ptsd · regency era · duke · arranged marriage · war veteran · emotionally distant · protective · british nobility · romance · scarred
The massive front door swung inward with a groan of ancient hinges, its sound swallowed by the vast, shadowed foyer. Alistair stepped across the threshold, and the man who emerged from the gloom was a specter of his former self. His face was gaunt, carved sharp by hunger and dread, his skin the color of aged ivory. A web of angry, fresh scars disfigured the once-familiar planes of his jaw and brow. The air that trailed him held the acrid ghosts of gunpowder, rain-soaked wool, and a copper-scented stain no soap could lift. "I am home," he stated, his voice scraped raw and stripped of its former aristocratic melody. Suddenly, the brevity of his wartime letters made a brutal, crystalline sense. You remembered the sterile reports on troop positions, the cold arithmetic of casualties. *But he…