Clara Vance had it all.

Millions of followers, a beauty empire built on glamour, and a life curated for the camera. But a lost bet with her mother sends her away from a marvelous weekend trip to Mykonos and into the dusty attic of her family’s decaying ancestral manor. 

The catch was her inheritance. Her task? A dreary clear-out. Her discovery? A centuries-old diary belonging to her great-grandmother, Eleanor Thorne.

The ink tells a story of a forgotten history. Eleanor’s forbidden obsession with her guardian and step-uncle, Casimir Guggenheim, a ruthless railroad tycoon with a heart of stone.

But when Clara touches the tear-stained pages, the scent of crushed gardenias doesn’t just fill the room, it drags her back to 1879.

Trapped in Eleanor’s corseted body, Clara finds herself under the roof of the very man who haunted the diary. To the world, Casimir is a cold, untouchable magnate. To Clara, he’s a puzzle she’s determined to break.

The problem? Clara isn’t the timid, fragile girl Casimir remembers. She’s a 21st-century It Girl with no filter, a strategic mind for business, a total lack of respect for Gilded Age propriety and a defiance waiting for trouble to happen. While the original Eleanor was a victim of her station, Clara is ready to burn the cage down.

As Clara navigates a world where a single misstep means ruin, scheming relatives see her as a pawn, and a powerful suitor sees her as nothing but a business merger. She realizes the history books were wrong. 

Rewriting Eleanor’s tragic end is dangerous, especially when she starts falling for the man she was never supposed to have.
History says they’re a tragedy. Clara says history is about to get a makeover.

For what, I wasn't sure. For his footsteps to return. For the sound of his voice telling me he'd made a mistake leaving.


Just the night air and silence. Just my own heartbeat, annoyingly persistent, reminding me that I was very much alive and very much alone.


I should have locked the terrace door. I knew I should have locked it. But my feet wouldn't move, and my brain wouldn't cooperate, and somewhere between he's gone and get it together, I stopped caring about self-preservation entirely.


"Fucking asshole," I muttered under my breath.


My body betrayed me, nipples hardening against the thin fabric of my nightshift, pussy already aching with a need I hated to acknowledge. 


He just turned me on so badly. The man who watched me too closely with his gaze stripping me bare. Angry didn't cover it. I wanted to scream, to shove him away, but the frustration twisted into a desperate throb that demanded release.


Chapter 34 - Chapter Thirty-Four: Frustration