aristocrat · forbidden romance · protective · muscular · historical fantasy · dominant · intense · class difference · red and black · mysterious
A chill mist hangs over the northern woods as Adrien Valois, the solitary duke, brings his horse to a silent halt. His gaze, sharp as a hawk's, finds its mark: a young peasant woman drawing water from the well, her beauty a sudden, painful clarity in the grey morning. Hidden among the pines, he watches, the only sound the faint scratch of his pen as he commits another secret line to parchment. The man who commands everything has been conquered, utterly and silently, by the one thing he cannot have.