Sea of Ruin by Pam Godwin EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Pam Godwin
- ISBN: B0842ZYGVV
- Language: English
- Genre: British Literature, Historical Erotica, Erotica
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 9 MB
- Page: 482
- Price: Free
September 1714
Province of Carolina
Charleston. To anyone settling here, it was a dazzling frontier of beauty
and opportunity. Its denizens comprised of wealthy planters sailing from
the English colony of Barbados and the Yamasee natives fighting to
destroy the white invaders.
Then there was me, the bastard daughter of noble blood, willing to do
anything to escape this life.
Though I was born here fourteen years ago, I had no interest in the
land or its wars. I longed for the sea, to feel the deck rocking beneath my
feet, to hear the wind drumming against sailcloth, and to wear salt and
spume upon my tattered sleeves.
My mother, however, didn’t care a whit about what I wanted.
“Stop fidgeting.” She pried my clenched fingers from the ribcrushing bodice of my gown.
Her scowl distorted the stately lines of a face that had once been the
envy of high society. Her eyes, cerulean blue like mine, simmered with
resentment as she scrutinized the chintz monstrosity she forced me to
wear.
“Can I remove the pannier? Please, Mother?” I yanked at the
cumbersome undergarment, my voice pitching to a whine. “God rot it, I
can’t move!”
The hidden wire hoops sat on my hips like bread baskets on a pack
animal. I pivoted left to right, taking up three times as much space as a
grown man. It would be impossible to mount my horse in this stultifying
contraption. Not that the countess would allow me near the barn on this
day.
“Really, Benedicta, you’re giving me a megrim.” She stood a head
taller than me, her golden hair pinned into a coiffure of ironed ringlets and
ornamented with a plume of feathers. “I spent a fortnight making this
gown, and by God’s heart, you will wear it with dignity.”
To hell with God’s heart. I swore in spite of his teeth. But never in
the presence of the Lady Abigail.
“I didn’t ask for this.” I motioned at the gown and the ornate
furnishings of my bedchamber. “For any of this.”
“I didn’t ask for you. Yet here you are, an ungrateful, quarrelsome
hoyden, born with both fists clenched.”
It was always the same when the countess looked at me. She didn’t
see her only child, a daughter to love, or a girl with earnest dreams.
She only saw her shame. Her ruination. The reason she was exiled.
Shifting toward the window, I sought a brighter view outside the
glass panes. The dawn-lit sea stretched eastward from the sandy shoreline,
aglitter with waves I couldn’t hear from my bedchamber.
I’d never ventured beyond the port of Charleston, never even stepped
foot aboard a ship. But England flowed through my veins. And constricted
my chest. Quite literally.
“It’s too tight.” I reached back, clawing at the stays that pinched my
spine. “It hurts to breathe.”
“Then don’t.”
“Don’t breathe? For how long?”
“For as long as it takes to secure an offer.”
An offer I didn’t want.
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