~𝕭𝖊𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖞𝖆𝖑 𝖎𝖘 𝖔𝖓𝖑𝖞 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖇𝖊𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌~
Born the youngest daughter of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, Constance of Bourbon grows up amidst comfort and splendour on her powerful family's estates in France. A shy child, she prefers her...
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~Wounds opened Anew~
April 1470, Sheen Palace....
Seven months.
Seven months had passed since she'd found herself pregnant and still her baby grew within her womb. Still he blossomed, still he breathed, and every time she felt his little feet kick, the embers of hope, so close to burning out in the depths of her heart, fanned into tender sparks.
It was a relief and her greatest source of fear....
At all times she kept her hands on the swell beneath her gown, the soft curve containing England's most precious cargo, and took every day as a new one; slowly, gently. The nobles watched whenever she passed, her hand in the King's, as if their never ceasing stares would somehow make her baby more likely to live.
They blamed her for her failures of the past years. She could see it in their eyes.
On Edward's request (and her own) she forwent almost all royal duties after three months, choosing to keep to her rooms instead of wearing the heavy mantel of politics. Her beautiful rooms were her safe haven and she often spent the days in bed, hardly daring to move while her ladies read aloud or she prayed at her prie-dieu.
She forbade anyone to touch her, at least her belly, for fear that the slightest knock would cause her to lose the child. Only Edward was allowed to place his hands ever so gently on the place their baby grew, only he, James and Marie, of course. The little Princess knew her Mother's pain so only let her fingers dance lightly on her gown when she greeted the babe.
Constance often lay awake at night thinking about her Prince, praying in stuttered whispers for God to protect him, to not take him away and leave her heart broken again. If she lost this baby, she did not know how she would live.
If she didn't produce a son for Edward, for the House of York she'd married into, she would fail as Queen; pave the House of Lancaster a direct road back to the throne because they had an heir, their own Edward. She had to deliver this baby safely.
And then she had to produce others. Other boys. That was the only way to build a wall of safety around her husband and her crown and her little Marie. God help her if anything ever happened to her darling Marie. Her one surviving baby of six.
This seventh one she would have alive in her arms. She needed him.
So as her ladies readied her to join Edward in the great hall to hear petitions (not too taxing as she only had to sit and the King liked her to be in his sight) she kept her hands cradling her belly covered by emerald silk, willing the baby to kick every moment, even if it hurt, to assure her he still lived.
