashford wanted you to have everything you need."
Eleanor steps inside and stops moving.
The bedroom is massive. The bed is the size of a small apartment. The closet is bigger than the bedroom she slept in at Catherine's place. There's a bathroom with a soaking tub and a shower with fifteen different jets. There's a sitting area with a view of the city that stretches for miles.
And on the bed, there's clothing.
Dresses. Dozens of them. In Eleanor's size. In styles that look like something a wife would wear. Not servant clothing. Not work clothes. Wife clothes.
Eleanor's hands start shaking again.
"Mr. Ashford had these prepared," Patricia says. "He wanted you to be comfortable."
Patricia leaves and Eleanor is alone in a bedroom that was prepared for a wife. A bedroom that someone thought about carefully. A bedroom that has been waiting for her.
Eleanor walks to the closet and sees hangers full of evening gowns. She sees shoes organized by color. She sees accessories arranged with precision. Someone spent money and time preparing this space for her.
Someone who is now sitting in an office refusing to look at her.
Eleanor sits on the bed and realizes something that makes her heart hurt.
James prepared this room thinking he was marrying the other Eleanor. James chose these clothes thinking they would fit the blonde girl he'd been promised. James arranged this space for a wife he thought he wanted.
Instead he got her. And the moment he realized it, he couldn't stand to look at her.
Eleanor looks at the dresses hanging in the closet and understands that she's not a guest in this penthouse.
She's a prisoner in a room that was made for someone else. She's a woman wearing another woman's life. She's married to a man who chose to walk away rather than spend one more minute in her presence.
Eleanor lies back on the bed and looks at the ceiling and realizes she has no idea how she's going to survive this.