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in love at first fight?
Any ship arriving from England means good news for Virginia colony
farmers. The “tobacco brides” would be on board—eligible
women seeking a better life in America, bartered for with barrels
of tobacco from the fields.
Drew O’Connor isn’t stirred by news of a ship full
of brides. Still broken-hearted from the loss of his beloved,
he only wants a maid to tend his house and care for his young
sister.
What he ends up with is a wife—a feisty redhead who claims
she is Lady Constance Morrow, daughter of an Earl, brought to
America against her will. And she want to go straight back to
England as soon as she possibly can. She hasn’t the foggiest
notion how to cook, she dares to argue with her poor husband,
and spends more time working on mathematical equations than housework.
What kind of a wife is that? Drew’s Christian forbearance
is in for some testing.
Headstrong and intelligent, deeply moral but incredibly enticing,
Constance turns what was supposed to be a marriage of convenience
into something most inconvenient, indeed. Read an excerpt below.
Chapter One
Virginia Colony
Two Months Later
The gown they gave her fit too closely. It displayed her figure
with humiliating clarity, but perhaps that would work to her advantage.
She had lost so much weight, she couldn't imagine any farmer wanting
to invest in such a sickly looking woman.
Several tobacco planters had been on board already to examine
the "cargo." The men stood chained on one side of the
upper deck, the women on the other. The men were being sold as
indentured servants for seven or fourteen year terms, depending
upon their sentence.
But the women were to serve a lifetime sentence. They were to
be purchased as brides. One bride in exchange for 120 pounds of
tobacco leafage, the colony's cash crop.
All except Constance, that is. She had been placed alone up on
the half deck, her wrists and ankles shackled, the first mate
standing guard behind her right shoulder. The captain was asking
two hundred pounds of tobacco for her. Ridiculous.
Her gaze drifted over the indentured men. Uncle Skelly was not
among them, of course. How could he be?
Only twice during the voyage had the captain allowed the women
onto the upper deck for fresh air. The first time up, she'd passed
Uncle Skelly on the mid deck. With a collar and padlock about
his neck, they had chained him not only to a board but to three
of the most abominable creatures she had ever seen. Jail fever
consumed one of those creatures.
The second time up, she had found Uncle Skelly's place on the
board eerily vacant. The first mate, Cooper, had confirmed her
fears. Skelly Morrow was dead.
Constance swallowed the rush of tears that even now accumulated
in her throat at the memory.
"Look lively, maiden. Here comes a'one," Cooper snarled.
She stiffened as a young farmer of but a score or so years approached
the half deck. He looked at Cooper, nodded slightly, then turned
to her.
She jerked back when he captured some strands of her hair between
his long work-roughened fingers. The captain had not allowed her
to wear a headcloth this morning. He'd insisted on having her
hair loose and uncovered around her shoulders and back.
This display was nothing short of blasphemy. A woman's hair was
sacred and a recognized symbol of her maidenhood, only to be worn
free while speaking wedding vows.
She'd never felt so naked in her life. Her hair wasn't soft and
silky like other women's. It was wild and thick with tightly coiled
ringlets that seemed to multiply when unbound.
The bay breeze picked up, causing her hair to swirl around her
face. She tried again to free herself from the man's grasp.
"Easy, miss. I'll not hurt you," he said.
His voice was kind, as were his eyes. He did not rake her with
an offensive look nor handle her roughly. If he asked to see her
teeth, though, she'd be most uncooperative.
Excerpted from A
Bride Most Begrudging by Deeanne Gist, Copyright ©
2005, published by Bethany
House Publishers. Used by permission. Unauthorized duplication
prohibited.
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