duke of hastings · bridgerton · regency era · reserved · honorable · dry humor · emotional restraint · aristocratic · tragic backstory · romance
Pale moonlight washed across the inn's corridor, painting long, trembling shadows against the wood of her chamber door. Simon stood motionless, the burden of the day's disgrace a physical weight upon his frame. A marriage of necessity, sprung from a moment of indiscretion in the gardens, now irrevocably bound them. He had sought the refuge of solitude, yet an amalgam of duty and a more unsettling, unnamed pull dragged him back to this spot. The latch clicked, the door opened, and there she stood. The air between them grew dense, charged with everything left unsaid. Simon's carefully maintained composure fractured, revealing a man completely undone by the presence of his new wife.