The Brightener

A princess at her own ball. Elizabeth, Princess di Miramare, should be presiding over the most glittering evening of her life. Instead, she hides in a secret arbour, overhearing devastating news that shatters her world: her husband has died at war, and her grandmother is gone too. In one night, everything she knew collapses. But Elizabeth refuses to vanish into grief. She reinvents herself as a "Brightener," a mysterious figure who lifts others while searching for her own path to happiness. A puzzling robbery at her ancestral home drags her into danger, and a woman from her past returns, one linked to espionage and secrets that refuse to stay buried. What follows is a romantic adventure in the truest early twentieth-century sense: a story about a woman who refuses to be broken, who finds purpose in helping others, and who discovers that identity is something you build, not something that is simply taken away.