She Said Yes

Eleanor Valemont had, on rare occasions, considered what a proposal of marriage might look like.

Long before Baron Ernest Teucher had appeared in her world—trailing smoke, standard rail clearances, impossible production targets, and an absolute blindness to feminine flirtation—she had imagined the traditional sort of ceremony her station usually demanded. A formal speech delivered over dessert in an ancestral dining hall. Perhaps an impeccably rehearsed stroll through a manicured rose garden while both sets of parents hovered behind the terrace drapes. Something proper, dignified, and thoroughly negotiated.

She had certainly never imagined standing on the gravel shelf beneath an active railway viaduct, with dust coating the hem of her traveling gown, river mist tangling her hair, and the most formidable industrial magnate in the realm down on one knee among the limestone rocks.