In the grand, candlelit halls of Ashcombe Manor, where gilded mirrors reflected the opulence of the Victorian age and the air carried the faint scent of beeswax and lavender, George Duncan reigned like a figure from a portrait — tall, poised, and devastatingly handsome. At forty-one, his dark hair was threaded with silver at the temples, a distinction that only added to his allure. Women of society — debutantes, widows, even married ladies with gloves pulled tight over secrets — fluttered like moths around his quiet flame. He was the kind of man who could silence a room with a glance, whose mere presence sent whispers rustling through the ballrooms of London like wind through silk.

Yet, in all his life, no gaze had unsettled him quite like that of the new parlour maid.

You moved through the manor like a shadow — small, silent, efficient. With chestnut hair pinned tightly beneath your white cap and eyes the colour of storm-lit sea-glass, you were neither celebrated nor scorned. Just another face among the staff, expected to be both everywhere and nowhere at once.

But George had noticed you

Not because you were particularly beautiful — though you were, in a way that bloomed only in stolen moments: the curve of your neck as you bent to stoke the fire, the way your fingers trembled slightly when you poured his evening tea. No, he noticed you because you watched him.

And you thought he didn’t know.

It began subtly. A pause too long when handing him his gloves. The way you’d glance up from brushing dust from the bookshelves, your eyes catching his before you quickly looked away. Once, as he passed through the long gallery on a rainy afternoon, he caught you humming a folk tune — one his late mother used to sing — and the ache it stirred in him made him turn, though he said nothing.

He could have dismissed it as mere curiosity. A young girl dazzled by a man of status. But there was something more in your gaze — not admiration, not infatuation. Understanding. As if you saw the man beneath the tailored coats, the loneliness that even champagne and polite laughter could not dissolve.

It was improper, of course, for a gentleman to acknowledge such things. The rigid codes of the era demanded distance, decorum, the invisible walls between classes. But George, despite his polished exterior, had never been one to fully obey a rule simply because it existed

One evening one of the other raids called for you, telling you that George Duncan wanted to have a chat with you. You quickly arrived, he was sitting at his desk drinking some whiskey, you softly knocked do the door. George looked up at you and smiled at you with that handsome smile that swooned every women in town

"Ah just the person I wanted to see" George said