CHAPTER 124: ABIGAIL

💌 Author’s Note

To my dear readers,

Thank you so much for walking this journey with me. Every word I write finds its meaning because of your eyes, your time, and your heart.

Your patience, your encouragement, and the way you keep turning the pages—these are what make the story breathe.

This Chapter is for you. May it carry you deeper into the world we are building together.

_____

"House Bellenti Exchange," the Master intoned, without fuss. "You know it. If you do not, watch the first measure and learn.

Gentlemen hold the line, ladies wheel to the right at the call and pass into the next set. There is no refusal in the Exchange, only rhythm. Keep your count, keep your courtesy.

Return to your chosen partner when the lamps are lowered." His mouth curved, not unkindly. "And keep your feet, if you can."

A ripple of laughter. Lazarus gave Samantha a mock bow that managed to be both theatrical and sincere.

Roman tipped his head to Julia; for an instant, his face eased of everything but attention. "Follow me," he murmured. "I’ve got you."

"I know," she said. She surprised herself with how true it felt.

The musicians drew out a ribbon of sound—violin first, then pipes, then the heartbeat of a drum touched with fingertips.

Roman guided Julia into the opening pattern: four slow steps forward, palms meeting and pressing gently, a pivot on the ball of the foot, a drift backward without breaking the line.

She matched him, listening to the measure inside her breath. The floor was slick, but his steadiness was a rail.

Around them, the room bloomed into movement. Fabric stirred like water.

Laughter threaded in bright stitches, then faded, replaced by the calm of bodies learning each other’s weight.

They turned. The Master’s cane tapped twice: the signal.

"Exchange," he called.

Julia felt the line of ladies peel gently to the right, a garden turning toward sun.

Roman’s fingers released hers as Lazarus stepped into place with an easy grin.

"Forgive me," he said in exaggerated solemnity, offering his hand to Julia as though she were a queen he had trespassed upon. "Temporary theft."

"Borrowing," Julia corrected, taking his hand. "You’ll have to return me."

"I always do," Lazarus replied, and his grip was careful, careful—brother-soft.

They moved through the steps, his attention never once straying to showmanship where steadiness was required. Across the lane, Samantha and Roman met.

Julia’s eyes flicked up—Samantha dipped her head to Roman, who gave her the rarest thing: the ghost of a smile.

They turned, counted, let the floor teach and carry them.

At the edge of the room, a girl in a bright skirt—too bright for the evening, too bright for the day they had come from—had decided that benches were suggestions, not rules.

She had arranged herself squarely on the lap of a laughing young man whose collar was open one button too far.

It was the woman from earlier whose hand had wandered beneath the table, careless of watching eyes.

The girl tilted her head back so that her hair spilled, a deliberate spill.

When the second exchange was called, she slid from his knees with a spin that made her skirt flare.

A few eyes watched; the Master of Steps pretended not to see.

The second pass brought Julia into the hands of an older gentleman with kind, papery fingers and a slight limp.

"My lady," he said, as if the words had been stored for her in cedar and he was pleased to take them out.

She matched his pace, lightened her step to meet his, and he rewarded her with a grateful nod.

Across the way, Roman received the bright-skirted girl.

She reached for him with an ease that carried no shame, her hand already climbing from his palm toward his shoulder, her body angling closer than the pattern allowed.

Roman’s grip tightened just enough to halt her advance; polite, restrained, but iron underneath.

For the briefest instant, her painted smile faltered, then she was turned smoothly into the rhythm and passed along again.

The Exchange carried its measure forward, partners wheeling like stars in an orbit they could not resist.

And then—Abigail.

When at last she was set before him, the atmosphere shifted.

The music did not falter, the dancers did not pause, yet the air thickened as if the chandeliers themselves had dimmed.

For a heartbeat, Roman’s composed mask faltered. His eyes widened almost imperceptibly—a flicker of surprise, a memory of the jagged wound she had left years ago.

Abigail, bold as ever, leaned slightly closer, her lips curving with that old, dangerous smile.

"Roman," she murmured, her voice low and silk-wrapped with malice, "you always were too trusting. Too soft. I wondered... do you still remember who I am? Or have you spent all these years pretending the hurt I left was nothing?"

The words were both honey and steel, curling around his chest like smoke.

A flicker of old pain crossed his features—brief, impossible to catch if you weren’t looking—but he masked it instantly.

His jaw tightened, his gaze sharpened, and the heat of that memory solidified into something else entirely: stone.

The transformation was immediate. The warm composure he had shown all evening hardened into something icy, precise, and lethal.

His eyes locked onto hers, cold as winter glass, and the air between them thickened.

Abigail froze mid-step, the familiar ease she wielded like a weapon slipping for the first time.

Roman’s hand extended politely, guiding her into the turn the dance demanded, but there was no warmth in it.

Every motion was exact, measured, courteous—but the aura surrounding him had become a shield and a blade, simultaneously warning and punishing.

Julia, standing a step back with her partner, caught the shift. She had watched Roman all evening, but now she understood the change was more than caution—it was history carved into his bones, a grief transformed into armor.

The man who once had loved without reservation now radiated a force that froze even Abigail in place.

"You’ve learned to look at me without trembling," Abigail said, her voice low, dangerous, almost a hiss.

"But I will have you remember... you belonged to me once. And power, even yours, has a way of bending if you do not watch carefully. Perhaps tonight I remind you who held the reins."

Roman’s expression did not waver. He guided her through the pivot of the pattern, his hand firm on her back, yet the eyes—the eyes—were unrelenting, frigid, a wall she could not pass.

He had turned the hurt she once inflicted into a blade aimed only at her, and she could feel it, a cold brilliance that left her heart pausing.

"You will find," he said, voice even, the faintest hint of steel cutting through the room’s hum, "that I am no longer the boy who broke for you. Your cruelty carved me once. I am not carved again."

Abigail’s lips parted, caught between indignation and fascination, as the reality settled: the Roman before her was no longer the man who would ache at her whims.

The man who had loved too much had vanished, replaced by one whose tenderness now belonged only to those he chose.

And in that frozen, spinning waltz, the truth was clear.

Abigail could strike, could tempt, could whisper every poisoned word she knew—but it would never unseat him.

The stone in his chest, forged for her memory alone, held firm.

Julia watched, quiet and aware, the subtle tightening of Roman’s jaw, the unflinching precision of his movements, and understood fully: the man she loved.

The man she was partnered with tonight in life and dance, was one who had survived betrayal, had learned the art of armor, and now radiated a power and warning that silenced even the boldest of ghosts.

Hi lovelies ❤️

A quick heads-up about Privilege Unlocks (for those who want to read ahead):

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With all my heart,

[MIDNIGHT_STAR07]

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