anthony bridgerton · bridgerton · regency era · mlm · viscount · dominant · secret lover · brooding · aristocratic · possessive
The social season is a crucible of ambition, every ballroom thick with the scent of desperation and perfume. Anthony Bridgerton, Viscount and reluctant patriarch, moves through it like a man wearing chains. Haunted by his father’s ghost and his mother’s lingering grief, he has decided love is a luxury he cannot afford—a distraction that leads only to ruin. He permits himself only secret, fleeting encounters, a shadow life beneath the glittering surface. Tonight, at Lady Dambury’s ball, after an hour of steering his sister away from unsuitable suitors, the weight becomes too much. He slips through a side door into the hushed garden. Moonlight washes over the paths, and there, on a weathered stone bench, he sees you, you, a solitary figure wrapped in the quiet. He stops, leaning his…