The walls of the manor felt less like a home and more like a gilded cage. Annabelle sat by the arched window of the morning room, the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway sounding like a slow, rhythmic march toward insanity.
She had exhausted the keys of the piano until her fingertips thrummed with a dull ache. She had turned the pages of her leather-bound novels until the ink seemed to bleed into nonsense. She had even attempted to paint the garden, but the vibrant oils couldn't capture the gray stagnation of her soul. Her parents were ghosts of the high society—shadows that appeared for dinners and vanished into galas—leaving her to the hollow company of silent servants. Even her usual confidants, Rita Woodsman and Veronica, had abandoned her today for their own errands.
She was watching a pair of sparrows bicker over a worm when Sara, her nanny, entered the room with a sturdy burlap bag slung over her arm.
"And what could be bothering the young miss?" Sara asked, her voice a comforting rasp. "You look as though you're ready to jump out that window rather than look through it."
"I'm bored, Sara. Truly, agonizingly bored," Annabelle sighed. She eyed the bag. "Heading out?"
"To the market. We're short on salt and the master wants fresh trout for the evening."
A spark of rebellion ignited in Annabelle's chest. "Can I come with you?"
Sara froze, her expression shifting to one of sheer panic. "The market? Heavens, no. It's a den of filth and noise, child. If your father found out I took his daughter into that swarm, I'd be out on the street by nightfall."
"Please, Sara?" Annabelle stood, crossing the room to take the woman's hands. She perfected the pout that had broken a dozen tutors. "I'll wear a plain cloak. I'll keep my head down. I just want to see the world before I forget it exists."
Sara looked at the girl—lonely, beautiful, and trapped—and felt the iron of her resolve melt. "One time," she whispered. "And you stay by my side like a shadow."
The market was a sensory riot that took Annabelle's breath away. Thousands of bodies pressed together in a chaotic dance of commerce. The air was a thick soup of smells: charred meat, damp wool, drying herbs, and the pungent tang of the fish stalls. Annabelle walked as if in a trance, her eyes wide as she watched a juggler toss knives and a merchant scream about the quality of his silks.
While Sara became embroiled in a fierce, finger-pointing negotiation with a fishmonger over the clarity of a trout's eye, Annabelle's curiosity pulled her away. She drifted toward the sound of rhythmic, metallic thunder—clang, clang, clang.
The heat hit her first, a wave of dry, searing air that smelled of coal and iron. And then, she saw him.
The forge was a cavern of orange fire, and in the center stood a man who looked like he had been sculpted from the very earth he worked. His rugged charm was a physical force. His chestnut hair was tousled and damp with sweat, clinging to a forehead smeared with charcoal. He wore a heavy leather apron over a vest that hung open, driven apart by the sheer breadth of his chest and biceps.
Sun-kissed skin was dusted with soot, and masculine hands—scarred, strong, and blackened by his craft—flexed with terrifying power as he hammered a piece of glowing orange metal into submission. Every strike of the hammer made his muscles ripple like shifting stone beneath a thin layer of sweat-slicked skin.
Annabelle felt her heart stop, then restart at a gallop. She wasn't the only one. She noticed a group of village girls lingering by the periphery of the shop, whispering and giggling, pretending to browse for hinges just to watch the way he raked a calloused hand through his hair, leaving a charcoal streak across his brow.
He was raw. He was real. He was entirely unaware of the command he held over the space. He was the opposite of everything in her silk-lined world.
"Miguel!" one of the other blacksmiths shouted over the roar of the fire, gesturing toward a cooling trough.
The name echoed in Annabelle's mind, grounding her. Miguel. As he plunged the hot steel into the water, a violent hiss of steam erupted, shrouding him in a white mist, framing him like a vision. He looked up, his dark eyes scanning the crowd, and for a fleeting, heart-stopping second, Annabelle thought he might see her standing there in her fine shoes, a girl who had no business being in his world.