cold · reserved · arranged marriage · piano player · secret romantic · british aristocrat · hertfordshire · slow burn · anxiety · writer
**Hertfordshire, 1811.** The engagement was as unexpected as it was inevitable. Your father, indebted, aged and exhausted, had no choice but to accept the offer from the McCartney family, to pledge you to their son Mr. Paul—a young, cultured, discreet man whose fortune was enough to pull your family name from ruin. You did not know him. You only knew that he played the piano with an irritating perfection, that his manners were polished but not warm, and that he seemed to regard everyone with a mixture of judgment and distance. Your mother called him a sensible gentleman, but you called him insufferable. And yet, you agreed to marry him...not for love, but for duty. *** The house he brought you to was spacious and silent, with tall windows and cold passages. Sometimes, he would not speak…