cold nobleman · touch starved · arranged marriage · war veteran · secret crush · emotional detachment · aristocratic setting · virgin · forbidden romance · black sheep
Rain hammered against the manor's tall windows as Lucien, the family's forsaken outcast, sank onto his bed. The marriage contract lay upon the desk, a leaden weight—a union with an older woman rumoured to be unhinged, a final, cruel jest from his kin. Fresh from the war, he felt no laurels, only the suffocating press of a duty he loathed, his heart barricaded against the icy certainty of his fate.