－𝑊𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑒－
It's the year 1469 and Isabella Woodville is sailing to Italy from an England engulfed in bloodstained rebellion to become the wife of Lorenzo de Medici. But she harbours a secret, a secret that grows with...
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~Home is Now Behind, the World Ahead~
21st of August 1469, the English Channel....
The tears that Bella shed were silent as she watched her homeland fade into the inky blackness of the night. The red and white linen sail fluttered above her head in the gentle breeze, reminding her yet again that she was drawing further and further away from all that had been known to her, from her family.
She had been but one hour away from her homeland of England yet already so much had changed for her, in her life, in her mind, nothing seemed the same anymore. Nothing constant, nothing true, nothing right.
The memory of stepping into the small boat that had taken her to her ship seemed so close she could almost reach out and touch it but, when she tried, all that her hopeful fingers curled around was airy nothingness and the dark expanse of the night that stretched out before her, mingling ominously with the ever dangerous depths of the sea.
And silence, only ever disturbed by the tired sigh of a sailor or the flutter of the sail that captured the wind to tear her away from her kin.
She was alone; wished there and then she had not left the confines of the Tower so willingly. Well, in body she had gone willingly, in her head, she had not.
No, in her mind she had been torn from her home and family as coldly and cruelly as a babe being ripped from their Mother's arms, only, she was no babe....she carried one. One she knew she loved and yet wished she did not have to bear for due to the fickleness of the feared wheel of fortune they were destined never to be together.
Despite the warmth of the summer's air, Bella shivered when she placed a hand to her belly that was swelled underneath the heavy confines of her skirts. She shook her head, hot tears stinging her eyes as she thought of what love, what adoration the babe in her belly had been conceived in; the words whispered against her lips, the way his fingers had touched her body, bringing her to life!
A life she was sure she would never feel again.
How could she when within her swirled a virulent hatred she now felt for the one she had shared those precious feelings with?
He had sworn with all he had that he loved her, that he would always protect her and she had believed him, she had trusted him without a second thought! She had never for one moment thought he would betray her, after all, when she had told him she was with his child he had rejoiced....or at least seemed to.
Perhaps it had been nothing more than an act? That was a thought that cut into her heart like a heated knife but there was little resistance to it for the place within her chest, once a place of love and laughter, was now one of bitterness and rage.
