╭                                                                 ╮

━━━━ " 🪷 "

𝙃 𝙀 𝘼 𝘿  𝙊 𝙑 𝙀 𝙍  𝙃 𝙀 𝙀 𝙇 𝙎
! BRIDGERTON ─── ʚĭɞ
⊹ , ˗'ˏ - act one ⊹

╰                                                               ╯

❛ SOMETHING HAPPENS AND
I'M HEAD OVER HEELS ❜

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FREDERICK GREY WAS BORED. He had been for a year. He had been since he stood in the crowds in front of the queen watching debutantes appear in front of her hoping to be approved and found out, along with the rest of the ton, that Cecilia Bridgerton would not debut - for she was not there, and instead bundled away in some seaside town recovering from a mystery illness.

Without Cecilia, Frederick had no one. His mother and sister were in France, as they had been for four years prior, his father often too busy with business and lacking the intense interest needed to participate in the social season, and his friends too busy with their own marital endeavours to spend as much free time as Frederick had. He forced himself through the season, dancing with those he asked, never following it up with a house call the next morning and rejecting any advances. Often not as politely as he hoped, but it was quick to be known the reason for his broodiness, and an expectation that had been held for many years; Cecilia Bridgerton was supposed to marry him, yet in the very year - no, the very moment - that their friendship could bloom into love, she was gone.

He had nothing to do, nothing to pass his time - except, of course, joining Benedict in some of his more artistic ventures and finding that when drunk, Anthony was a little more bearable - and await a letter, news, anything about her condition. He knew her not to be dead and instead in recovery, yet he knew nothing of her feelings or thoughts and had nobody to share his own. He was used to that, he and Cecilia used to spend every moment possible together, drawing, talking, reading and riding their horses, spending the off-season at Aubrey Hall with Cecilia managing to convince others to allow her to hunt with them and join them whilst fencing.

Frederick could not yet justify writing to his mother to ask for her ring, could not yet certify those feelings that had risen not long since meeting Cecilia for the first time. He did not yet know if she would be returning that season, and if she would, who she would be when she returned. He had no doubt she would be the same person who had left but harboured a certain worry that the year had changed them, and things would not be the same.

He had been waiting, wondering if he had done something wrong, wondering if she received the many letters he had written, wondering when she would return, and wondering if when she did, she would still be the person who could return his love.

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HEAD OVER HEELS
━━ i never find out until
i'm head over heels