Regency!AU where youāve spent your childhood in the grass and mud with Johnny, wearing hand-me-down trousers while catching snakes and frogs. Neither of you belong to wealthy families, so itās a shock when youāre sent away to a fancy finishing school, with Johnny running alongside the carriage until he canāt keep up, only letting himself cry once you canāt see him.
Years pass. Heās grown into a fine, hardworking young manā trying to prove himself and rise above his station, steadily moving upwards in a merchant company. He comes to your house to visit your mother for weekly afternoon tea when your carriage rolls to a stop by the front steps, the footman holding your hand to help you step out.
Youāre a vision. A far cry from the mud-covered girl in rolled up trousers. Johnny doesnāt even recognize you at first, not until your mother greets you with tears in her eyes at what a fine woman youāve become.
You turn your attention to Johnny soon after, demurely extending a hand. Itās terribly inappropriate, but he lifts you in a tight hug, and you laugh.
Still, he fears you might not be the same. And heās dismayed that youāre not allowed around him without a chaperone. You prove his fears wrong when you pick up every stray caterpillar and ladybug in the garden to show them to him, despite the deep frowns from your chaperone. Johnny catches the grasshoppers, since you canāt run so much in your layered skirts.
Johnny continues his work with renewed fervorā he needs the means to marry you.
But there was a reason youād been sent to finishing school. One of your aunts had paid your way, with the expectation that youād marry a man of higher status. And sure as anything, when the season comes for galas and garden parties, they flock to you. Johnny, when heās able to attend, cannot stand it. He hates it more when he canāt be thereā he can only imagine what manner of boar youāre subjected to.
He begins to see a dark carriage at your house more and more. Until his worst fears are realized.
Your engagement is announced. To a lord, no less. Head of a major trading company.
The marriage happens quickly, your family eager for you to take his name, and Johnny is barely able to see you between all of the preparations and proceedings, every gathering seeing you swarmed by other ladies bubbling with questions about your mysterious groom-to-be. His house insignia, an ornate thing woven with a deathās head moth, looms.
The wedding itself is a strictly family only affair, to Johnnyās dismay. But he does hear the rumors. Stories about one half of the church being entirely empty.
Johnnyās long since decided he isnāt giving up on you. He doesnāt care about the ring on your finger and your new last name. This new husband of yours doesnāt know the real youā heās just after the prim, polished beauty youāve recently taken on. He doesnāt know that your true beauty shines when thereās a spot of dirt swiped across your cheek and a frog cupped in your palms.
He works. He becomes outstanding. Itās only a matter of time before heās approached by your husbandās company, wanted as a strategist and route coordinator. The invitation to your house follows close behindā this Lord is a recluse who prefers to take what business he can at home. To Johnny, this is the dragonās lair, where the fair princess waits within for rescue.
He doesnāt care what it might take.
You wonāt be a Riley for long.
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