Reincarnated As The Duke`s Fiancée

I died listening to rain beat against a council flat window.

It was the kind of English rain that never hurried, persistent, invasive, soaking into brick and bone alike. It tapped against the glass in uneven rhythms, mingling with the hiss of passing tires on wet asphalt three stories below. I lay on a mattress shoved against the damp-stained wall of my bedsit, staring up at a ceiling light that flickered with a rhythmic hum, like it might give up the ghost before I did.

The room smelled of my life: laundry that would not dry in the humidity, cheap instant noodles, and the metallic tang of an electric heater that produced more noise than warmth. I had lived my entire existence in places like this. They were rooms designed for temporary stays that somehow became permanent by accident. Furniture scavenged from charity shops; a kettle that clicked with a violent shudder when it boiled; a life measured in the blue glow of a phone screen and the ticking of a clock I could not afford to replace.

I had worked since I was fourteen. Not out of a sense of 'hustle,' but out of a desperate, clawing need to keep the lights on. I had been a 'him' back then, but now a man of thirty-two who felt like he was pushing eighty. My hands were mapped with the scars of 'honest work.' Warehouse shifts where time dissolved under fluorescent lights that felt like they were bleaching my soul; delivery routes that left my knees clicking in the cold; night security shifts where the silence was so heavy it felt like a physical weight pressing against my chest.

Zero-hour contracts. Temporary fixes. The constant, gnawing anxiety of the 'Next.'

People liked to romanticise the working class, but there was no poetry in a life spent trading hours for the bare minimum of oxygen. I had no family to call. No partner to hold my hand. If I vanished, the only person who would notice would be my landlord, and even then, only when the direct debit bounced.

Then, the pain came.

It was not a cinematic explosion in my chest. It was a cold, spreading numbness that started in my left arm and bloomed into a crushing weight on my sternum. I tried to reach for my phone, but my fingers felt like lead. My vision began to fracture like the flickering ceiling light splitting into three, then five, then a blinding white smear.

So, this is it, I thought. My internal monologue remained surprisingly flat. Dying in a six hundred pound a month coffin while the rain mocks me.

I did not see a tunnel. I did not see my life flash before my eyes mostly because there was not much I wanted to watch twice. I just felt the cold. A deep, abyssal cold that swallowed the sound of the rain and the hum of the heater until there was nothing left but the dark.

Then came the heat.

It was the first thing I felt. A heavy, suffocating warmth that smelled of lavender and something cloying, like old roses and expensive beeswax. It was not the dry heat of a radiator; it was the oppressive, humid warmth of a room kept too sealed, too private.

My eyes snapped open.

The ceiling was not grey concrete or peeling wallpaper. It was a masterpiece of plasterwork intricate vines and goldleaf molding circling a massive chandelier of teardrop crystals that caught the morning light.

I tried to sit up, but my body felt... wrong. It was light, yet uncoordinated. When I pushed my hands against the mattress, they did not meet the scratchy polyester of my old sheets. They sank into silk.

I looked at my hands.

The breath hitched in my throat, a high, soft sound that did not belong to me. These weren't my hands. The thick, scarred knuckles were gone. In their place were slender, pale fingers with nails shaped like almond shells, buffed to a high shine. There were no callouses. No traces of grease or manual labour. The skin was so thin I could see the delicate, branchlike veins of a person who had never seen a hard day's sun.

"What..." I tried to speak, but the voice that came out was a melodic, frightened soprano.

I scrambled out of the bed, my legs tangling in a nightgown made of so much fabric it could have paid for my previous year's rent. My bare feet hit a plush, handwoven rug. I staggered toward a vanity table topped with silver backed brushes and crystal perfume bottles.

The mirror was a tall, oval thing of polished silver. I stared into it, and the stranger stared back.

She was beautiful, in a fragile, haunted sort of way. A waterfall of hair as black as a crow's wing spilled over shoulders that looked far too delicate to carry any weight. But it was the eyes that stopped my heart. They weren't the dull brown of my past life. They were honey brown, warm and currently wide with a terror that looked like it could shatter the glass.

"Lady Elowen?"

A voice came from the door. A woman in a stiff black dress and a white apron stood there, clutching a basin of water. Her eyes were downcast, her posture one of practiced subservience, but there was a distinct edge of annoyance in the set of her jaw.

"The Count is asking for you," the maid said, her voice flat. "He says if you are not down for the Duke's arrival in twenty minutes, he will personally drag you to the carriage by that black hair of yours."

I froze. Lady Elowen. The Count. The Duke.

The words acted like a key in a lock. A secondary set of memories, faint, like a dream you are trying to remember after waking surged into my mind. I saw a childhood of cold hallways and colder parents. I felt the sting of a tutor's ruler. I remembered the hushed conversations behind closed doors about 'The Ashford Debt' and the 'Duke of Ravenshollow.'

I was not just in a different body. I was in a different world. A world of titles and transactions.

The maid stepped forward, setting the basin down with a deliberate clack. She looked at me then, her eyes raking over my trembling form. "Do not give me that look, My Lady. We all know you are just a bargaining chip. Best to make yourself look pretty so the Duke does not realize he has bought a dud."

The 'me' who had died in the council flat, the one who had been barked at by foremen and threatened by bailiffs felt a familiar spark of heat in the pit of my stomach. It was the only thing that felt real in this nightmare.

A bargaining chip? Sold?

I looked at the maid, then back at my own honey brown eyes in the mirror. Lady Elowen Ashford had been a quiet girl, a girl who faded into the wallpaper, a girl who took the abuse until her spirit was a thin, transparent thread.

But the person standing in her shoes now had survived thirty-two years of a world that tried to grind them into dust. I had dealt with worse than an angry 'Count' and a rude maid. I had stared down hunger; I had survived the rain.

I reached out and grabbed the maid's wrist. It was a small movement, but the woman gasped, her eyes snapping to mine.

"Fix my hair," I said. My voice was soft, but the 'me' from the warehouse was behind it now hard, cold, and utterly done with being pushed. "And do it quickly. I would hate for the Count to be disappointed because his 'property' was not polished to his liking."

The maid's mouth fell open. The 'dud' was not supposed to speak back.

As she began to frantically brush my hair, my mind raced at a thousand miles an hour. I did not know how I got here. I did not know the rules of this game. But I knew one thing with absolute, bone deep certainty.

I had been poor, and I had died. I had been a nobody, and I had been forgotten. I was not going to let that happen again. If I was being sold to a Duke, then I would make sure the Duke knew exactly what kind of fire he was bringing into his house.

But as I stood up to face my 'father,' a chilling thought struck me.

If they sold me for money, and the Duke is buying me for power... what happens when they realize I'm not the girl they think I am?

The door to the study creaked open, and the smell of expensive tobacco and impending doom wafted out.

"Ah, Elowen," my father said, his back to me as he looked over a ledger. "I hope you have practiced your smiles. The Duke of Ravenshollow is known for his... particular tastes. And he does not like to be kept waiting for his property."

I gripped the silk of my skirts until my knuckles turned white.

Just you wait, 'Father,' I thought, my honey brown eyes darkening. The property is about to start looking back.

The sound of heavy carriage wheels on gravel echoed through the hallway. The Duke had arrived.