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  A BRIDE FOR VALENTIN

  The Proxy Brides

  By: Parker J. Cole

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2019 Parker J. Cole

  Cover Art by Black Widow Books

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition: March 2019

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors.

  Scriptures quoted from the King James Holy Bible.

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Upcoming Proxy Bride Books (2018/2019 Series)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JOIN PARKER’S BODACIOUS READERS

  WORKS BY PARKER J COLE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I want to thank Carole McDonnell for helping a frazzled author find clarity by simply asking questions until the story became what it is. I consider Carole a master storyteller with an insight into the craft that is unique and wholly her own.

  I want to also thank Allison K. Garcia, another author friend who helped me with the names of my characters. Special acknowledgement goes to her husband for letting me use his name. Hooray!

  PROLOGUE

  Outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico

  October 1866

  No one had seen the assailant enter the home. He’d made certain of that. In the hustle and bustle of the place, it had been relatively easy for him to infiltrate. He knew where the guards were stationed along the interior of the large, well-maintained and luxurious ranchero.

  When a maid went down a hall, he followed behind her, silent as light. She never sensed his presence though he walked a few feet behind her. He stopped at a door. Carefully, with his eye still on the woman who hummed as she carried her load of linens, he turned it.

  Locked.

  Satisfied, he took out a hairpin from the pocket of his black tight-fitting trousers and the assailant crouched behind the door, silent as light. A locked room might spell disaster for some but he recognized the safe haven of a locked room. Indeed, he knew that made had cleaned all the others room but had skipped this one.

  Which meant only the most trusted among the servants has a key, or, more likely, only the owner had it.

  The maid turned down a side hall. Glancing back and forth, he saw no one. Quickly he inserted the key into the lock and listened to the tumblers as they moved.

  Click.

  Stuffing the hairpin back in his pants, he turned the now unlocked and entered the room, closing the door behind him, locking it from the inside.

  He surveyed his surroundings. The portrait of the beautiful, haunting peasant girl was the sole focus on the room. Above the hearth, her eyes stared out from the picture, captivating viewer with intensity of her dark stare.

  The assailant had a difficult time looking away from her but eventually he dragged his regard from her to survey the room.

  Not much in furnishings. Just a sofa, a desk on the western side of the room, and a figure of the Madonna. Candles lined the wall, unlit.

  Going over to the candles, he saw some had been lit before while the wick in others hadn’t been touched. Perhaps they were changed out over time.

  No matter.

  He had a mission—kill the owner of this ranchero. From the knowledge he’d gleaned from the servants, only the patron entered this room. So he would wait until the patron entered the room.

  Gently, like a lover’s caress, he rubbed his hand over the handle of the knife.

  When the time came, he’d sink the knife into the patron’s chest.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Castillo Garcia de Alba

  Northern Spain

  July 1866

  “Dios El Padre, Father God, was to be my husband, not a man!” Contessa Ysabel Garcia de Alba declared to her brother, Conte Atilio Garcia de Alba as they stood before the giant hearth in the morning solar of Castillo Garcia de Alba.

  The castle, their ancestral home for over a hundred years, rested in the protective cusps of the towering mountains in Northern Spain.

  “A man has so much more to offer than God.” Atilio shrugged in disinterest.

  “Not from where I stand,” Ysabel retorted, her hands clenching the ivory handle of her lace fan. “You’re a disgrace to our family name.”

  Her brother’s nostrils flared, his golden-brown eyes disdainful and hard. “Silencio! You will do as I say, mi hermana and marry Valentin Carrion del Bosque.”

  She shook her head. “I. Will. Not.”

  “Yes. You. Will.” Atilio commanded with the same implacable tone she’d used. “Valentin has brought my debts. If I do not give him you as his wife, he will call them in.”

  Ysabel scoffed. “I am not a commodity, Atilio. Whatever his grievance is with you, it has nothing to do with me. You have made it apparent that you hold no regard for me or my well-being.”

  “Do not suppose you will be left unscathed if Valentin calls in my debts!” Atilio snarled.

  “But I will remain untouched!” Ysabel countered, gesturing with her fan. “My inheritance will be in my grasp within three months and I will leave this place and never have to set eyes on you again.”

  “You would let our family legacy fall into mockery and ruin?”

  “Atilio, you are the head of this family and yet you have let our heritage fall into ruin. You chose to support the Carlists in their efforts to usurp Queen Isabella. Such defiance is costly.”

  “Do you despise the crown, too then, Ysabel?” Her brother’s brows furrowed over his eyes like a thunderous cloud in the horizon.

  “No, Atilio,” Ysabel sighed in exasperation. “I am no liberal. I believe in the monarchy and tradition as much as you do.”

  “Queen Isabella is inept!” Atilio shouted. “Even you can see how her governance is destroying our country.”

  Ysabel made a sound of disgust. “That is irrelevant. She is the monarch and it is our duty to support our queen.”

  “Irrelevant? Don Carlos de Borbon was the rightful ruler of Spain. If his brother, King Ferdinand, hadn’t overturned salic law and made his daughter queen, we would not be on the brink of disaster.”

  “Don Carlos is dead,” she reminded him in blunt fashion. “King Ferdinand is dead. It no longer matters. If the Carlists had tried to support the queen, had they tried to help her in her rule instead of fighting to overturn it, maybe our land would not be teetering with ideas of revolution.”

  Ysabel turned away from the uncomprehending fury in her brother’s face and walked over to the window. The castle sat high in the mountains, a proud royal edifice of stone and brick. It overlooked the Bay of Biscay. From her vantage point, she could see the clear blue waters of the bay froth against the coastline.

  The tranquil sight reflected nothing of the country surrounding it. In one sense, her brother was right. Queen Isabella the Second was nothing like her predecessor for which she was named. Although Ysabel agreed with the queen’s father of laying aside salic law in order for his daughter to rule, that decision had only helped to deepen t
he chasm of a country already scarred by the Napoleonic war conflict prior to Ysabel’s birth.

  Ysabel tapped the edge of the fan against her chin. In her own private thoughts, ones she would never share with her brother, the Liberals, those who opposed the banner of the Carlists – ‘God, Country, and King’—had some rightful objections to absolute monarchism. She had only to look at the huérfanos, the orphans, to see it was so.

  A sad smile creased her unlined face. Those pathetic children with their grubby hands, malnourished bodies, and hopeless futures, still managed to give her bright smiles whenever she came. The Carlists fought to keep the power of the monarchy and Church—did they ever think of them?

  What did the Holy Scriptures teach? “Pure religion …is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction...”

  Though she had been born in a family of nobility, she did her best to practice such pure religion. When she reached her twentieth birthday in three months’ time, she will gain access to her inheritance. She would take her inheritance, gift its entirety to the convent which cared for the huérfanos, and enter the holy orders.

  From there, she would become the wife of a Husband that would never disappoint, in whom she could trust implicitly. She’d be a mother to many children. Their Father, the only one who would give them unconditional love.

  “Ysabel?”

  Blinking rapidly, she turned away from the serene view and back to her brother.

  “I will not marry this Valentin Carrion del Bosque.”

  Atilio’s left eye twitched. In the ensuing silence, she took in his familiar, disliked figure. His aristocratic bearing was unmistakable. Proud chin thrust out. Prominent mustache groomed and carefully manicured. Wide spaced eyes set in face some women of the nobility found attractive.

  Fifteen years her senior, Atilio treated her like a guardian with an unwanted charge. He had never liked her. At times, Ysabel wondered if his feelings for her bordered-on hatred.

  “You have to marry Valentin Carrion del Basque.” An unreadable expression had changed the features of his face. “It’s a necessity.”

  “Who is this man?” Ysabel snapped open her fan in question. “Is he a business acquaintance who has brought your debt?”

  Had some creditor finally decided to ignore the lofty claims of nobility in exchange for the money owed to them? Ysabel fanned herself with worry. If that was the case, it let her know just how bad things had become in Spain.

  “He’s a mongrel,” her brother replied darkly. “A mongrel who has made a fortune in importing and now wishes to collect his debt.”

  “What debt?”

  Atilio’s eyes flickered in her direction. And then she knew. “Mi hermano,” she queried, “what did you to this man?”

  He said nothing for a while, just cast a thunderous glare at the flames in the hearth. When he refused to say anything after a few moments of an uneasy hush, she repeated, “Atilio, what did you do?”

  His voice was almost a whisper but she the distinct words, “That mongrel wishes to atone for her honor.”

  Ysabel shook her head, eyebrows drawn together. “Her honor? Whose honor?”

  “His sister’s. “Atilio spat. “As if some campesino is worth it.”

  “Peasant or noble doesn’t matter, Atilio,” she demanded, the fan in her hand shaking. “What did you do?”

  Perhaps she didn’t want to know. Atilio wasn’t not the kindest man Dios El Padre had ever created.

  “It does not matter what I have done. What does matter is what you will do?”

  “I?”

  “Si.” Those golden-brown eyes gave her a triumphant stare. “What will happen to those huérfanos if el orfanato is closed?”

  The blood drained from her face. “Atilio!”

  “What, Ysabel?” he asked with mocking, cold innocence.

  “Atilio! You wouldn’t!” She gulped when she realized that her brother most definitely, unequivocally, would. He would use those children to control her. To make her submit. He would.

  “I would, hermana.” He grabbed her chin and tilted it up. His golden-brown eyes reminded her of a nugget of amber. Hard. Unyielding.

  “I care nothing for those huérfanos” he declared in a quiet voice. “They should have been drowned in a lake. But no matter. That orfanato is on Garcia de Alba land. Don’t think I won’t close the orphanage, and cast those grubby, diseased children out if you do not do this.”

  Ysabel’s felt the tears swell up behind her eyes. She did not want to give them the freedom to trail down her face. Atilio would only use it as a means of control. Just as he was using her. The children’s faces swam in her mind like fish in a lake. Their open, brown eyes. Their cherubic cheeks. Even their grubby, mud-stained bodies. Those poor children, pathetic and so needy.

  How could he do this to her? An instant later, she felt the fight go out of her. Of course, he would. Though her father had given Ysabel her mother’s inheritance without any provision except she reach her twentieth year, their father had entrusted all their land and holdings to Atilio. The orphanage rested on one of their holdings and if he wanted to, he could.

  Helpless anger made the fan in her hand shake all the more. How could he do this to her? She wanted to join the sisters of the holy order. Cast herself away from this land with its turmoil, its political upheaval. Live in the peace, solitude, and spiritual rest of the convent.

  Now, she had to choose – a life of holy service or a life of marital bondage.

  “Shall I make it easy for you, Ysabel?”

  “You can make it easy by not making me do this!” She whirled around from him. The hem of her dress with its cornflower blue color and ruched drapery over a corseted bodice dragged across the carpet floor. She set her fan on the table where the Holy Bible sat. “Whatever it is between you and this man, it should have nothing to do with me.”

  “But Valentin asked for you in order to waive my debts. Though the idea of a campesino staining our family line with his blood is reprehensible, I cannot afford to let him do this.”

  “You’re despicable, Atilio,” she spat, the dismay within her growing heavier by the moment.

  “Are you going to marry Valentin or not, Ysabel?”

  “I—”

  “Think very carefully of your answer. You know I will do what I promised. Just so.” He straightened up and tugged on his vest. “I will give you until the end of this week to come to me with your answer. See how generous I am?”

  She turned away from his mockery. Felt, more than heard, his departure from the room. The room warmed back up as if her brother’s presence had allowed the heat to swarm in again.

  Ysabel stared at the bible, wondering if Dios El Padre had abandoned as if she were one of those pathetic orphans.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jacinda’s Rest

  Outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico

  July 1866

  “Do you think Conte Garcia de Alba will sell his sister to you?” Diego Fernandez Aguado, the best friend of Valentin Carrion del Bosque asked as he toyed with a small curio in his hand. “Would any man sell his family to pay off his debts?”

  “The conte would,” Valentin answered, pursing his lips over the ledger in his hand. The numbers added up but he was an ever-meticulous man, fully aware of the damage one tiny error could do. One slipped digit, one missed comma, and his entire empire could come collapsing down upon himself.

  Not that he would ever let that happen.

  “Well, you know how best the conte is.” Diego gave a flippant shrug. “Although I can’t understand why you wish to bring his sister into your plan. Surely, your vengeance should only be directed toward the conte.”

  Valentin said nothing as he added up another column of numbers. According to his calculations, he had several hundred pounds of cocoa that had to be shipped to clients over three continents. The plantation which he owned in West Africa would produce most of it.

  His clients – merchants, nobility, even those
of royalty, sought after the cocoa bean with a voracious appetite. Of particular was its importance to the marriages of Spanish noblewomen to their foreign husbands—cocoa had become his primary import.

  The idea of his taking the sister of his enemy, Contessa Ysabel Garcia de Alba, turned his stomach. But in order to avenge the honor of his sister Jacinda—may God rest her soul—from the violation of what the conte did her, he would fight El Diablo, the Devil, himself.

  “I know what I am doing, Diego.” He set the quill down and rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands. After an hour bent over his ledgers, adding and subtracting every number of his fortune that he accumulated over the years, made his eyes blurry. “The conte’s pure blood line will be stained by me. Once I get the contessa swollen with my child, it will be a blow to his family lineage.”

  But would it be enough? Valentin turned away from the sight of his friend’s prostrate form on the oak-framed, velvet blue and white sundial patterned sofa and focused his gaze on the window.

  From his vantage point, he saw the blue skies of New Mexico as they hung above the sprawling construction of his rancheros. Below that brilliant sky, he could hear the faint sounds of activity. After the devastation of the War Between the States, Valentin knew he was extremely blessed to have retained most of his fortune through the diversification of his trade businesses.

  For the past twelve years, he specialized in importing sugar cane, spices, and cocoa, enterprises which had made him rich. Even here, in the territory, formerly called New Spain which had once belonged to his home country Spain, he had begun to make his ventures profitable.

  The federal government sought cattle to feed the reservations and forts under its control. He’d heard of ranchers coming from Texas into New Mexico to sell their cattle. Valentin wanted the same opportunity. It seemed just as good to take money from the impoverished U. S. government as well as anyone else.