Capturing Your Heart

Please add my next books, Your Affection and Moonlight Shines on Childhood Sweethearts, to your collections!

Blurb:

[Sunny, spirited young lady x cold-faced, loyal guard]

As the beloved young lady of a general's household, Chi Wan had never wanted for anything.

That is, until her father brought home a guard named Pei Yan.

Pei Yan was cold-faced, taciturn, and strictly adhered to the rules.

Born into humble circumstances and raised in hardship, even when he was found among a pile of corpses with barely a breath left, he still clutched half a blackened bun to his chest.

Yet he always obeyed Chi Wan's every word and came whenever she called.

She ran barefoot down the corridor, and he silently handed her shoes. "Miss, the rules."

She snuck out of the residence late at night, and he waited outside with a lantern. "Miss, please come back."

She fell into his arms and acted coy, and he stiffly steadied her before stepping back three paces. "This subordinate has overstepped."

Everyone laughed that she could never warm this block of ice, but Chi Wan refused to give up.

One day she brought him a bowl of sweet soup, the next she asked him to teach her swordplay, openly challenging Pei Yan's limits.

But with his repeated deference and retreats, the light in Chi Wan's eyes gradually dimmed.

The people in the residence slowly noticed that the young lady was no longer inseparable from Pei Yan.

They sighed. It seemed there really were depths even a shining pearl could not illuminate.

On the very night she decided to put all her feelings away

Assassins attacked with deadly force, their swords flashing coldly.

Pei Yan, drenched in blood, shielded her behind him.

She trembled as she bandaged him, but inside his bloodstained robes, she felt a pearl hairpin she had once lost. Its edges had long since been polished smooth from repeated handling.

After that night, everything seemed different.

He was still taciturn, but when she drank, he would instinctively tuck the loose hair behind her ear, while the feelings surging inside him gathered like a storm about to break.

Later, a traitor gave away their secrets, and the enemy surrounded the city. Pei Yan fought his way out alone to seek reinforcements.

On the night before he left, the guard who had never once overstepped entered her room for the first time.

He kissed the tears from her lashes, his voice so hoarse it hardly sounded like his own. "Wait for me."

On the day he returned in triumph, everyone cheered.

Pei Yan rode through the streets in full armor, but reined in his horse in front of the general's residence.

Before everyone's eyes, he dismounted and knelt on one knee, carefully tying her untied shoelace.

"General!" his deputy cried out.

But Pei Yan looked up with a tender smile, rose, and pulled her into his arms. "I promised I'd come back for you, my young lady."

Reader's Guide

1. One-on-one romance / both leads' first and only / happy ending, sweet historical romance, healing for both.

2. Cold-faced, loyal guard x bright and proactive young lady, difference in status + secret love comes true.

3. The male lead is intensely restrained at first, then becomes completely lovestruck. He gives his tenderness to her alone.

4. The female lead is a ray of sunshine, proactive but never self-effacing.

------------------Next Book------------------

Your Affection, blurb:

[Playful, sweet young lady x aloof, proud high-ranking official]

Gu Yunchu had a secret love she'd kept in her heart for years. She had never told anyone.

When she turned fifteen, her parents arranged a marriage for her and sent her to stay with her maternal uncle's family in the capital until the wedding.

Desperate to escape the engagement, she tried every possible way to run away, but each time her sharp-minded cousin, Lu Yuanzhen, caught her perched on the wall and casually carried her back to the residence.

Lu Yuanzhen was proud and aloof, his thoughts impossible to read. No one could sway him in the slightest.

To break off her engagement, Gu Yunchu put on a show of deep affection in front of him.

At banquets, she disregarded etiquette and openly declared her admiration for Lu Yuanzhen. On a snowy day, she even knelt for a long time on a mountainside to pray for a talisman to keep him safe, all for the sake of bringing him a moment of peace.

At last, even his heart of stone began to soften.

Lu Yuanzhen wiped away the tears at the corner of her eyes and gently comforted her. "It's only an engagement. I'll help you break it off."

As soon as he finished speaking, the young woman looked at him through tearful eyes and leaned shyly against his sleeve. "Yunchu trusts you most in this life, Brother."

On the night the engagement was broken off, Gu Yunchu drank herself into a stupor. On a whim, she began telling Lu Yuanzhen what was on her mind. "Brother, I'm finally free. Tomorrow, I can go find the person I've kept in my heart all this time."

At her words, Lu Yuanzhen felt as if a needle had pierced his heart. The wine cup in his hand slipped and shattered on the floor, its shards scattering.

He immediately grabbed her wrist, his eyes cold with a bone-deep chill. "Gu Yunchu, look at me and tell me: who is the person you've kept in your heart?"

[Playful, sweet young lady x aloof, proud high-ranking official]

Theme: Love makes the proud bow their heads and the restrained make an exception.