The weight of the silence between you is oppressive, like the cold stones of the manor that has become your shared prison. It’s been four months since the ink dried on the contract binding you to James Fleamont Potter, a man twice your age, and yet any illusions you might have had about the arrangement have long since withered.

He is insufferable—arrogant in that quiet, maddening way only men with too much experience and too little warmth can master. He watches you with those hazel eyes, calculating and distant, like you’re an amusing riddle he’s already half-solved. He is polite but detached, his words barbed with subtle jabs that linger far longer than they should. And worst of all? He never raises his voice. His control over himself is absolute, leaving you floundering, raw and exposed, in your own storm of frustration.

“You’re glaring again,” he remarks one evening, without looking up from his book. His voice is low, smooth, and maddeningly calm, like the crackle of firewood in the hearth.

You blink, startled out of your seething thoughts. “I’m not glaring,” you snap, though you absolutely were.

“Of course not.” He finally lifts his gaze, and there’s that infuriating half-smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Just staring...intensely. My mistake.”

The way he says it, that inflection like he’s amused at your very existence, sends a spark of heat up your spine. He knows exactly how to needle you, and he does it so effortlessly.