A Royal Bride of Convenience. Rebecca Winters

a mother to her own baby.

      Lise had to dig back a long way to understand how she’d come to do her life’s work in Chakul. She supposed it had started as a form of rebellion against the life she’d been born into. Not against her parents, who were wonderful people, but against the royal institution itself, with its archaic betrothals, used as a sole instrument to aggrandize wealth and property.

      Her betrothal had been sanctified in the church on her tenth birthday. To this day all she could remember was a fifteen-year-old beanpole, with an evil smile and black coals for eyes. Afterwards in the courtyard she’d heard him call her a royal pudding behind her back—in Italian, no less. She’d swung around and thrown pebbles from the fountain at him, screaming that she would never, ever marry anyone so mean.

      That was a lifetime ago. As far as Lise was concerned, marriage was the most individual, sacred matter on earth. To enter into it for any reason but love was anathema to her.

      She’d always believed that if she ever met a man she truly loved, she would seek out Prince Raimondo in secret and end their betrothal. It would kill her parents. She would be forever diminished in their eyes for putting love before them and the crown, but she knew herself too well. A marriage based on anything less would never work.

      Lise knew her betrothed felt exactly the same way. Not once in eighteen years had he tried to make contact. She suspected he nursed the hope she might even have died by now. He was probably going to get his wish.

      As tears trickled across the bridge of her nose, her ears picked up a sound. It wasn’t Celeste. Someone was moving inside the hut with great stealth. Dear God, please help me.