He is a cavalry officer the kingdom relies upon—and dares not question. Men like him are not born. They are forged.
Before reputation. Before legend. Before the name Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam becomes synonymous with iron discipline and lethal resolve.
Before the Storm is the history of the second son of Matlock—the spare. Fitzwilliam is marked early by a constitution that does not register pain as it should.
What others feel, he notes only in passing. What is first regarded as peculiarity becomes a curiosity to physicians and, in darker hands, an invitation.
Sent across a Europe tightening towards war, Fitzwilliam moves through Paris, Berlin, and Vienna under constant appraisal by diplomats, soldiers, and men who recognise the hand of the state at work–and mean to harden it further.
In him, they recognise something rare. What begins as appraisal becomes selection.
This is not the story of a hero’s rise. It is the account of a man who submits to pressure and trial until the ordeal drives him beyond the last restraints of gentility.
