The Shipwrecked Earl's Bride, page 1
The Shipwrecked Earl’s Bride
Also by Renee Dahlia
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Liability
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Her Lady's Fortune (Coming Soon)
Kapow
Out of Her League
Rekindled
His Buxom Beauty
Craving His Spotlight
Her Pregnant Rival
Standalone
The Bluestocking's Legacy
Ode to the Banh Mi
The Shipwrecked Earl's Bride
Watch for more at Renee Dahlia’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Also By Renee Dahlia
The Shipwrecked Earl's Bride
About the author
Content Warnings
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Author Notes
All Books by Renée Dahlia
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Also By Renee Dahlia
The Shipwrecked Earl’s Bride
Renée Dahlia
LORD RUPERT STANMORE was banished to the continent for a grand tour after being caught kissing his best friend, Lord Benburgh. Two years later and life back in England has caught up to him. His father died recently and now he’s the latest Earl of Stanmore. On the way home, his ship is wrecked in a storm, and he washes up on a beach in Spain, only to be rescued by a beautiful woman. As the Earl, he has an obligation to marry. He’d rather be hung for sodomy than allow his mother to choose his bride, and who better to annoy his proper and distant mother than a poor foreigner as a bride? He plots for Sofia to fall in love with him, not expecting to fall for her.
SOFIA LUCIANA RIAL is the only daughter of a fisherman in Spain. She taught herself to read English from books washed up on their beach, a skill her widowed Father sees as pointless. In his opinions, she should spend all, not most, of her time doing domestic work. When a man washes up on the beach near their cottage, she realises he might be her ticket out of poverty. She sets about to make him fall in love with her so he can take her to England where she will never again have to worry about where her next meal will come from. Only her plan fails when she falls in love with him. But how can she convince him that her love is real?
Note: This book was originally published in the Twelve Rogues of Christmas Anthology.
About the author
Renée Dahlia is an unabashed romance reader who loves feisty women and strong, clever men. Her books reflect this, with a side note of awkward humour. Renée has a science degree in physics. When not distracted by the characters fighting for attention in her brain, she works in the horse-racing industry doing data analysis and writing magazine articles. When she isn’t reading or writing, Renée spends her time with her partner and four children, volunteers on the local cricket club committee, and is the Secretary of Romance Writers Australia.
Acknowledgements
Thank you Ebony Oatney for putting the Twelve Rogues of Christmas anthology together, and for everyone else in the group for being supportive and fun to hang out with.
The Spanish used in this book was added by Heidi Wessman Kneale and then edited by Lina Riveria.
The cover design was done by the fabulous Sarah Paige from Opium Creatives.
For everyone who mispronounces words because they”ve only ever read them, not heard them.
Content Warnings
Homophobia, biphobia against the hero.
Chapter 1
December 1850
“What do you need with reading, niña?” Girl. She was nearly five and twenty. Sofia might have glared at Father as he stood in the doorway to their small cottage, if it wasn’t for the tone of his voice.
“Get down to the beach with the others. There’s been a wreck and we need everyone.” Father didn’t have to say he needed everyone to scour the beach for treasures. Winter was the best time of year for shipwrecks. The sudden storms inevitably surprised ships as they exited the Mediterranean and headed along their portion of the Spanish coast, and their goods ended up scattered on the beach. Sofia tucked a scrap of fabric into her precious book; Pride and Prejudice. The pages were soft from having read it so often and she knew much of it by heart.
Once more, she thanked her neighbour Gloria for teaching her to read, and she sent up a prayer for the old woman who’d died when Sofia was only ten. Sofia threw on a warm coat and shoes to join her family in their hunt for anything that might help them survive the next few months. Perhaps she’d get lucky and find a suitcase with a book inside. The last shipwreck had gifted her with the Journals of the House of Commons Vol29 collated by a Sir Edward Coke in 1797. English government was no use to her here on the shores of Spain, except to practise reading English, but then, her father would say that reading was useless too. Since Mama died, her sole reason for existing was to cook and care for her brothers. There was no one else to do it. Besides, she hadn’t found anyone who would marry her and get her away from their little cottage and the drudgery of keeping them all clean and alive. Father blamed the reading for her lack of prospects too; no fisherman worth anything wanted a wife who spent all her free hours hiding in a book. Reading was no use when she could be cooking, cleaning, and having children. Father should be pleased no one wanted her, otherwise he’d lose his convenient help.
“Come on. What is taking so long?” Father cursed at length, and she ducked her head as she exited their small cottage.
“Nothing. I am ready.” For a fisherman, Father was so damned impatient. The only reason she tried her best to appease him was because he literally gave her a roof over her head. If she were to blame books for anything it was her own sense of dissatisfaction with the very small life she lived. Her most treasured book was Baretti’s Dictionary of Spanish and English. It had been tucked into some unlucky traveller’s case nearly a decade ago, and she’d used it to teach herself how to read the English books that washed ashore, although she’d never heard the language spoken. Her entire world opened up—most of the books she’d found were unreadable until that day—although they did highlight the main problem with books. They showed her the rest of the world and made her yearn for a different life. It was an impossibility; if she left, she’d have to walk and she had no money, no resources. Essentially she belonged to her father and he was miserly enough that he’d have her charged with theft for the very clothes on her back if she tried to leave.
The winter wind cut cruelly against her as Sofia rounded the edge of the cottage. It rushed off the sea and over the dunes with the remnant of last night’s storm, and she huddled into her coat. Father and her two brothers were already tramping down the beach with a couple of other fishermen from the village. The dawn light was weak at this time of year, and she squinted along the beach before she headed to the Torre del Loro because the ancient fort walls always captured wreckage from ships and held them tight. Whenever there was a shipwreck, some items stayed on the beach, while others washed back out again. Besides, the ancient rock wall would shelter her from the wind and from Father’s critical eye. Her hair whipped around her face, and she tucked the errant threads back under her woollen hat, even though the wind won that battle. She had to lean into the wind to make any decent progress as she strode down the beach, and almost fell as she stepped into the lee behind the wall. The sudden lack of wind might have been the initial reason, but the sight of a washed up body added to her staggered steps.
“Oh the poor soul.” She performed the sign of the cross, then knelt beside the dead man on the beach. They often had bodies wash up on the beach after a wreck, and she breathed deep into her lungs to prepare herself for the process of dragging the body up past the high tide line where her brothers would strip it of anything valuable; clothes, boots, jewellery if they were lucky; then bury the body. He was young, perhaps in his late-twenties, around her age, judging by the few lines around the corners of his eyes. Tawny hair clung to his forehead, bedraggled from being sloshed around in the surf. He was handsomely dressed. They’d gain a bounty from his clothes today, and she pushed aside the usual flush of guilt she had from treating a corpse with such pragmatism. He’d still be dead when they were buying flour or thread to fix the nets on the fishing boat. It was such a shame to see a young life cut short like this; it always reminded her about the futility of her own life stuck here in Puerto Dorado, a poor fishing village with five cottages, miles from anywhere. It was a full morning’s walk to the tiny township of Mazagón and their church which they only attended in summer when the days were longer. Ships went past daily from somewhere to somewhere, people living incredible lives while she stayed here.
She had plenty to be thankful for, a roof over her head, regular food. Father didn’t push her to marry; mostly because he needed her to run the household. It was hard work, but she knew how to manage Father’s needs. If she married, she’d have to navigate a whole new set of rules, and her husband might be harsher than Father who at least didn’t beat her. Maybe Father was right. If she didn’t read, she wouldn’t have known that there were other ways you could live. People in Pride and Pre
The dead man coughed. She yelped. Literally shocked out of her memories.
“Are you alive?” She used the only language she knew how to speak, Spanish, as she had no clue where he’d washed up from. She knelt beside him and placed her hand on his cold forehead. His eyes flickered open, then closed again. Oh goodness. He was alive. Now what? He must be frozen.
She pulled off her coat and threw it over him. “Can you move?”
He grunted, a low rumble, and tried to move his legs. She helped him, and slowly they managed to roll him over and then he dragged himself onto his hands and knees. It took a concerted effort to get him to stand, and when she was done, she was heaving for breath. He was much heavier and taller than she’d expected, especially as he leaned against her. She tucked her coat tighter around him to better shield him from the wind. A trickle of pink blood stained his skin below his ear, as if blended with the salt water.
“Come on. Walk with me.”
He gave no indication that he understood her, but when she took a step, he shuffled beside her. Slowly they made their way to the end of the Torre del Logo wall and she braced for the blast of chilled wind that would hit as soon as they weren’t sheltered.
“Father. Father. Help.” She called out. The man’s body was solid as he leaned on her and she kept her feet wide apart to help steady herself under his weight.
Chapter 2
Rupert woke up sweating and kicked off the heavy woollen blanket covering him. For a desperate heart stopping moment, he worried he was blind, but quickly realised he was in a very dark place. But where? The last thing he remembered; he was clinging to the side of a wooden-hulled sidewheel steamer with freezing cold water splashing on his face. He’d ventured out of his cabin to ask the Captain about the storm, only to be confronted with it. And now, he was here. Wherever that was. The modern craft had been no match for the weather, it would seem. A warm gentle voice spoke to him and tucked the blanket back around him as he shivered. A cool moist fabric wiped his brow and he fell asleep again.
Apparently, he was stuck in a nightmare where he was being forced to go through the same motions again and each time he woke, lingering images from restless dreams confused him. Palatine Hill in Rome, his mother’s sharp voice, a letter from home with demands... The demands felt familiar unlike the ever-present lovely voice which spoke in a language that sounded almost like Italian, and a little bit like the Latin he’d learned at Eton. He couldn’t make sense of it.
“How many days have I been here?” His voice didn’t sound like his. It was croaky and sick, and he wanted to drink. Desperately parched for anything to soothe his brittle throat. The woman spoke again and spooned warm broth into his mouth. The broth tasted like ambrosia, the best thing he’d ever eaten, even though it was only a fish soup.
“Where am I?”
“Puerto Dorado.”
Nothing familiar struck him with that name, the foreign words were just a tangle of syllables that didn’t help him orient himself. The last he’d remembered, they’d left the sheltered calm of the Mediterranean, through the Strait of Gibraltar, and headed out into the North Atlantic. He’d been sad to leave the last couple of years behind, but it was time to face his future.
“Damnation.” The demanding letter hadn’t been a dream. He was the Earl of Stanmore now; Father had died of an apoplexy some months ago. His younger brother would be ecstatic, ever since he’d been sent away, his brother Errol had been gleeful because Errol assumed it meant he would be the Earl one day based on the presumption that Rupert would never have children. Little did Errol know that Rupert had no preference for any one gender and he’d happily take a wife if he found someone interesting enough. The whole saga was going to be a shock to Errol, but it couldn’t be helped.
The woman tucked the blanket around him, and he slept again. The next time he woke, there were more voices, all speaking rapidly. It reminded him of his arrival in Italy—he’d wanted everyone to slow down as they spoke so he could learn, but he’d quickly realised that everyone spoke quickly when they were familiar with a language and the onus was on him to learn. If he had his bearings right, then the ship must have been wrecked near either Spain or perhaps the Spanish controlled city of Tangier on the opposite shore from Gibraltar. He certainly wasn’t in Gibraltar as the locals would understand his English there. At least he’d retained his memory, even if he didn’t know where he was. He really needed to piss, so he tried to stand, but somehow ended up on the floor with shouts from the people. People grabbing at him was the last thing he remembered before everything went black again.
“I’m sorry.” It was hours, days maybe—he’d lost all track of time—before he woke again and apologised. The woman fed him broth again. At some point, he’d been undressed and now he wore unfamiliar clothes that were rough against his skin. Finally, after an unending number of iterations of sleep, wake, broth, sleep, his head stopped feeling foggy and he managed to sit up on the surprisingly comfortable bed.
“How long have I been here?”
The woman shook her head and the door opened, letting in enough light that he saw her face for the first time. She was stunning. He’d imagined an older woman caring for him, a motherly type, not her. She was around his age, perhaps, with a classically beautiful face with high cheek bones, and a slight determined look to the way she set her jaw. Her face was in shadow, and he couldn’t tell the colour of her eyes, but the dim light shone off her dark brown hair giving her an angelic appearance.
A man stood in the doorway and spoke abruptly to her.
“Siete días.” Her response to the man in the doorway tugged at something in his mind. Before he could work it out, she turned back to him, and rested her cool palm on his forehead, then nodded to herself, and said something he couldn’t understand. He really didn’t like this inability to know anything—where he was, what people were saying, the lack of control over his body—none of this was good.
“I’ve been here for seven...? sette...?” In Italian, seven was sette, very similar to what she’d said, but days was giorno, or a week, settimana. She must have meant days; in Latin, days was diabus, similar to what she’d said. He wracked his brain, trying to remember if he knew any Spanish. It must be Spanish, given the last known position of his ship. The likelihood he’d washed further than that would be low, almost impossible. He couldn’t remember much more than the crashing of waves over the deck as he’d tried to cling onto the ship. He’d gone out of his cabin to talk to the Captain and had slipped on the deck. From there, it was a matter of survival to grab onto anything solid as the ship was tossed around on the sea. They must have wrecked at some point, but that didn’t explain how he’d ended up here in this dark little room, or where he was.
“Espere.” She moved towards the man, and they spoke rapidly, occasionally pointing to him. The man grumbled something and left, shutting the door with a bang, and blocking out the light. The woman moved easily in the dark, barely a shadow with light footsteps, then lit a candle. She cleared her throat and handed him a book. Baretti’s Dictionary of Spanish and English. Oh thank the Lord in Heaven. He wasn’t a believer, couldn’t believe in a church created solely so a king could divorce his wife. It wasn’t completely God’s fault that humans were so ridiculous. Or was it? It was another reason he found the whole concept difficult. An omniscient God wouldn’t create such nonsense. And now this fight between two churches believing in the same God but with different rules to suit those in charge had been going on for three hundred years. Throw in their teachings that would have him sent to hell for his... well, affair with Bruce, then he wanted no part of the whole sorry mess. Bruce had been dragged back to the wilds of northern England where he was Lord Benburgh, and he’d been sent to the continent. He’d been too broken hearted, and damned proud, to write to Bruce. Besides, what he wanted to say couldn’t be written down. It wasn’t legal, nor was it safe.
