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What will you do when you get lonely, No one waiting by your side? You've been running, hiding much too long, You know it's just your foolish pride.
Eric Clapton, Layla
✶
Thievery.
How would you call it? The act of stealing, where individuals unlawfully take someone else's property or possessions? A form of dishonest and unauthorized acquisition of goods or valuables?
No.
Back in the 1850s, for people like Beatrix Fairfield, who were raised in the most difficult of situations, thievery was like a clandestine ballet of the shadows. Stealing felt a lot like the grand balls that all those from noble families enjoyed. It was all like a nocturnal waltz where larcenous muses guided one's hand in a choreography of calculated cunning.
It felt like an unusual passion had been kindled within Beatrix, and soon, it evolved into her entire existence.
The young woman carried, of course, a tumultuous stealing history that had refused to fade into oblivion multiple times, and the shadows of theft and mischief lingered closely, no matter how hard she had earnestly sought to distance herself from them.
Despite the veneer of elegance that adorned Triss - opulent skirts, polished etiquette, and residence in the lap of luxury - beneath it all, she remained tethered to her authentic self. A concealed dark side, where larceny and mischief intertwined like an insidious disease, persisted beneath the facade of a well-mannered lady.
Triss, unequivocally, defied the conventions of a true lady, her connection to nobility nothing more than a claim she had upheld since her marriage to a British lieutenant. A facade meticulously maintained, no matter how she adorned herself or how benevolently she projected outward, the inexorable truth unfurled, laying bare the minutest details of her storied past.
Yet, in the intricate web of identities, a few discerning souls could tell Lady Fairfield from Triss Belmore. Among them was Jack Dawkins, once a navy surgeon who had reinvented himself as a respected young surgeon in the colony. However, the past, a relentless specter, crept back into their lives when an old acquaintance resurfaced, compelling both Jack and Triss to revisit the life of crime they had sought to leave behind.
