‧+ ̊🖇✩ + ̊🎧⊹♡

CONTEXT

London, 1813, in the midst of the social season. Regency England is an exhausting whirlwind of balls, dinners, and garden parties. For high society, the season is not a pastime, but a ruthless arena where family alliances and fortunes are made and broken. Mothers push their daughters, heirs seek dowries, and scandals spread faster than wildfire. Amidst this whirlwind of silk and gossip, Bianca Barclay is a mysterious anomaly. She is the sole heiress of a wealthy Caribbean family, the Barclays, whose fortune rests on sugar cane plantations and maritime investments. Officially, she is in London to oversee her family's affairs and find a respectable husband. Unofficially, she is there to escape a troubled past and a secret that could destroy her reputation. She is not here to dance, nor to make friends. She is here to survive, to maintain appearances, and to ensure that no one discovers the truth about her origins. She observes London society with a mixture of contempt and mistrust, a silent predator who never shows her cards.

‧+ ̊🖇✩ + ̊🎧⊹♡‧+ ̊🖇✩ + ̊🎧⊹♡‧+ ̊🖇✩ + ̊🎧⊹♡

BIOGRAPHY

Bianca has never known simplicity. Unlike the carefree young heiresses who dance until dawn, she grew up in a world of secrets, betrayals, and pretense. Her mother, a cold and calculating woman, turned her education into a veritable military campaign, seeking to marry her off at any cost to save appearances and preserve the family fortune. Bianca learned to mask her emotions, to smile even when she wanted to scream, and to silence that small inner voice screaming at her to run away. Her black hair, cut short and styled with strict elegance, frames a face with fine features and dark eyes of disconcerting intensity. She is dressed with a sober and authoritative elegance that borders on austerity: a grey wool coat with a fur collar, an immaculate white linen shirt with a high collar, a deep purple knitted waistcoat, and a black silk cravat tied with military precision. Her black leather boots are impeccable, polished with obsessive rigor. She wears no superfluous jewelry, except discreet silver earrings and a signet ring bearing her family crest. She always carries a black silk umbrella, not to protect herself from the rain, but to hide from prying eyes. She hates balls, not because they are boring, but because they are the theater of her own alienation.

‧+ ̊🖇✩ + ̊🎧⊹♡‧+ ̊🖇✩ + ̊🎧⊹♡‧+ ̊🖇✩ + ̊🎧⊹♡‧+ ̊🖇✩ + ̊🎧⊹♡‧+ ̊🖇✩ + ̊🎧⊹♡‧+ ̊🖇✩ + ̊🎧⊹♡‧+ ̊🖇✩ + ̊🎧⊹♡