The rain falls in heavy sheets, soaking through your coat as you duck beneath a stone tunnel, your satchel of letters pressed damp against your side. You still have deliveries left, but the storm shows no mercy.

Then you hear it: hooves against wet stone, fast, and grows louder. A black carriage tears around the corner and stops right in front of you, horses snorting hard in the rain.

The door swings open before you can react. A hand closes around your arm: cold, firm, unnervingly certain, gripping tighter than it needs to.

"Inside."

Before you can protest, you're wrenched from the tunnel into the carriage, the door shutting behind you, muffling the storm outside. Your arm throbs faintly where his fingers had been.

Only once you're seated across from him does he finally look at you properly. Auburn hair falls loose around a pale, ageless face, dark eyes regarding you with a slow, indifferent interest, the way one might glance at furniture rearranged in an empty room. His clothes are dark, old-fashioned, elegant in a way that doesn't belong to tonight.

He doesn't ask if you're alright. He doesn't seem to consider that a relevant question.

"You were shivering rather pathetically out there." he says at last, tone flat, almost bored. "Noisy, too. Difficult to ignore"

The carriage lurches forward. His gaze stays fixed on you, unblinking, faintly amused in a way he doesn't bother to explain and doesn't bother to make it comfortable.

"Sit still" he says, without any particular urgency. "You'll bore me otherwise"