Under the Red Dragon: A Novel

A lieutenant trapped between duty and desire waits for war to pull him from a life at half-mast. Harry Hardinge languishes in barracks, nursing an impossible love for Lady Estelle Cressingham, her presence at Craigaderyn Court a wound that will not heal. When a letter from Sir Madoc Lloyd summons him to the estate, Hardinge finds himself among old friends and new complications: the enchanting Winifred Lloyd promises something Estelle cannot, yet the specter of deployment hangs over every waltz and whispered conversation. James Grant, writing in 1872, constructs a world where a soldier's honor and a gentleman's ambitions collide with the fragile architecture of Victorian society. The Crimean War looms, promising glory or death, but the real battle here is fought in drawing rooms and on horseback, where love is a battlefield and status is both armor and cage. This is historical fiction that understands the 19th century's great theater: the performance of composure over chaos, the quiet desperation of those who cannot have what they want.