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

7 October, 1371. St Ivan's Palace, Havietten

It had been just over a week since she'd last spoken to Lucas. And what a long, lonely week it had been.

Celia was unhappy without him. She was also still fighting nausea and the tightly laced gown with the topaz dotted bodice that she was wearing that day, was pressing uncomfortably against her ribs.

At this point, if I didn't have my delightful little boys, I'd have no reason to rise from my bed every morning, she thought grumpily. Everything is upsetting me, everything is an effort.

She was in Gabriel's nursery, seated in a soft armchair and with the small boy curled on her lap like a kitten, fast asleep. She sang a lullaby as she admired his exquisite little profile. His long lashes curled and rested on the tops of his cheeks.

Not Romantic at All