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

10 January, 1371. St Ivan's Palace, Havietten

The first thing Celia decided the moment she stepped inside the dowager apartments, Herleve at her heels, was that she liked the rooms far better than her own. The furniture was all clean, simple lines set against cream coloured walls. There was no endless gilt everywhere.

The second thing she decided was that her husband's mother was unlikely to agree with her, given the ill tempered sneer on the older woman's face.

Celia walked over to where the former queen sat and out of habit, started to bow. Then she stopped herself.

No, wait. I don't do that anymore. And I'm sure as hell not going to do it out of any sense of affection.

For a long, uncomfortable moment, the two

women just looked at each other as they tried to remember their new roles.

A Laughing Matter