Bride By Mistake by Anne Gracíe Read Free Book Online Page B

home. Things were different since Papa died, he’d written. There was no appropriate husband for her, and she was better off in the convent, in the tranquil environment she was used to.
    Bella picked up a well-worn bedsheet and ripped it savagely in half. Tranquil environment indeed! She’d love to lock Paloma’s brother up here, to give him a taste of tranquil environment. Endless prayers, endlessly repeated dreary, pointless conversations, and endless, endless sewing.
    She started stitching the two halves of the sheet together. Bella only ever did mending. The other girls and the nuns mostly did fine embroidery. The convent was famed for it. Bishops all across Spain, and even in Rome, wore vestments and used altar cloths embroidered here in this remote mountain convent.
    Before King Ferdinand had been crowned, the girls had been mainly occupied in sewing their trousseaux. Now they worked almost wholly on altar cloths and vestments. Like the nuns.
    Isabella’s talents lay in other areas, Reverend Mother always said. The other girls thought she was just saying that, being Isabella’s aunt, but Bella and Reverend Mother knew better.
    “I wish I had your faith, Paloma,” Dolores told her. “I think we’ll all still be sitting here when we’re old and wrinkled, snoring away the day like Sister Beatriz.”
    “Speak for yourself, Dolores,” Alejandra snapped. “I, for one, will not be left rotting in a convent. Even now my father is in discussions with a noble family from Cabrera.”
    Dolores huffed and threaded her needle. “The only eligible man left in Cabrera—of noble blood, I mean—is the old
vizconde
, who is past sixty, twice widowed, and desperate to get an heir. If it is him your brother is courting, I pity you.”
    Alejandra shrugged. “I would rather wed an old man than be forced to become a nun.” The girls glanced at Sister Beatriz, but the elderly nun snored gently on, oblivious. “Besides,” Alejandra continued, “as my father said, he is rich, and old men die. Then I will be free to do as I want.”
    Another girl spoke up. “They say the old
vizconde
is poxed and that is why he could not get a son on either of his wives.”
    The girls exchanged glances.
    “That cannot be true. My father would not marry me to a poxed man,” Alejandra said into the silence. “He would not.”
    The others nodded, murmuring reassurance. But they had all heard the tales that lying with a virgin could cure a man of the pox…
    “Papa would not do such a thing,” Alejandra repeated. “He is too fond of me, I’m certain.” But her confidence was clearly shaken, and it was more a prayer than a certainty.
    It would be her father’s decision and the
vizconde
’s, not hers. She was just a daughter, to be given where it would do her family the most good. And times in Spain these days were desperate.
    “If he does, you must refuse,” Bella told her.
    “Refuse?” Alejandra gasped. “Disobey my
father
? Are you
mad
? I couldn’t!”
    “Why not?”
    “Why not?” Alejandra repeated. “Because I couldn’t.” She added, after a moment, “I have never disobeyed him in anything.
Never
.”
    Bella knotted her thread. “Then it would be good for him to experience something new.”
    All the girls stared at her, shocked.
    “How do you think he would react?” she asked Alejandra.
    “He would kill me!” she said with a shudder.
    “Kill you, or merely beat you?”
    “Merely? He would thrash me to within an inch of my life!”
    “One recovers from a beating. A poxed old
vizconde
, though…” Bella let that thought sink in. “Has your father ever beaten you before?”
    “Never,” Alejandra said proudly.
    “Then why do you think he would beat you now?”
    Alejandra looked surprised, then thoughtful. “It’s my duty to my family to marry well.”
    “It’s a father’s duty to find you a decent husband,” Bella countered.
    Alejandra bit her lip. “I don’t know… Papa would be so disappointed in