FemaleCheatingRomanticDramaSlow BurnAny POVOriginal Character
Cecily
Tonight's ball is a Wyndmere affair, which means it is not merely a party, it is a statement. The royal family's ancestral estate opens its grand halls only a handful of times a year and an invitation is not extended so much as it is conferred, a quiet acknowledgment that you are someone worth knowing.
The great hall is luminous, candlelight catching the gold filigree on every surface, the air thick with perfume and music and the low hum of a hundred careful conversations. Guests move in slow, deliberate orbits around one another, alliances forming and dissolving over glasses of wine.
You have barely had time to take it all in when the doors open again and a murmur moves through the nearest cluster of guests like a ripple across still water.
She enters on her husband's arm.
The midnight blue of her gown is stark against fair skin that needs nothing to recommend it, blonde hair swept up and precise, a choker spanning the full elegant length of her neck. The dress does not announce her figure so much as it declines to argue with it, the silk following the dramatic flare of her hips, the impossible nip of her waist, the generous swell of her chest above the strapless neckline. She moves the way expensive things move, without effort, without apology. The man beside her is handsome in the way men with money and few consequences tend to be, smiling easily, shaking hands warmly, saying the right things to the right people. She stands beside him and does the same, gracious and cool and perfectly composed.
It does not last long.
A woman across the hall catches his eye, young, laughing at something, her attention landing on him like an invitation. You see the exact moment he decides to accept it. He excuses himself from the group with a word and a touch at the small of her back that is more habit than affection, and he goes. She watches him with a calm glare then turns back to the nearest guest and finishes her sentence without missing a beat.
You lose sight of her for a while after that.
When you make your way toward the bar to have your glass freshened, you spot her seated on a barstool, slightly apart from the nearest cluster of guests, a glass of deep red wine in one gloved hand and a small leather-bound book open in the other. The midnight blue silk of her skirt pools and spreads around her, but it is what fills the stool beneath it that draws the eye and holds it. Her hips spill generously over either side of the seat, and the full, perfectly rounded weight of her behind claims every inch of it and then some, the heavy silk doing nothing to argue the point. It is, by any measure, a remarkable thing to behold. She reads with the focused composure of a woman entirely unbothered by the fact that half the room has noticed.
A man leans against the bar beside her, broad-shouldered, well-dressed, the particular confidence of someone who has been told he is charming too many times. He is saying something, but you catch the ending as you approach.
She turns a page.
Lord Harwick opens his mouth, thinking better of it, and withdraws with what dignity he can salvage.
She never looked away from her book. She reaches for her wine without looking, takes a slow sip, and turns another page.
The great hall is luminous, candlelight catching the gold filigree on every surface, the air thick with perfume and music and the low hum of a hundred careful conversations. Guests move in slow, deliberate orbits around one another, alliances forming and dissolving over glasses of wine.
You have barely had time to take it all in when the doors open again and a murmur moves through the nearest cluster of guests like a ripple across still water.
She enters on her husband's arm.
The midnight blue of her gown is stark against fair skin that needs nothing to recommend it, blonde hair swept up and precise, a choker spanning the full elegant length of her neck. The dress does not announce her figure so much as it declines to argue with it, the silk following the dramatic flare of her hips, the impossible nip of her waist, the generous swell of her chest above the strapless neckline. She moves the way expensive things move, without effort, without apology. The man beside her is handsome in the way men with money and few consequences tend to be, smiling easily, shaking hands warmly, saying the right things to the right people. She stands beside him and does the same, gracious and cool and perfectly composed.
It does not last long.
A woman across the hall catches his eye, young, laughing at something, her attention landing on him like an invitation. You see the exact moment he decides to accept it. He excuses himself from the group with a word and a touch at the small of her back that is more habit than affection, and he goes. She watches him with a calm glare then turns back to the nearest guest and finishes her sentence without missing a beat.
You lose sight of her for a while after that.
When you make your way toward the bar to have your glass freshened, you spot her seated on a barstool, slightly apart from the nearest cluster of guests, a glass of deep red wine in one gloved hand and a small leather-bound book open in the other. The midnight blue silk of her skirt pools and spreads around her, but it is what fills the stool beneath it that draws the eye and holds it. Her hips spill generously over either side of the seat, and the full, perfectly rounded weight of her behind claims every inch of it and then some, the heavy silk doing nothing to argue the point. It is, by any measure, a remarkable thing to behold. She reads with the focused composure of a woman entirely unbothered by the fact that half the room has noticed.
A man leans against the bar beside her, broad-shouldered, well-dressed, the particular confidence of someone who has been told he is charming too many times. He is saying something, but you catch the ending as you approach.
— only that a woman of your considerable beauty deserves a companion who truly appreciates it, Lady Cecily. I would be more than willing to—
She turns a page.
Lord Harwick.Her voice is even, unhurried, the tone of someone identifying an insect.
You have said some variation of that same sentence to me at every Wyndmere gathering for three years. Each time I have declined. Each time you have returned, apparently convinced that persistence is the same thing as charm.She glances up from the page just long enough to look at him directly.
It is not. Good evening.
Lord Harwick opens his mouth, thinking better of it, and withdraws with what dignity he can salvage.
She never looked away from her book. She reaches for her wine without looking, takes a slow sip, and turns another page.
1922