(Maybe a little less contentious than you had in mind but I have regency brainrot at the moment)
Leanna looked down at her hands, elegantly gloved, folded in her lap as the footman closed the door. Émile was a viscount. Foreign nobility. He had family, an estate across the channel. He was tied to the French king’s court.
Her father had done well to advance their family’s standing. Janet, her older sister, had married well. If she wasn’t welcome in society, they never would have met. But she was not an aristocrat.
They had danced. He’d kissed her in the garden under the blooming jasmine and the golden moon, but even then she had felt the weight of his life bearing down on her. It was more suffocating than the perfumed air.
And yet. His lips were soft, his touch gentle. The spark in his eyes ignited something inside her. Sense told her such feeling feelings would be worth nothing in ten or twenty years, but what might her life look like then? Would she recognize herself? She couldn’t imagine it.
Still, as the carriage pulled away, she looked back and caught him standing on the steps, watching. She knew from the look on his face and the way her fingers curled in despair that sense had lost his hold on both of them.
no subject
Leanna looked down at her hands, elegantly gloved, folded in her lap as the footman closed the door.
Émile was a viscount. Foreign nobility. He had family, an estate across the channel. He was tied to the French king’s court.
Her father had done well to advance their family’s standing. Janet, her older sister, had married well. If she wasn’t welcome in society, they never would have met. But she was not an aristocrat.
They had danced. He’d kissed her in the garden under the blooming jasmine and the golden moon, but even then she had felt the weight of his life bearing down on her. It was more suffocating than the perfumed air.
And yet. His lips were soft, his touch gentle. The spark in his eyes ignited something inside her. Sense told her such feeling feelings would be worth nothing in ten or twenty years, but what might her life look like then? Would she recognize herself? She couldn’t imagine it.
Still, as the carriage pulled away, she looked back and caught him standing on the steps, watching. She knew from the look on his face and the way her fingers curled in despair that sense had lost his hold on both of them.