Chapter 1

Silas Wycliffe spoke as casually as if discussing the weather, while tears already covered Eleanor Pembroke's face.

She remembered him ending their engagement and her father driving her from the estate while strangers called her a walking curse.

She remembered thirty years of wandering, farming, sewing, fasting, and grinding poverty.

She remembered keeping her promise for half a lifetime while people laughed that no man wanted the aging spinster.

Silas dismissed all of it with one weightless phrase: repaying a debt.

But Cecilia Pembroke had not saved his life. Eleanor had.

Blood sprayed across Eleanor's white wedding gown before she collapsed.

...

When Eleanor opened her eyes again, someone was gently shaking her awake.

"Mr. Wycliffe has come personally to give you gifts. How can you still be sleeping?"

She froze.

Harriet Vance stood before her, pale and exhausted but not yet gravely ill from the broken engagement, and not yet coughing blood on her deathbed.

There was still time.

Eleanor threw herself into her mother's arms and burst into tears.

Her startled mother wiped at her face. "Are you crying because you're happy to marry the man you love?"

Eleanor shook her head desperately and held her even tighter.

Harriet had endured everything in life.

She endured winters without coal and clothing withheld by the household.

But when Margaret Pembroke tried to transfer Eleanor's engagement to Cecilia, her mother knelt in the snow for three days and was still refused.

She believed Silas was Eleanor's destined husband.

He once carried her mother through a rainstorm to a physician and stopped the family from withholding treatment money.

He supplied coal to their small wing and ensured Eleanor no longer wore discarded clothes that did not fit.

He even secured a publicly witnessed marriage compact from the King so Margaret and Cecilia could not exchange the bride.

Yet in Eleanor's previous life, this was the day he declared her cursed and came personally to end the engagement.

Eleanor dried her tears and made a decision. This time, she would not let history repeat itself.

She went directly to the main house and curtsied to her father.

"I will surrender my engagement to Cecilia and marry into General Harcourt's household in her place.

"I ask only for a substantial settlement and permission to take Mother with me."

Edwin Pembroke hurled a teacup at her. "A daughter who leaves through marriage doesn't get to take a woman out of my household. Absolutely not."

Eleanor did not move. She lifted her head. "General Harcourt may be critically wounded and unconscious, but many officials still support him.

"If they learn the Pembrokes despised him so much that neither daughter would honor the match, your political career will end."

Her father's face turned livid. After a long silence, he ground out, "I agree.

"But this can't become public. Both weddings will occur on the same day, and the carriages will be exchanged before departure."

Eleanor exhaled in relief, but a steady hand caught her arm.

Silas stood beside her in a pale silver coat, his expression distant and controlled.

His cool gaze swept across Edwin with unmistakable warning.

"Mr. Pembroke, I told you that if you mistreated Eleanor again, I'd petition the King to remove you from office."

Edwin immediately smiled and apologized. Silas stopped looking at him.

He turned to Eleanor and gently wiped the blood from her forehead.

Eleanor stepped backward instinctively, resistance clear in her eyes.

His hand stopped.

He studied her calmly and asked in a low voice, "Were you reborn too?"

Her heart tightened, but she forced her expression to remain natural.

After watching her for two more seconds, Silas returned to his old gentle manner. "Are you angry because my proposal came late?"

He stepped aside and revealed the servants behind him.

Two lines of attendants entered while one read the gift register aloud.

"A pair of gold-inlaid vases, a ruby-and-onyx jewelry set, ten bolts of imported silk, a chest of southern pearls..."

White-wrapped gifts filled the courtyard, and the first two servants carried a pair of engraved silver eagles.

"I commissioned the eagles myself. That delayed me."

Eleanor looked at them, her fingers curling slightly.

So this was what he meant when he promised another life and said he would compensate her.

In her previous life, she had once dreamed of receiving these gifts.

Her mother's greatest wish was for Eleanor to become a respected wife.

She had not wanted Eleanor to suffer as she had, displaced by another woman and reduced to dependence.

Eleanor searched for years.

The scholar next door spent his nights in brothels, and a distant cousin refused to work. Neither would do.

Then Margaret sent Eleanor to a remote chapel to pray for her sick grandmother, where Eleanor found Silas gravely injured.

She discovered that he met every standard she had imagined.

He did not mock her limited education and taught her to read. He did not criticize her shyness and taught her how to speak in company.

When women offered him flowers, he never looked at them. He spent every day studying and never became idle.

When he left, he stood outside the chapel and said only four words: "Wait for my proposal."

Her mother had been overjoyed, while her father cursed and said no low-ranking clerk would marry his daughter.

But the man who arrived to propose was no poor clerk. He was Silas Wycliffe, the kingdom's greatest seer, trusted completely by the King.

Eleanor was merely the unfavored daughter of a minor official, and the gulf between them frightened her into hiding.

Silas personally taught her formal manners, correcting everything from the depth of a curtsy to the way she held a teacup.

He brought her to a reception at the palace, introduced her to every important guest, and said, "This is my future wife."

At the national cavalry review, he took her onto the honored platform before all the officers and seated her beside him.

Step by step, he drew her out of the shadow of inferiority.

People who once mocked her background began praising her composure.

And later? She waited thirty years, buried her mother in a rough shroud, and learned that her entire life had been built on deception.

"Miss Pembroke, have the gifts stunned you speechless? Mr. Wycliffe is waiting for your answer."

The matchmaker's booming voice pulled Eleanor from her memories.

She looked up into Silas's calm, gentle eyes.

When the matchmaker tried to tease her again, one look from Silas silenced the woman.

Eleanor smoothed things over. "Every gift is excellent. I was only thinking about the wedding date."

Silas immediately ordered an attendant to bring the casting tokens. "Then we'll choose an auspicious day."

He cast them seven times, and every result warned of disaster.

His brows drew together. "Bring another set."

Eleanor stopped the servant. "There's no need. Take the nearest date. A week from today is perfect."

Silas paused, then warmth entered his eyes.

"Then we'll marry soon. Don't worry about the signs. I understand astrology, but perhaps no one can calculate his own fate accurately.

"With me beside you, every year ahead will be blessed."

Eleanor smiled as though she agreed.

Inside, she thought that Silas had finally calculated something correctly.

In seven days, she would be traveling to General Harcourt's estate.

There would never be another future for the two of them.