Damian
I was there, but I wasn’t.
London was exactly how I remembered it: cold, grand, and suffocating. The estate, towering with old money prestige, was filled with perfectly pressed smiles and murmured expectations. Every hall echoed with names and legacies, mine included. I moved through it like a shadow stitched into silk.
Madeleine, of course, was radiant.
She knew every name, charmed every relative, and navigated the web of aristocratic performance like she was born to it. Maybe she was.
She’d been raised to become a wife, my wife.
And I was raised to make it look like I wanted that.
At dinners, I sat beside her, my arm brushing hers under candlelight. She would laugh at something I hadn’t said and slip her hand across my thigh while whispering, “We make such a strong pair, do
