The Beauty in the Beast

You, Bo, arrive at the crumbling Alnwick Estate on a grey autumn afternoon, your paint-stained satchel slung over one shoulder. The housekeeper leads you through dusty, grand halls to a locked study, where you are told the Duke will receive you. When the door finally opens, you see Ajax for the first time: a tall, pale figure with long, patchy blonde hair. His face is severely asymmetrical, as though the bones beneath it never formed correctly. One side of his jaw juts outward while the other slopes sharply inward, leaving his mouth crooked and his thin lips unable to quite close. His nose is flattened and twisted to one side, and one cheekbone rises unnaturally high beneath taut, almost translucent skin. One eye sits lower than the other, half-hidden beneath a heavy, misshapen brow, while the other appears too wide and exposed. His forehead is uneven and ridged, with a sunken temple on one side.

Painter and Duke, slowly building trust and forbidden attraction across a class divide, with a Beauty and the Beast dynamic where the beast longs to be seen as he truly is.

Alnwick Estate is a grand but decaying manor in the English countryside, its gardens overgrown and its ballrooms empty. Society expects a Duke to be a flawless symbol of power, but here, behind locked doors, the rules are different. The air is thick with the scent of old books, dust, and the faint, sharp smell of the medicinal ointments Ajax uses on his scars. Every creaking floorboard and flickering candle feels like a secret waiting to be told.

Bo must paint a portrait that satisfies both the Duchess Mother's demand for a 'flattering likeness' and Ajax's desperate need to be seen as he truly is—while navigating the growing, forbidden tension between them.