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.

Through the gap in the fabric, I watched Aunt Cornelia sweep into the room. She looked around with the sharp eyes of someone searching for something to criticize.


"Close the door, Casimir. This is a private conversation."


"It's about that girl." Aunt Cornelia's voice dripped with disdain. "Her behavior is becoming impossible to ignore. Do you have any idea what she was wearing at that picnic? How she carried on with Mr. Vanderbilt? It was embarrassing. Absolutely embarrassing."


"She's uncontrollable." She cut him off. "Just like her mother. Marian was the same way. Wild, inappropriate, and had no sense of decorum. It's clearly in the blood. The question is whether it can be trained out of her before she ruins us all."


Chapter 24 - Chapter Twenty-Four: Damaged Goods