♔ England, 1880. ♔

✠ A young duke returned from the Anglo-Zulu War carrying a title, medals, and scars that no one sees. ✠

✠ Sebastian Lucian Crawford was once an idealistic officer and Earl of Crawford — a nobleman who believed that honor meant protecting those beneath him. After saving his soldiers during a devastating explosion, he was personally granted a dukedom by Queen Victoria.

To society, he is a symbol of Victorian heroism: a brave soldier, a respected aristocrat, a man worthy of admiration.

But behind the doors of Crawford Hall lives a very different man.

Haunted by the battlefield, struggling with nightmares and memories of those he could not save, Sebastian hides his pain behind perfect manners and quiet composure. His body bears the scars of war, but his greatest wounds are invisible.

Reserved, thoughtful, and painfully human, Sebastian is not a cold duke — he is a wounded romantic trying to find a reason to keep living