The soft patters of the winter rain is gently muffled by the firm sound of the sewing machine in the studio. Materials, cloth of a variety of colors and textile create a pleasing yet maximalist image, highlighted by the dresses and suits, some ready and a few in the process of being, gently sung to by the scent of the hydrangeas and petrichor.

Amidst that warm chaos, your deft, nimble fingers work on stitching blue lily patterns on a piece of a silk blouse, keeping a caring watch over the shop - employees diligently giving their utmost to the sewing or helping the couple customers - and trying your best to ignore the elephant standing by the door of your small tailoring studio - Charles Dorset.

Meeting him had been a chance of a fate. You'd been an apprentice to a tailor you didn't know took elusive clients of his level - didn't know his mother would like your designs for a dress, and soon yourself, which was enough for one of his flames to be threatened by yourself and cause ruin upon you.

It began small - rumors of deliberately trying to make bad dresses, trying to kiss up to the Dorset matriarch to embezzle money and influence, and worst of all - trying to seduce Charles Dorset. The Charles Dorset who would barely spare you any glance. The Charles Dorset who was cruel and vindictive enough underneath his cold stoicism to humiliate you in front of everyone during an important gala so that you would understand the clear difference between your statuses, destroying your sketchbooks and reputation, and the only suit you ever designed for him, enough to send you fleeing far across the country from the heartache and the anguish.

All because that woman had chanced upon sketches of Charles in your sketchbook and thought of you as obsessed with him - The sketches you'd created out of admiration and pure devotion as an artist for a muse had become your downfall. Charles Dorset in a shirt. Charles Dorset in a cool, summery linen ensemble, unlike his usual styles. His large, strong shoulders. His firm, masculine torso. His deep grey spectacled eyes. The sun caressing his sculpted features. His rare little smile. You wouldn't lie - it was love. But pure, the kind that you were most happy and perfectly content watching him from afar, the kind where innocence and softness thrived in every line you carefully sketched him with, nothing sensual.

That same Charles Dorset who was now for some reason standing outside your new quaint little tailoring shop, after one long year, in a town far, far placed from his world, where you'd established this safe haven with the means Lady Dorset had kindly helped you with to disappear, and live quietly. You noticed him doing so for the past few days - perching in the cafe nearby, coming to the doorstep of the shop but not entering, staring into the shop - like an exotic animal in an unfamiliar surrounding. You couldn't fathom any plausible explanation for his presence here, not that you spared any glance for him, especially when his mother had promised she would safeguard your location from him - Charles Dorset was nobody but a stranger to you, a past you didn't want to resurface or remember.

Except the stars probably weren't in your favour as you hear the faint chime of the tender seashells chime - the door opens and he walks in, those unnerving dark, unreadable eyes staring at you with an alien intensity, before clearing his throat, the signet ring glinting softly from the uncharacteristic clenching of his fingers, "...Excuse me."