28th February, 1890 — Bones Household, The Long Weekend

The low February summer sun woke Annabelle and whilst marvelling at the precision of its rays in landing right on her face it took her a moment to recall that she had closed her curtains the night before. She was sure of it – the room had felt stuffy and after her long-shift she preferred the cool fresh air on her skin; she had opened it and drawn the curtains and in the night they had opened once more.

How funny, she thought, still half-asleep, before her eyes shot open, recalling that two of her children were at school, one couldn’t reach the curtains and the fourth was still on a shift. Perhaps it had been the staff? They were well-trained to leave her and Rosamund alone when they were getting precious sleep but there was a first time for everything.

An arm draped across her waist and behind her Belle felt a body pull itself closer. Reasoning that the maid was unlikely to climb into bed with her and acting before panic could overwhelm sense she rolled over and-

“Oh shit,” she muttered to herself, faced with Finnian Byrne. In her bed. And apparently not wearing a shirt. She shook him urgently, wondering what on earth had possessed him to be this bold and indeed when and how he had managed to get into her bedroom unseen.

Had she even told him where she lived?!

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Finnian Byrne

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Lady made me sexy <3

Mornings at Finnian's house were far from glamorous. Long nights at the office often meant that his eyelids gave out on him before he could so much as change into his pajamas or close his curtains, which meant mornings involved groaning at the piercing sunlight, stiff muscles, or—in the worst case—a pillow covered in pomade that he'd rinsed out of his hair. Finnian hated mornings, in fact, that he'd long resigned to the idea that they were horrid by nature and made no attempts to ease his sunrise suffering.

It was a little different this morning, and Finnian could sense it the moment it shifted. Half-asleep and half-awake, Finnian had shifted slightly, grasping at the object that had disturbed his comfort. He drifted further back into slumber, having mindlessly discovered the source of warmth, but had only a moment before that warmth ripped itself away from him once again.

"Wha—?" he asked groggily, squinting through the light to find none other than Annabelle Bones leaning over him, hands grasping his shoulder—completely topless. He blinked a few times, almost sure that he'd really once his eyes focused, but in this case it seemed that this dreamland had, somehow, become a reality. "Mrs. Bones?" he asked, unable to stop the yawn that escaped him. He reached up and rubbed his eyes and stretched his legs, figuring out rather quickly that he was just as topless as she was, and only when patting the stainless white bed sheet did it really hit him.

"What are you doing in my ro0—wait," he said, gaze flickering around the impeccably-decorated room. It was prettier than any room he'd seen, and there were plenty of bedrooms in the Connolly house. "this isn't my room." he concluded, turning to look back at her, clearly puzzled. "I suppose it's yours, eh?" No acknowledgement of the situation, no questions, nothing. Maybe she wouldn't acknowledge the question hanging in the air if he didn't. Or maybe she would, because she was definitely smarter than him.

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For a moment the only thing that registered with Belle was the absolute absurdity of him calling her Mrs Bones in this moment. It could only have been made worse if it had been Healer Bones or, Merlin help her, Moth-

No, she couldn’t even think it! Instead she jumped out of bed with all the grace of a dying gazelle.

In hindsight pulling the covers after her might well have been another error.

Letting out an exclamation of surprise to discover that no, Finnian was not in fact wearing anything underneath there Belle turned her head away, utterly failed to look where she was going, and collided with the small occasional table she had kept on the other side of the room for the last fifteen years. Quite why it was in a different place she didn’t know, nor did her brain have the capacity to comprehend at the moment when there was something far more pressing for it to work through.

“How did you get in?” She asked breathlessly, so many hopes about him vanishing into thin air. Belle was not a romantic but their flirtation and teasing kisses had been a lovely diversion from the rest of her life – how could he ruin it by just letting himself into her bed?!

Ought she to call for the aurors?

“I thought so much better of you,” she muttered sharply, holding the bedsheets tighter around her body.

  

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Lady made me sexy <3

Finnian was overwhelmed with confusion and panic as she leaped from the bed and away from him, leaving him on the bed completely naked. He sat up and made a half-assed attempt to cover himself, but found himself more preoccupied with other concerns: specifically, that he had no good, reasonable answer to her question.

He grabbed a pillow from her bed and placed it across her lap and rested his arms atop it. "I-I didn't let myself in, now that I think about it." Finnian was normally the type to face inexplicable events with a smile and shrug, but this was different. This was plain strange. "Ye can think of me what you want, but I never learned where you live, let alone where your bedroom is." He may be a flirt, but he was no predator. Surely she knew that!

He tried to search his mind for memories from last night. The last he remembered, he'd been returning home from work, far too tired to go out to the pub with his colleagues. He distinctly remembered turning down the glass of whiskey one of the other men offered to buy him if he came. There was no way he could've drunkenly stumbled into Mrs. Bones' bed—and a quick smell test proved it.

"Do you usually sleep in the nude? I don't," he questioned, his eyes moving from her sheet-clad body to the floor, where he was confused (and a tad concerned) to find that his clothes weren't there.

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Oddly it was that thought that permeated the panic and made her rational brain kick in. No, she most certainly did not sleep nude, nor did she forget to lock the doors when she returned home. In fact nothing about the way she had woken up this morning made sense, from the curtains being open to Finnian being in her bed. And he was quite right – other than the vague information that she lived in Wellingtonshire, along with hundreds of others, she couldn’t recall ever telling him her actual address. But above all that, and strongest of all, she didn’t believe him to be that sort of man.

“Where are you clothes?” She asked anxiously, eyes scanning the carpeted floor to no avail. Blushing she accidentally caught a glimpse of the body still visible on her bed – quite a lot of it actually – and she scurried to the wardrobe at the foot of her bed, determined to cover herself so she could in turn cover him. They would get nowhere if she was distracted by the smooth expanse of-

“What the-?” Belle bit her lip – her mother would kill her if she heard half of the language she apparently came out with these days – but it was justified in her estimation as folded neatly on a shelf inside the wardrobe were a set of robes she had never seen before in her life that carried the distinct cologne that she could practically feel on her own body.

“Finnian, someone is playing a very odd trick on us.”

  

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Lady made me sexy <3

Well at least the accusations had gone away.

Finnian watched her scutter around the room in search of his clothes, and Finnian found himself wondering what he'd even come in that night (morning? Afternoon? There was no way to be sure). He was the forgetful type, sure, but it was beyond unsettling that he couldn't even map the last evening of his life, especially when it had led to him being in Belle's bed. Not that he minded, he thought a he got a glimpse of her backside as she sifted through the wardrobe.

He was happy enough to enjoy the view, and maybe they would figure this out so they could proceed on slightly less stressful terms—but much to his dismay, it seemed there was more to the mystery to unravel. She seemed to go stiff for a moment, which was enough to pique his curioisity.

"A trick?" he echoed, swinging his legs over the bed's edge. He moved to get up, but decided against it on second thought and clutched the bedsheet over his lap. "Did they... take my clothes?" Who was "they", anyways? Was there even a "they"? Or was it something else, like a vial of amortentia or a memory potion or something else that an expert like Belle Bones would recognize on sight?

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“Then starched and folded them it seems,” Belle said with a raise of her eyebrow as she reached out to touch the robes in a bid to convince herself that they were indeed real. The textures were certainly convincing if they were an illusion but what shook her to her core most of all was the odd but unshakable conviction that they had been here for some time.

“There are at least two sets of your robes in my wardrobe and I-” she turned back to him, noticing immediately how the drape of the bedsheet did little to preserve his modesty, blushed but didn’t look away. “I have no idea how they got in there,” she admitted, looking around the room as though it could yield secrets in the midst of its familiarity.

“How could we have forgotten something like this?” Perhaps they had been drugged? It seemed a pointless and bizarre thing to do but it was somehow not the worst case scenario.

  

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Lady made me sexy <3

Two sets of clothes in her drawers, and one set missing off his body altogether. If he didn't know otherwise, he might thought he'd been a frequent visitor in her bedroom—and Belle seemed to have similar thoughts.

"Well unless you're maid is so discreet she'd neatly fold your lover's clothes without questioning you about it, and unless someone executed a memory charming without ensuring we'd never end up together in bed..." He trailed off. There was no good explanation. Even if they had been drugged, they would've had to be in similar places to begin with, or someone would've had to known about their relationship and actively tried to push them together. And even then, why? Even his lawyer brain was unable to decipher a motive.

"It has to be memory-related. Something magic. But... I couldn't tell you what." He smiled a little then, because no matter what circumstances had brought them here, they were naked in her bedroom, and he was sitting on her bed. He locked eyes with her and smiled a bit more. "But I've not regrets no matter what. Look at you."

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It was enough to make her blush and, curiously Belle later thought, the point at which her heart rate began to return to something approaching a healthy beat. Theirs was hardly a conventional meeting so perhaps it made some sense that whatever else happened would be just as confusing: at least there were no wild buffalo in her bedroom.

“I ought to have known you’d be charming even in the face of…whatever this is,” she said with a smile. Lover. Oh dear Merlin this could be the end of her and her children’s futures. Or potentially the opposite. It was all far too confusing for this time in the morning and it seemed neither of them were much closer to working out how they had gotten here in the first place.

Well, she could hazard a guess but it seemed terribly unfair that neither of them recalled what had happened. Carefully sitting herself on the edge of her bed Belle sighed and let out a breathy laugh.

“I suppose we were heading here anyway, weren’t we?”

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Lady made me sexy <3

His smile spread even wider as she came to sit next to her. It would've been imprudent to reach out and touch her—or would it? They'd obviously done something already, or else they wouldn't be naked. No, it would be best to let her make the first move, even if her words and body language suggested that she was into it. Into him. Did this mean they were lovers? Would they be lovers going forward? Merlin he hoped so.

"But this is the perfect time to be charming," he chuckled, eyeing her bare shoulders. Would it be weird to compliment her complexion, all things considered? He held his tongue on that one. She had to know what a beauty she was, or else she'd be far more insecure around him than she was. Before he knew it, he'd leaned over and brushed his arm against hers, bare skin against bare sin.

They had been heading here, hadn't they? He remembered the attraction in that bush—how, despite the threat they were facing, all he could think about was her face.

Merlin he was going to be in deep shit if anyone found out about this.

"I suppose we were," he agreed, giving her wrist a gentle squeeze.

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