Shipwrecked and Seduced. Amanda McCabe

Maria could feel was the terrible cold of the water. She shivered, and Isabella quickly swung her own velvet cloak around Maria’s shoulders. She also removed her necklace, a heavy emerald cross on a gold chain, and looped it around Maria’s neck.

      “There is nothing to fear,” Isabella said. She stood up, clad only in her own white silk chemise, and held up her arms as if to greet a lover.

      At that moment, a deafening cracking noise sounded all around them, like a cannon shot. Maria clapped her hands to her ears, screaming as the ship broke up beneath them. All the terror her frozen calm had kept at bay swept over her.

      They all plunged into the sea, the stormy waves sucking them down and down, into the black depths.

      For an instant she could think of nothing. The water hit her like a hundred swords. But then she heard a voice in her head. Not God or the saints, but her father. A sailor who had died when she was a child.

      “Never fear the water, Maria mia,” he said, from somewhere deep in her memory. “Work with it—make it your friend. Move through the waves, kicking your legs and moving your arms, like a frog. Let yourself just float free.”

      Maria wrenched herself free of the heavy cloak, kicking up toward the faint light above her head. She broke free, into the violent world of foamy waves, driving rain, the splintered wreckage of the ship.

      The screams of the dying.

      Gulping in a deep breath, she kept kicking, kept moving, until she could latch on to a large floating plank. She dragged herself up onto its surface, wrapping her arms tightly around its rough length, and holding on as the sea raged around her.

      She felt the emerald cross press against her breastbone. “Help me,” she whispered. “Please, I want to live!”