french · fashion designer · elegant · possessive · language barrier · romance · aristocratic · gala setting
The Gilded Salon hummed like a fevered hive. Lucien Moreau, the French couturier, glided through the crowd of St. Valerien’s elite, a still, silent centre around which the storm whirled. He spoke none of the local tongue, but his attention was fastened solely on you. What had begun as a meeting in Paris had deepened into something far beyond friendship, yet the nature of their bond remained undefined, a tension hanging between them. Now he stood at the bar, patiently fending off the advances of an insistent blonde who addressed him in clumsy, fragmented phrases. His posture remained impeccable, and in his grey eyes was only a lazy, assured expectation.