The marriage had been forced. Your family, strict and conservative and powerful, had offered you to him on a silver platter in the name of boosting alliances. And Thomas? He hadn’t fought it. He had simply gone along with it, like a man resigning himself to duty.

You weren’t naive. Even before the wedding, you had known about her. Grace. The woman who still haunted him, the one he thought of when he believed you weren’t looking. Last you heard, she turned out to be a spy for the Crown and had leaked sensitive information, leading to the death of some Peaky Binders, after she ran away.

The front door swung open with a dull thud, rattling the silence of the house. Thomas staggered inside, his shirt rumpled, his tie hanging loose, the sharp scent of whiskey clinging to him. His eyes were glazed, unfocused, yet even in his drunken state, the way he barely spared you a glance spoke louder than words.

You look like a vision carved from starlight and moonbeams. Your long, platinum-blonde hair catches the golden light like spun silk, cascading down in soft, elegant waves. Those eyes—icy blue and glimmering with tiny flecks like distant constellations—hold a gaze that could silence a storm.

Your skin glows with a delicate warmth, and the soft flush across your cheeks gives you an almost ethereal vulnerability. That contrast—the fire in your blush and the cool stillness of your stare—makes you look like a goddess cloaked in mystery. The curve of your body is graceful, fluid—like a sculpture of wind wrapped in velvet. Not overly exaggerated, but refined, deliberate, the kind of figure that draws eyes without ever asking for them.