He appeared like the fabrication of a dream coming to life before your very eyes. For Anthony Bridgerton walked across the reflective tile and the exquisite line of trailing rose petals, dusting the floor as though they were merely fallen flakes of the purest snow. Sparkling as the sunset danced across their silken edges, silent as the heavy descent of his footsteps fell upon their elegant presence.

The horizon was bathed in the hue of a honeyed rich marigold, piercing through the softest breath of clouds that faded with the blue that slowly drained from the afternoon sky. Making way for the indigo that would soon bleed into the essence of coral and the palest peony pink and the breathtaking stars, that would soon twinkle amidst the grasp of the evening's blanket of deep shadows.

Aubrey Hall was as it always was, mesmerizing beyond compare. As it sat nestled upon a landscape more than you could ever hope to envision in the depths of your imagination. For the rolling fields were lush with the very essence of spring breathed right into the blowing blades of emerald grass, that shimmered beneath the heady glow of the dwindling sun, as if they were simply streaks in an oil painting with their unscathed perfection.

The gardens bloomed to life with colors that the skies could only dream of, as their aromas and perfumes engulfed the air surrounding the ancestral estate, leaving no one untouched by the scent of their richness and intoxicating beauty. It had always been your favorite home of the Bridgerton family's, as there was a sereneness found only in the depths of the countryside and a beauty that London simply could never hope to capture.

But perhaps, above it all, Aubrey Hall would always hold a place in your heart, as the place where you realized you'd loved the man who would soon reside full time within it's aged but beautiful walls. It was in that garden, bursting with life and vivacious colors, that you fell in love with Anthony Bridgerton and to this very day, your heart had never ceased to stop.

"I didn't think you would come." His voice alerted you to his sudden presence, but perhaps, it was the overwhelming nature of his aura that told you he was near. As if the very breath of his shadow, illuminated by the fallen sun, cast against your back with an occupancy you simply couldn't ignore.

For he'd always had that way about him, the entire room seeming to stand still once the Viscount entered, but with you it felt as though it was on an entirely different level. As if it were some ingrained part of your soul, that flared to life when Anthony drew near to you, igniting a part of yourself that saw nothing but darkness until it was the hand of his company that pulled it out into the fresh breath of light.

The corridor you'd turn down, was vacant as the attendees of the party that ensued occupied the main ballroom or the lawn that glistened beneath the sharp glow of the sunset. Your hands empty as you balanced the sleek and chilled silver platter under your arm, pressing the cold surface against your ribcage. Feeling it soak through the fabric of your frock, nearly seeping straight past the surface to your concealed flesh.

Your footsteps soon came to a halt at the interruption of his voice, the very tone that could stop you dead in your tracks and nearly knock you out cold, for it engulfed you in a warming aura. One that you craved with every fiber of your being, but feeling as though your hands were tied behind your back, unable to reach out for a single grasp. The patter of Anthony's steps resounded through the empty corridor, listening as they slowed and soon stopped just as you own had, leaving a measly five paces remaining between your bodies as you began to turn softly on your heel to face the man.

You hadn't expected him to appear anything less than handsome and yet, as you eyes fell upon his entirety and absorbed the sight of him, you felt your inhale catch in the base of your throat as he appeared more than handsome. There wasn't a word for the way he looked, not one that truly existed yet, for perfection was unattainable and yet, it was the only cemented word in the English language that attempted to come close.

He was a sight to behold, amongst a party brought to life with the hue of a white pure as the winter snow and a blue, that threatened to put the very sky's shade to shame. For the petals of roses coated the floors and burst to life within their vases decorated around the corners of the room, with the softest breaths of pale blue hyacinths engulfing the room in a flow that replicated the warmth of the Bridgerton's drawing room back home in London. It was a beautiful decoration of floral tones and pastel hues, of silver streaks and twinkling embellishments, and Anthony Bridgerton stood bold amongst it all.

When the world around him begged for white, he stood sharp in a black suit tailored to the absolute nail, accentuating his every muscle and every broad stretch of frame. When the aesthetic consumed the ballroom in a breath of pale blue, he wore the darkest sapphire waistcoat known to man, making him appear like a wave washed up from the ocean's surface as it melded into the current of a fresh water river. When the sun graced over the land in a heated glow of marigold and the softest swirls of peony, his eyes of brown burned an amber so golden it reflected with the heat of a thousand suns.

Anthony Bridgerton would never be able to disappear into the ton, even if he were to dress as all the others and act as imperceptible as possible, he would always be sought after. For he was a man too breathtaking, too full of allure and enticing contradictions, that would always demand the eyes and the attention of those around him.

Blinking quickly, as though with some ounce of luck you might find it possible to wipe the vision of his ravishing appearance from your mind. Swallowing a deep breath as you felt your tongue dart slowly across the span of your bottom lip, wetting the suddenly parched skin, you smiled ever so softly at Anthony's long ago voiced observation.

"I hadn't much of a choice in the matter, I'm afraid, My Lord."

Your tone fell without a shred of malice, even as the words pained the very essence of your soul. They were simply a remark, a response in which you both knew without a doubt to be true at the end of the day, and you felt yourself suddenly weary and seemingly small as your once steady gaze proceeded to falter.

Staring down at your feet and the tile below them, feeling as if you were shrinking right before him now and the floor beneath you would surely swallow you whole. But perhaps, a part of yourself found it wished for the floor to open up and allow you an escape, a way out from being forced to witness the looming expression within the golden swirl of Anthony's heavy scrutiny. For even as your eyes no longer stared into his own, you could feel it's softened but nonetheless aching presence wash over your frame, very well threatening to engulf you to a point of no return. As the air around you suddenly felt thin and the oxygen in your lungs became shallow and scarce.

For you knew the look in his eyes, the very expression that awaited you, it was the sight you saw each and every night behind the darkness of your eyelids as you willed yourself to fall deep into slumber, into a dream that would not be occupied by the burning glow of honey and amber or the recognizable sensation of a forbidden hand. You knew the look, you felt the look, you even feared you'd internalized the look. The expression of longing for something that you knew in the foundation of your heart, you could never have.

You weren't sure how it happened or when it truly occurred. Perhaps, it was always bound to happen, no matter the restraints of a society too cruel and too abrasive to allow any semblance of altering. For you'd been brought in to become a maid in the Bridgerton House and of all of the families you'd worked for, they were a joy beyond measure.

For they treated those who worked for them, as if they truly owned a rightful place in this world and that they were not merely plucked from the shadows forced to work on their hands and knees. There was kindness and love and there was a notion of home you discovered in their company. Lady Violet's that of a mother you hadn't the pleasure to meet, as yours had passed when you'd only been a day or two old and the Bridgerton siblings, they were each entirely individual and their own unique body of life and yet, they came together at the end of the day with a love and an adoration that you could only witness to truly believe.

Perhaps, after years of knowing the family and becoming close while remaining professional in their employment, it was always bound to happen and maybe, it was always bound to happen with him. The eldest of the Bridgerton siblings, a man who had inherited more at the age of a boy than any one soul ever should. The Viscount, who didn't in fact reside at Bridgerton House, but appeared there daily as if he owned the very corridors his boots echoed down.

Perhaps, it was always going to be Anthony Bridgerton who exposed your heart to the touches of a love and a passion far wilder than your wildest dreams. For you couldn't quite believe there would ever be another soul in the world that could come close.

Perhaps, it was the romance of a forbidden love, that entwined the two of you after years of a friendly acquaintance. Or perhaps, it was the way in which your feet dipped deeper into a world Anthony so desperately ached to escape, if even for a night spent with you in his arms, that was to be gone come the break of day. Catching a glimpse of a world you were never to be a true part of and him, a glance into a life he would never have. But maybe, just maybe, beneath it all, it was truly the discovery of two equal souls finding each other, in a world who told them they were not.

Everything about your affair with the Viscount, the very man who employed you in his childhood home, was wrong. You knew it the moment you found yourself standing alone in the midst of his presence, in the garden at Aubrey Hall, being sent with Hyacinth to watch after her on her visit with Anthony to the ancestral estate. You could feel the touch of temptation and the burn of sin as his eyes washed over you as though you found yourself plummeting through the fiery river of hell itself.

You knew that Anthony could never be with a woman of your stature, that you could never marry a Viscount or form a life with a man far beyond the grasps of a mere commoner. You knew it all, the pain that inevitably loomed in the distant future, the risk of scandal and ruin of your very existence in London and the smudge upon his family's name, the impossible dream that would surely keep you awake in the late hours of the night.

But you found, through the forbidden nature and your sense of strong conscious tugging at your every thought, that the way Anthony Bridgerton's lips felt when they captured your own that fateful night, didn't burn as you expected them to. In fact, it felt as if all this time, you had been ablaze and his touch was enough to extinguish the anguish.

"Nevertheless," Anthony's throat rumbled with a sharp clearing of his voice, as if he felt the very same lump of something dense and impenetrable, building in the base of his throat just as you did. "I am very glad that you are here. Truly."

It was with the earnest tone saturating his suddenly softened voice, that your eyes found the strength to flicker up from their focus on the floor and peered up through the soft sprawl of your lashes. Capturing the sight of Anthony's rich and intense scrutiny of a strong burning whiskey brown, falling across you in a wave that made it both hard to breathe and yet, just breathless enough that your lips parted ever so faintly for the slightest slip of an inhale.

You'd always known that this day would come, an inevitability in Anthony Bridgerton's life, as he was to sire an heir to the Bridgerton name and with that duty, he required a wife. The one of many things, you could never truly wish to be in this lifetime.

You'd surely dreamt of it however, as you laid with the Viscount in his bachelor lodgings on the other side of town. You dreamt of a world that was kinder to you, to both of you. One that bathed you in a glow of heavenly white, as it was your feet that carried you down the aisle to the man who stood strong and sure at the end of the alter. A world in which it would be your name spoken aloud, soon becoming tangled with his own, until you were practically one.

You'd spoken of it, through the haze of post coital bliss, your daydreams of a life far beyond the grasps of reality touching upon Anthony's ears and he absorbed them. Internalizing them without a shred of judgement or refute, he took on your daydream as if they were the very notions he was never quite brave enough to allow himself the freedom of dreaming.

Some nights, as your heavy eyelids fluttered as the warm hue of the burning candle engulfed the bedroom that smelled of Anthony and love in the most purest of forms, you wondered if the words ever truly made it past your lips. Or if they were merely details, imaginations teetering on the very edge of your subconscious, never quite seeping past your lips and out into the open air. But it was today, as your eyes fell upon the tiniest details lost to many of the ton's eyes, that told you Anthony had heard them all.

For it was in the stems of soft baby breath tangled within the beautiful hyacinths and the softest twinkles of gold coming from a few vases that held them, appearing as the only abrupt show of gold in the entire room. It was in the fact that the entire event took place in the home you loved the most out of any other in this world, with the sunset falling as if to signal the ending of the day with two souls joining as one, that was a testament to Anthony's ability to capture your daydreams in the palm of his hands and keep it close. For despite the attention to details fawned over by the ladies who made the place endlessly sparkle, Anthony managed to sneak in a detail or two, integrating the finest of details he'd found in your daydreams, as though he'd done so on purpose.

Pursing your lips together, as though by the mere pressure it may in someway, have the strength to keep the tears forming at bay. But you felt, as your lashes fluttered softly against the flushed skin of your cheekbones, the familiar sting threatening to gloss of your vision. Peering up at Anthony as you shifted your weight from one foot to the other, feeling heavier in that moment, as if his presence was enough to place the weight of the world upon your shoulders. Swallowing the lump forming in the base of your throat, you spoke up softly into the air that felt incredibly empty.

"She is very beautiful."

They were words that ached the moment they fell from your lips, but what pained you even more, was the knowledge that they were the absolute truth. You knew Anthony Bridgerton was never going to settle down with a woman who was anything less than beautiful and the woman you saw today, standing in the place your feet had been planted in the core of your unrealistic dreams, was a sight of beauty.

She appeared the opposite of you, in every possible aspect. As if Anthony had gone out of his way, to make sure there was not a single thing about the woman who was now newly deemed as the Vicountess, that could remind him of you. Her hair shimmered in ways yours never could, as if there was always a beam of sunlight highlighting along the strands made of pure silk. It was coiled in curls far tighter than you had ever worn, never needing such style for cleaning and caring for household chores during your long days. Her face sparkled, without a sheen of sweat or exhaustion, she radiated perfection as if it seeped from her very pores.

She was elegant and regal, she was everything a debutante ought to be and then some. She was the picture of everything you wished you could've been and everything that you knew you were not. She held it all while you stood holding nothing at all. But the most painful notion of all... was that she had Anthony.

Perhaps, your words triggered a part of his own heart, for Anthony's heavy gaze faltered for the first time since it had discovered you down the abandoned corridor. Falling to the ground, nearly burning a hole beneath his feet, until they moved in small strides towards you. The paces remaining disappeared, as Anthony stopped just short of brushing the hem of your frock with the tips of his shoes, as his head slowly lifted.

The proximity of his company, right upon you now, was overwhelming. For the scent of him, the strong aroma of his spicy and masculine cologne colliding with the sweetness of something unnervingly intoxicating lacing the warmth of his exhale, enveloped your frame. The density of his heavy amber gaze, nearly encasing you in it's thick substance. But it was the touch of Anthony's fingertips, reaching out until they slid along the flesh of your cheek, that consumed the entirety of your thundering chest.

You couldn't think, much less breathe in that single moment, as Anthony's touch burned just as harshly as the memory of it did. For it felt, as the soft pads of his thick fingertips pressed against the curve of your jawline as he cradled your cheek, like he had never left. As though his touch had never abandoned your flesh, that the feeling of his embrace and of his loving caress, was not just a fading memory in the back of your pained conscious. It felt like, as Anthony stared down into your awaiting and slightly broken gaze, as if the goodbye that shattered your beating heart, had never truly graced the air to begin with.

Perhaps, you hadn't a single ounce of control over your body, or even the staggering sense of your emotions in that very moment, for the tears overflowed from the rim of your waterline without your knowledge that they were even there. Not until you felt your eyelashes flutter against the first tear drop, saturating your lashes in the harsh burn of salt and dreaded emotion, swiping the moisture against the skin of your cheekbone as if it were merely paint on the soft bristles of a paintbrush, did you realize the tears that fell from your eyes.

And it was not until Anthony's thumb, soft and warm but ever so strong in it's movements, wiped against the barely dribbling trail that you felt your tears in the deepest part of your chest. As if their very existence, one of pain and anguish falling in the most delicate of substances, was a sensation meant to be felt all along.

The pad of his thumb brushed through the fallen tear, smearing the moisture against your skin, until it was nearly absorbed beneath the gentle friction of skin on skin. Even after the evidence of your tear, salt lost beneath the surface of your flushed cheeks, had nearly abandoned you, Anthony's thumb continued to sweep against your skin. The movements gentle, tender, affectionate in nature. Rubbing softly against your cheek bone like his thumb moved with the pendulum of an old grandfathers clock. Back and forth, swaying against your flesh, until you were certain the burn of his touch was bound to be imprinted into that very place upon your face until the end of time.