This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions to celebrate today's release of THE SEAFARER'S BRIDE by Laura Strickland! Enter to win an ebook of the first book in the Viking Brides series The Berserker's Bride. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
A year ago, Magnus Tolljursson helped repel a treacherous attack from his father’s enemies, and discovered he carries the berserker’s seed of madness. Now he must sail to the settlement from whence those attackers came, and fulfill a promise to a friend. He doesn’t know what he’ll find in Husavik and never suspects he may lose his heart.
In her father’s absence, Embra Fritisson has been engaged in a desperate battle to keep leadership of the settlement. When Magnus arrives saying her father is dead, she fears her unstable family will splinter into factions and destroy one another. She must retain control, but how can she hope to keep her head while falling in love with the enemy?
Enjoy an Excerpt
Now her gaze met that of her servant, Kennach. A slave captured in Erin long ago, Kennach had been with her most her life. No longer a young man, she acknowledged he was still important to her. She’d had a succession of nurses when young, but Modir invariably ordered them off in one of her rages.
Kennach, being in essence a furnishing, could not be ordered off. He’d become the one consistency in Embra’s life.
She looked him in the eye and gestured to the mirror. “I was just girding myself for battle.” She never used the mirror out of vanity. Though she’d been told all her life she was beautiful, the compliment meant nothing. Modir was beautiful—the most beautiful woman in Husavik, it was said. Only look what that beauty had done for her.
Nei, Embra used the mirror in order to make certain she looked formidable, nothing more.
“Which of them is it this time?”
Kennach grimaced. A man of ordinary height and girth, he had what Embra considered a typically Gaelic face, with a broad forehead and wide-set eyes. Those eyes had been her touchstones so many times—when she wept, when she felt loneliness, or despair. But when had his hair gone from brown to gray? Ach, how much time had passed.
“Your sisters, mistress.”
Ach, Freya, not that. Embra possessed a brood of brothers and sisters. One thing her parents had done well, was breed. Gunnar, now missing, was the oldest and named after his grandfather, the former jarl. Another son, Runi, had inherited a measure of Modi’s madness and become a reclusive schemer. Embra had been born next, the eldest of the girls, followed by two more boys and three more girls. All, miraculously, had survived and would yet, if they did not kill each other over the succession.
“I have three sisters. Which of them?”
“Mistress Vanja and Mistress Dagmar. There has been spitting and name-calling. Slaps and clawing. When it became violent, I came for you.”
Embra abandoned the mirror. Her chamber was very small, but it was her own. She had traded space for privacy, but that failed to protect her when things like this occurred. And lately, they seemed to happen more and more often.
Who had named her peacemaker?
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ReplyDeleteI love this excerpt! I'm intrigued to know more! Congrats to Laura!
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