[Medieval Mistresses 01] • Mistress Angel

To save her son she must risk losing the love of her life.

“Mistress Angel” is a medieval historical romance novella of 28,000 words. It is a sweet to sensual romance story, set in a time when women had little power and fewer choices.

Once a child-bride, intended to stop a blood-feud between rich and ambitious families in fourteenth century London, Isabella is now a young widow, a medieval Cinderella, tormented and blamed. Seeking always to escape her grim destiny, she can just endure it but when her beloved son Matthew is torn away from her care, spirited somewhere into the country by her malicious in-laws, Isabella is desperate. To save her son she will do anything, risk anything. Even if it means she must lose the love of her life, the handsome, brave armorer Stephen Fletcher, who catches her when she falls from a golden cage and who calls her his Mistress Angel.

This book also includes long excerpts from six of the author's other medieval romance novels.

Historical Note:

The scene where Isabella is inside a golden cage suspended over the cobbled streets of London is based on a real event. In May 1357 Prince Edward, whom we now call The Black Prince, escorted the captured king of France through London in a glittering victory procession. Londoners flocked to see this and the London guilds vied with each other to add to the spectacle. The London goldsmiths placed twelve maidens in golden cages above the route where the princes would pass. In my novella, I make Isabella one of the maidens.

Child betrothals and child brides were a part of the Middle Ages. One of the most famous is Margaret Beaufort, who was married at just twelve and who became pregnant just before her thirteenth birthday. After a long and difficult labor she gave birth to a son who as Henry Tudor would become King of England and Wales. Even at the time the early consummation of her marriage was remarked on with some censure. Margaret later was keen to ensure that her granddaughter was not sent to her betrothed the king of Scotland too young in case the king consummated the marriage at once and so injured her.