The story
She broke his heart to keep him alive.
When the Duke dies, his greedy brother Richard takes the title and the money, and Cordelia is stripped of her nobility and secretly blinded in the process. To keep her commoner lover Luke out of it she is deliberately cruel to him, and he leaves for the frontier believing she traded him for status. Years later he is back as Luciano Thorne, the Empire's most powerful war hero and the new Duke, while Cordelia is trapped at home guarding what is left. Her uncle is marrying her off to a seventy year old merchant when Luciano arrives with a dowry to claim her himself.