Gabrielle_Johnson_6482

“You must bear a child, Celia. what good is a woman who isn’t a mother? What good is an empty womb?”

“Especially when it’s a foreign womb, like yours…”

It’s not an easy life when you’re watched month after month, when all the blame is placed at your feet for your young husband having no heir. 

Celia Devon Tralhamir, Crown Princess of Havietten, waits every month with hope mingled with fear. 

A child will secure her future. But it will also bind her for life to a husband she neither loves or respects, who refuses to see her abilities. Is that what she wants?

Is she content to prioritise security over happiness, and be a wordless decorative vessel all her life?

Or is she brave enough to try to forge her own path and seize fulfilment on her own terms? Even in a society that cannot recognise individual brilliance in a mere woman.

A sequel to the WEBNOVEL book “Earning the Love of a Princess”, this novel follows another woman born into the Royal House of Devon, trying to fight the confines that threaten to stifle her happiness.

The Loneliest Ballad

6 October, 1370. St Ivan's Palace, Havietten

She'd genuinely thought it would be a long shot. A hope and a prayer, nothing more.

But perhaps the odds hadn't been stacked against her quite as much as she'd feared.

It's not like they were last time, were they, Celia? A baby had been the last thing on your mind that fortnight that you spent sharing Lucas's bed as you travelled from Magdaline Castle back to St Ivan's.

And yet the two of you managed to make Gabriel in those days.

So should you really be that surprised now?

Celia was almost positive she was pregnant again. She was queasy every morning and avoided breakfast. Certain smells seemed not just stronger than ever, but genuinely repulsive. She was lethargic.

Charade