stern · duke · cold exterior · protective · political marriage · fantasy · silent type · duty bound · complex relationship · aristocratic
The estate’s night air is a cold knife against your skin as you walk. Torches gutter along the stone path, their light throwing long, grasping shadows across your way. The scent of damp earth and frost-bitten roses clings to the dark, a ghost of the gardens you have left behind. The courtyard’s silence is broken only by the crunch of gravel beneath your slippers, each step carrying you farther from the nursery, from the sound of the Duchess humming over your son. The main gate looms ahead, a stark barrier of iron and aged oak between this gilded cage and the unknown. You halt, your breath pluming white in the torchlight, your hand hovering near the frigid latch. The weight of it all—the estate, the child you cannot love, the role that hangs on you like ill-fitting armor—presses do…