Bride From the Sea Read online

  Bride from the Sea

  Frances Housden

  www.escapepublishing.com.au

  Bride from the Sea

  Frances Housden

  From best-selling author Frances Housden comes a brand new historical romance about a Spanish señorita and a strapping Scottish hero…

  Celestina is a survivor: she escaped the firestorm of the Armada, she outwitted superstitious sailors bent on her murder, and she swam through a vicious storm after leaping into the sea. When she comes to her senses on a beach, wrapped in the arms – and plaid – of a huge Scottish laird, she needs only embrace one small lie to ensure her existence: impersonate the mythical Selkie that her rescuer believes her to be. But falling in love with her big Scottish Highlander might be the one thing she won’t be able to survive.

  Since he first heard the stories from his nurse as a child, Niall has known that Selkies are real, and when he finds one on his own beach, it seems as if she is there to answer his prayers, to cure his loneliness, to bring magic into his life. But Selkies aren’t meant to be land-bound, and when Niall finds himself falling deeply in love with his Celi, he knows that he must make the ultimate sacrifice: his happiness for her life.

  About the Author

  Frances Housden was first published in contemporary romantic suspense, and even now that she has become immersed in writing Scottish Medieval romance the elements of suspense always creeps back into her books. A feature that she hopes her readers enjoy as much as she does. Although she now lives in New Zealand at the other end of the earth from Scotland where she was born, her memories of the Scottish history that surrounded her while growing up appears in her books.

  You can connect with her on Frances Housden Author at Facebook, and on Twitter @HousdenFwriter as well as her website www.franceshousden.com.

  Acknowledgements

  Quite a few years ago, I attended a writing workshop given by author Catherine Asaro with my friend and science fiction writer, Mary Brock Jones. That is where I wrote the first scene sketches for Bride from the Sea. I would like to thank Catherine for her insights and Mary for continuously asking me when I was actually going to write the book.

  I would like to dedicate this book to Time Team on the History Channel. Their episode about scuba-diving down to the wreck of a Spanish ship that had sunk in a storm off the northwest coast of Scotland, after surviving the firestorm of the Spanish Armada, was my inspiration for this book.

  Foreword

  The Selkie legend

  The folk of the Northern Isles have long believed that certain magic female seals have the ability to come ashore, shed their skins, taking on human form as Selkies. The magical creatures can then form relationships and bear children before returning to their home in the sea. The only way their human partners can bind them to land is by stealing the Selkie’s sealskin and hiding it away. However, should a Selkie happen discover her skin, she shall surely wear it again and return to her home in the sea, leaving behind a grieving husband and bairns.

  Prologue

  It was well known amongst his peers that Capitan Xavier del Vargas had been born under a fortunate star and, after fifty prodigious years, he had no reason to belie their perception. Therefore it came as no surprise to the Capitan when his ship survived the firestorm the English had thrown at the Armada, a truth that cozened him into believing the worst was now over. He had put his trust in Don Alfonso, Duke of Medina and Chief Commander of the Armada—one-hundred and thirty-two ships and thirty-three thousand soldiers and sailors; they were invincible, the Duke had claimed.

  No one had expected gales to sweep the ships into the North Sea. Such fierce winds were unheard of at that season. Yet no matter what had occurred, the commander sustained that selfsame belief that all would be right. He held it close to his heart, as he did a handkerchief that had belonged to his late wife and still retained her perfume. It was their daughter he thought of as they navigated the ship round the wild north coast of Scotland, anxious to make all speed back to Coruña—to Spain—to home, where he should have left his only child still living.

  El Teniente, his lieutenant, was in accord. ‘We should never have brought women aboard the San Miguel. The voyage is cursed we must put them ashore.’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ Capitan del Vargas scoffed at his lieutenant’s suggestion, the nostrils of his high-bridged Spanish nose quivering. How dare he suggest abandoning his daughter Celestina, along with her maid, Rosalina. He would as soon stab himself in the heart.

  With a snap of his fingers at such blatant impertinence, he dismissed el Teniente, turning his back on him as the San Miguel surged through the towering white-capped waves. Unlike the galleons they had accompanied from Coruña, the ship was not huge, its holds filled with luxurious goods to make the Spanish high command feel at home in the cold island they had intended to invade—a land ruled by Queen Elizabeth, a virago who had literally thumbed her nose at the Pope. Though Xavier would never admit to such blasphemy, he was almost happy the Armada had failed. It meant that he no longer had to face the prospect of living amongst such ungodly people—heretics. With a shrug he put them from his mind and concentrated instead on the journey southward.

  An experienced commander, he at first refused to fret over the expanding bank of gunmetal grey clouds chasing the ship, laced with lightning that dragged spears of thunder in their wake. The noise was almost as loud as the pair of cannon below decks. As the storm came tumbling down on them after smashing through the Northern Isles, for once Xavier’s confidence was shaken.

  Sensing danger to his craft, he hurried from the quarterdeck, issuing orders as he bent into the wind to keep his balance on the pitching deck. Soon he had the crew scurrying to obey his commands, a glassful of action was of more use that a barrelful of fear.

  Xavier momentarily took heart from the rays of sunshine low on the western horizon. Pale gold limned the dark grey clouds with hope, but his assurance crumbled slightly as the full force of the gale stirred the Irish Sea into a boiling cauldron, tossing the round-bottomed caravel about like a cork. Not even he could find a spar of hope to cling to as the massive wave enveloped the San Miguel and sucked them into its howling maw. When it spat them out, he was at the foot of a dark blue hill of water, and his wide-brimmed hat floated down the wave toward him. No one will ever know what made him swim to rescue his hat, for certainly Xavier himself had no notion why he reached out and caught hold of the brim, unaware that the underswell had pushed him to the crest of the giant wave.

  That’s when he observed the San Miguel tearing away to the southeast, the distance swiftly widening betwixt him and his ship. Xavier bit back an oath as the San Miguel’s sails bellied out, as if it readied to fly up to place a kiss on the burgeoning clouds, taking Celestina, his daughter, with it.

  Too late now to heed the warning that women aboard ships were bad luck, but what else could he have done? His beloved son was already lost to him; Miguel had not survived a skirmish with the French. How could he have left his Celestina in Spain—abandoned a daughter without any other blood relative other than distant ones of her English mother?

  Xavier had found no alternative. He had taken his daughter aboard the San Miguel with him and sailed out of Coruña with the Armada.

  Now he saw the inescapable truth: he had either killed his daughter out of love or, by bringing her aboard, had made his own death inevitable.

  He had but time for one last thought, one last word on his lips as the wave collapsed in the centre and sent him plunging into the dark depths as the hill of water crashed down upon his head, washing his daughter’s name from his lips: ‘Celestina’.

  Contents

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

 
Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…

  Chapter 1

  Celestina

  Coward! She bit her tongue on the oath balancing at its tip.

  Angry or not, Celestina still felt the blood drain from her face as she blanched at the news, her rage white-hot. El Teniente—her father’s devious lieutenant, a man without courtesy—had left it to the cabin boy to deliver the dreadful note, probably because she had rejected his advances.

  Her breath seized in her throat, she squeezed her eyes closed against the hurt.

  Clutching the note to her breast as if it could erase the pain—the fear, the heartfelt sobs begging for release—she gathered herself together and, blinking back tears, looked at her maid. ‘El Capitan, mi padre, he is dead,’ she told her, voice rough with grief yet well aware she had to be strong for Rosalina, for herself.

  Rosalina’s moans began from low in her throat, rising higher as she sank to the floor on her knees, but then she was ever contrary. ‘Madre de Dios. We are destined to feed the fishes. Did I not always say so? Women are bad fortune aboard a ship. We are the reason for this storm. Everyone says so.’ Rosalina grasped Celestina’s skirts as if her weight added to her words would convince her mistress.

  Of course by everyone she meant the crew. ‘Nonsense. That is but superstition. As if two small women could be responsible for the whole Armada being blown off course. The San Miguel is but a tiny portion of the ships with which we sailed out of Coruña.’

  Celestina’s chest quivered on a sigh, a betrayal of her anxiety as she reached for the edge of the table to steady her balance. Quelling the urge to totter across the deck as it shifted beneath her feet, she hammered home her point. ‘Are we laden with cannon and soldiers as the galleons are? No. If God wished to punish Spain He would surely direct His displeasure toward those ships intent on destroying England. The San Miguel carries only supplies for those who could not bear to miss the comforts of home—of Spain.’

  But now her father was dead, washed over the side by one of the towering waves—huge swells of water that still tossed the ship from wave to wave like flotsam. She too felt fearful—fears too many to list—but, unlike Rosalina, she could not let herself give into them. As his only heir, Celestina must stand in her father’s place.

  Locking her fingers around Rosalina’s wrist, she attempted to drag her unwilling maid to her feet. ‘We must go up onto the deck now, Rosalina. If we stay down below we will surely drown.’ No matter what her maid thought, there was nowhere to hide from the storm, below decks or above; it would find them, but she refused to go down without a fight.

  Celestina turned to the table and pulled her rosary into her hand, wrapping the red coral beads around her fist until the silver cross bit into her palm.

  As she swung around, her skirts didn’t follow, so she kicked out, catching Rosalina with her toe as the maid sank to her knees again. It was all too much. A mixture of grief and rage rose inside Celestina, blinding her to the strict code of manners that had been instilled by her mother all through childhood. As Rosalina clung to her, she spat, ‘Don’t be stupid. I must climb up to the deck, with or without you. The choice is now yours.’

  For Celestina to tread the deck without her father or Rosalina to give her consequence would have been frowned upon, but the circumstances left her no choice. In her mind’s eye she recalled el Teniente’s face when she’d rejected his advances. He had thought her a fool who would believe his implausible lies, when in his eyes she could see the reflection of her father’s ship and wealth and an only daughter who, since her brother’s death, would inherit everything.

  The three steps up from her cabin led to the master’s day cabin. Charts had slipped from the table to the floor. Her father must have been studying them, looking for a place of shelter on the wild Scottish coast—a vain attempt since it had not saved him or the ship. She walked across the cabin, stumbling from table to chair, her stomach complaining as the hill of grey water outside the window slipped away behind the San Miguel, until the sturdy craft breasted the crest of the wave. The noise of the storm, the sound of her indrawn sobs and Rosalina’s constant moans seemed to echo in a space that felt hollow without her father’s large presence.

  The journey onto the deck took longer than she had experienced before, more a hand-over-hand struggle than the usual few steps. Of course she was anchored by Rosalina, her weight pulling at the tape drawing in the waist of Celestina’s skirt to fit snugly that now rested on the top of her hips, but there was no time for fussing. She opened the door, pushing it wide as the heavily beaded embroidery on her skirt scraped over the frame.

  Salt water slopped across the wooden decking into the day cabin. She clung to the ornamental fretwork covering the narrow windows that had given her father a view of his crew at work. With the other hand she lifted her skirts to a level where they couldn’t trip her—an ineffectual effort that did not prevent the saturated silken hem slapping at her ankles. She stepped outside the door with Rosalina behind her, barely able to keep her footing in the wet, squealing and grabbing for Celestina’s skirts for a second time.

  The scene that filled their eyes might surely be described as Noah’s version of hell. Overhead, a sailor hung from the rigging by one ankle, swaying, his wide white canvas pants ballooning in the strong wind—yet no one climbed to his aid. No one dared.

  The topsails had been furled, the main, mizzen and foresails reefed in, and sailors stood by the sheets ready to make adjustments at el Teniente’s command. Naught could disguise the dark menace the lieutenant’s eyes shot in her direction.

  Celestina plastered her back against the wall below the quarterdeck, while Rosalina used her mistress’ skirts to climb to her feet, the jewels and pearls from the skirt bouncing on the deck around them. Soon she was clinging to Celestina’s arm as they edged into the corner of wall and steps—a shelter only a fool would choose, but fear was a hard taskmaster. The rosary cross clutched in Celestina’s palm left an imprint, cut into her skin—hurt—a necessary pain, one needed to help her, help both of them, survive.

  If not for the storm, she was certain the crew would have turned to stone, statues that could not believe their eyes, transfixed as they watched, but it didn’t last. A midshipman stumbled down the steps from the deck above them.

  ‘Aieeee!’

  Rosalina’s scream of fear almost deafened Celestina. Worse, she broke away from Celestina, the expression in the maid’s eyes desperate. To compound her mistake, the ship lurched to port at the same moment and Rosalina staggered toward the ship’s side, making a last frantic dive to grab Celestina’s skirts. She heard them rip, pearls scattering on the soaking deck under Rosalina’s feet, sending her slipping and sliding into the rail and over the side. Gone.

  The last scream was Celestina’s—silent yet loud inside her head as she hurried after her maid and saw Rosalina’s head disappear beneath the waves. No one on deck rushed to Rosalina’s aid, some gawped, some grinned like idiots, as if watching a fool cavort for their entertainment. The midshipman sprawled across the deck at Celestina’s feet. It took a moment to realise he was gathering the pearls and amethysts that had once decorated her skirt.

  The lieutenant watched, arms akimbo, legs astride, his narrowed eyes, glinting darkly with satisfaction. If her father still lived, he wo
uld have run him through with his sword for such insolence. If she had confessed to her father that el Teniente had made advances toward her, the blackguard would have been dismissed from his service.

  Anger raced through Celestina’s blood. Every lesson in decorum that her mother had taught her went overboard with her poor innocent maid. Celestina’s scalp felt on fire, burning with rage. With a very unladylike growl, she snatched off her heavy beaded Spanish headdress and threw it at the midshipman’s head. Unfortunately it wasn’t hard enough. Her toe itched to kick him, but her eye caught sight of others of the crew watching with greedy eyes as her hair, loose now, blew about her head and into her eyes. While she brushed the tangle away, the sailors who had left their posts edged closer, holding their hands palms out, as if she were evil, something to be warded off. They all believed it was Celestina who had brought this disaster down upon the ship.

  A solution that had been hiding at the back of her mind could no longer be ignored.

  She would have to jump, and why not? From the salacious gleam in some eyes, she had nothing else to lose, but first …

  Stripping the bracelets from her wrists, she threw them across the deck, causing a squabble amongst sailors who had never before laid hands on such riches.

  Hurriedly stepping out of her skirt, she tossed the torn silk after the bracelets then grappled behind her to loosen the laces, her fingers trembling as at last the lieutenant began to move across the deck, eyes fixed on her struggles. Tremors of relief shook her as she wrenched the bodice over her head. The sight of Celestina in her silk shift halted the crew—even the lieutenant. They gawped at her slight body as if they had never seen a naked, or near naked woman before. Her annoyance at breasts that had barely begun to bud had become something to be thankful for since it meant she’d had no need to wear stays.

  She glanced over her shoulder. The wild coast had begun to emerge from the grey haze of wind and rain. Ireland … Scotland … she had little notion which it might be. As long as it was not England, she did not care, now that her father was dead and the Armada defeated. She had but one thing in her favour: she could swim. That gave her an option more favourable than death or, worse, rape at the hands of those who blamed her for all their woes.

 
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