The echo of your footsteps, heels clicking furiously against the elegant flooring of Bridgerton House, thundered within your head like the sound of your racing heartbeat, thumping relentlessly in the base of your ears. Breath by breath, shallow puffs passed through your parted lips as you stepped past the threshold and ventured down the wide corridor. You could feel the air around you pining for the entrance into your screaming lungs. Aching for a deep breath that never seemed to come, never rushing strong currents of fresh air down through the cavity of your chest, until it expanded with the very oxygen your lungs craved. For the air around you was tainted with the chill of the evening and the overwhelming ominous sensation suspended in the atmosphere like a hidden storm cloud. The denseness of the unmistakable void hindering the ability for a deep breath as your clicking heels stormed through the archway, the sight of Anthony Bridgerton's closed study door slowly coming into view.
The light of the hall was low, as night lingered in a deep overcast coat of blackness that consumed the streets below. The shadows of the evening threatening to seep through the linen curtains that shut the outside off from the interior of Bridgerton House, as the moon hid away amongst the thick cloud coverage. The house was quiet, eerily so, even as most of its residences still remained in the clutches of the ball ensuing as though nothing had gone down in its very presence. But for those who had returned, they left the walls once bouncing with the echo of vibrant and vivacious voices suddenly silent. The void overwhelmed the hallways bathed in the nighttime's shadows, but you could nearly feel the silence in your very bones as you approached Anthony's door.
Peering up through the sweep of your anxiously fluttering lashes, you lifted your right hand and let your knuckles, that had since been released of their silken confines, fall against the painted wood in a soft but urgent knock. Drumming them over and over, each knock fueled with more haste, until the door finally creaked open in the slightest crack of the wood. Dropping your gently curled fist from it's placement against the door, you were met with the striking emerald green of Colin Bridgerton's eyes, peering through the crack in the door but seemingly unsurprised by your sudden presence.
"Might I speak to him Colin? Just for a moment, please." Your voice felt undesirably meek in that moment, your words falling in a breathless whisper against the stilled and silent air shared between the two of you. Your fingers had unconsciously found themselves twisting anxiously together in front of your chest, the very edge of your hands brushing against the embroidered muslin fabric, that cascaded down your frame in a softening shade of honey paled yellow. A faint hue, contrasting in comparison to your dear friend Penelope Featherington's bright canary yellow. But a cloak of deep navy blue draped across your shoulders, shrouding your brightened fabrics in a blanket of indigo darkness, as you grabbed it quickly when you had ventured into the night after Anthony's departure.
Colin's eyes studied you for a moment, feeling as though an eon as you waited with bated breath, feeling the thudding of anxiety in the base of your chest, as you willed with your expression for Colin's answer. You watched the classic Bridgerton chestnut brown locks turn and cover the crack in the door as Colin turned his attention back behind him. Glancing at the others left standing in the room, before returning his gaze back to you and opening the door further with a swift pull of his hand. Colin stepped to the side as your heels passed over the threshold, entering Anthony's study that was bathed in a golden orangish hue, and watched as Benedict Bridgerton joined Colin as they slowly dispersed from the room. Leaving you alone, with an anxiously racing heart and nearly breathless set of lungs, before Anthony Bridgerton himself.
You listened to the soft clasp of the door, not being pulled completely closed, but the collide of the door against the frame made it nearly close enough to be considered as such. The room was silent, except for the crackling of a fire burning in the adjacent fireplace, illuminating the room in a warmth that the evening air had lacked most of it's setting hours. The golden hues graced the walls with shadows of the flames that danced and twirled, as though the movements of a waltz in the blistering embers. Painting the floor and the sights of the intimate study in an orangish glow that altered the colors of the paintings lining the walls.
