Book Three in The Storyteller series
August, 1368. Geoffrey Chaucer, vintner and court poet, is married to the higher born Pippa Rouet, and is esquire to the powerful Prince John of Gaunt. He has desired Gaunt’s wife, Blanche, the Duchess of Lancaster, for years, but desire conflicts with duty to Gaunt. Jealousy also consumes him, for he thinks his son and daughter were both fathered by the philandering Gaunt.
Chaucer cannot voice his true feelings so instead composes a poem in Blanche’s honour that Pippa discovers, inspiring her own jealousy.
At Savoy Palace, Blanche is shackled by courtly definitions of what a lady must be, and is drawn toward a faceless knight. Pippa’s sister Katherine Swynford arrives, capturing Gaunt’s gaze, and Blanche asks Chaucer to compose a poem to recapture her husband’s love. Five hearts are now entwined by duty, desire and jealousy.
As events unfold, Chaucer must fashion three poems into one, and finally delivers a poem that speaks to the journey of his heart, and learns that it is neither duty, desire nor jealousy that matters most – it is love, and his renewed love for Pippa.