Tiffany Cotton was not who she said she was.
The peculiar woman had shown up in Ravensfield one night, wielding a pistol with a familiarity that odd, run-of-the-mill spinsters shouldn't know how to do. She was bizarrely intelligent, wore gowns that...
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One
-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-
Ravensfield England January 1841
He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but there was something about the way her mouth gaped open slackly and emitted gentle snores that simply... made him enamoured.
Finnegan Holt contemplated the peculiarity that was his 'wife' from the other side of the chambers they shared. An oil lamp sat on the table beside her bed, at the end of its soaked wick, and the sheer white coverlet was pulled down to her waist, almost entirely indiscernible to her sheer white nightgown.
Stray lights of dawn dipped through the gaps in the curtains that shrouded the large bay windows opposite the bed, and he knew, without a doubt, that Addilyn Sybil Heatherington would rise without preamble as soon as sunlight kissed her eyelids.
That was just who she was- up with the birds, always busy, always working.
Since he had met her all those years ago on a filthy street somewhere in East London, a place where no lady should have ever strayed so tainted with gamblers, lowlifes and debauchery was it, he had not known a moment that she wasn't in action.
Always proactive.
Always ready with a solution.
Even when they were ready to call it quits with her failing business venture, ready to throw in the towel and find another means that wasn't the Anxious Hearts Society- the matchmaking service for fae and human alike that Addy had founded two years ago- she had been ready with an alternative.
"We could turn tricks in the streets," she had joked once, "with your sleight of hand, Finn. I'd cajole them in, and you could trick their coins away!"
He couldn't remember exactly what he had responded to her back then- possibly something flippant and light-hearted, as he was wont to do. In fact, he was more than certain he had said to her that he was better at turning tricks in the sheets than the streets, but he couldn't endure the turn of phrase presently as he studied her.
She deserved the rest. She deserved the luxury Ravensfield offered her.
He was just somewhat bitter that he wasn't the one who could give it to her. And he wouldn't be the one to ever give it to her, not as things stood.
Outside, a bird chirped pretentiously, and he bristled.
Addy would hear it, no doubt, and believe that she needed to be called to action. It would be just like her to believe that she ought to be awake with the first creatures that heralded the dawn. There was no reprieve for her, not that she believed, and from what he knew of her, from what he had learnt from their years together, he couldn't blame her.
