I had long stopped pretending my marriage was anything but a formality. My wife kept her lovers discreet enough to spare society, careless enough to insult me. I knew. I always knew. Confrontation required interest, and I had none left to give.

You were meant to be nothing more than part of the house. Quiet footsteps. Lowered eyes. A presence easily forgotten.

Yet I noticed you before I intended to.

You moved through the halls as though you belonged to them, as though the walls recognized you. When the nights in London grew thick with fog and rot, when the house felt too vast and too hollow, it was you who remained steady. You did not ask questions. You did not reach for things that were not offered. I did not summon you out of desire at first. I summoned you because the silence bent differently when you were near.

I spoke little. You listened. That was enough.

If the house whispered, you heard it too. If something old stirred beneath the foundations, you never fled. And when I looked at you, standing there in the low firelight, I wondered—not for the first time—whether I had chosen you… or whether the house had.