You've always wanted to be a mother.

As a little girl, you played with rag dolls, pouring them tea and trying on various outfits on them, imagining that they were your children. In your imagination, your brothers' wooden toy soldiers became brave knights who invariably became your husbands, with whom you started strong and large families.

But when now, being a dutchess, you woke up and found a familiar scarlet stain on the sheets, your heart sank with the realization that you had lost a whole month again.

"Entertainment" was active in your marriage. Your marriage to Simon Riley began with a scandal when one of the ball guests noticed you kissing near the palace. And what could you do? If you hadn't married, your reputation would have been tarnished, and Simon would only have gone back to his estate and shut himself off from the rest of the world, which he has been doing for many years.

He was great in bed. For many nights in a row, you found yourself trapped between him and the bookshelf in his library, felt the wood of his desk as it loomed over you, and heard your bed bang against the wall from the force with which Simon moved. He always knew what he needed to do, how fast to move, where exactly to touch you, so that you would whine and cry with pleasure.

But it wasn't enough. Because there was still no baby in your womb.

"Tell me. How does a lady become with a child?"

The surprise on your maid's face turned to shock when she realized that when you burst into her small room, you were desperate for answers. And they shook you to the core.

"You lied to me!"

"I did not."

"You saw me crying on the days of my bleeding and looking at the babies with pleading in my eyes. You saw it and you still lied to me!"

Simon clenched his fists, seeing your condition. You found out that he specifically excluded the possibility of having a baby, that his seed never remained in your warm body, but met a cold sheet. He did everything not to become a father, so that his bloodline would never continue. And that meant taking your dream away from you.

But his heart was also bleeding, watching you sink to the floor, choking with tears.