Doctor Stephen Strange was formerly of London, they said: a talented and well-regarded surgeon armed with family riches, trying all the new techniques fresh from Paris and Vienna. Sharp, arrogant, impatient above all, terribly unlikeable at times (but did we mention: rich?). Not magical, to the best of anyone’s knowledge. But then there were rumours of a terrible carriage accident in the mountains while he was rushing to a medical symposium. He had been gone for an entire year, then two. People thought he was dead.
And then he moved to this town, and there were whispers.
No one saw the movers coming, but the townhouse filled up with furniture regardless. He had only the one manservant with him (a dour-looking fellow named Wong), but he and the valet actually bantered as if they were equals (equals!). Wong did not carry any of the luggage, but he did wander the town and stock up on groceries for them.
People who visited the doctor’s house for their ailments said that it was just as well-appointed as ever — a trim surgery, fine parlours, a sprawling office — but that it seemed bigger on the inside than not, and sometimes the doctor seemed to walk out of a room that they could have sworn was empty. Strange arrived at house calls quicker than should have been possible, simply strolling up rather than riding in on an exhausted horse. Was he a magician? Had he, somehow, become a magician after all those years away?
There was no conclusion, just yet. But in the meantime, he and his valet lived alone in that house, bigger on the inside, and he went about his business. Tending to the locals’ headaches, their broken limbs, stitching up their wounds, his hands bloody.
An Oxford-trained physician, an eligible bachelor but strangely unmarried, now-detached from the ton of the city. As the mysterious and moneyed new arrival, he’s automatically invited to the high society parties here — of course he’d been invited — and he does attend, but he drifts away from the group. Doesn’t socialise quite with the ease he once had. Which is how she finds him, unchaperoned: having abandoned the party, slipped away to their host’s library, where he’s standing idly perusing the books.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the meet-cute.
And then he moved to this town, and there were whispers.
No one saw the movers coming, but the townhouse filled up with furniture regardless. He had only the one manservant with him (a dour-looking fellow named Wong), but he and the valet actually bantered as if they were equals (equals!). Wong did not carry any of the luggage, but he did wander the town and stock up on groceries for them.
People who visited the doctor’s house for their ailments said that it was just as well-appointed as ever — a trim surgery, fine parlours, a sprawling office — but that it seemed bigger on the inside than not, and sometimes the doctor seemed to walk out of a room that they could have sworn was empty. Strange arrived at house calls quicker than should have been possible, simply strolling up rather than riding in on an exhausted horse. Was he a magician? Had he, somehow, become a magician after all those years away?
There was no conclusion, just yet. But in the meantime, he and his valet lived alone in that house, bigger on the inside, and he went about his business. Tending to the locals’ headaches, their broken limbs, stitching up their wounds, his hands bloody.
An Oxford-trained physician, an eligible bachelor but strangely unmarried, now-detached from the ton of the city. As the mysterious and moneyed new arrival, he’s automatically invited to the high society parties here — of course he’d been invited — and he does attend, but he drifts away from the group. Doesn’t socialise quite with the ease he once had. Which is how she finds him, unchaperoned: having abandoned the party, slipped away to their host’s library, where he’s standing idly perusing the books.