Mistress by Magick Read online

  Mistress by Magick

  By Laura Navarre

  Tudor England, 1588

  Lady Jayne Boleyn lives in disgraced exile, far away from the scandal that destroyed her reputation. She would do anything to return—even seduce a daredevil captain and spy on enemy forces with only her barely controlled Fae powers to protect her.

  The Spanish dons resent pirate Lord Calyx’s leading role in their impending attack on England, but his rivals would kill him outright should they ever learn he’s not only half-Spanish—he’s also half-human. On the lookout for spies who might unmask him, Calyx’s suspicions settle on Jayne...but so do his lusts.

  Duty demands Jayne and Calyx be enemies, but fate has made them loyal lovers. Together, they may thwart the combined malice that threatens to alter the fate of Europe. But as a final confrontation looms, Jayne must choose between her long-cherished redemption and the precious, newly discovered secrets of her heart.

  Book three of The Magick Trilogy.

  97,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  Happy 2014! You know, I love futuristic romance, and I swear it wasn’t that long ago that I was reading books in the genre that used years like 2014 and 2015 to indicate a time that seemed really far out. Of course, I suppose I’ll be saying something similar twenty years from now, when it’s 2035. (And isn’t that a weird thought?) As it happens, in the lineup this month we have both a futuristic romance and a hero who travels from the future, and both give a unique look into a future that’s actually a little further out.

  I love the premise of Libby Drew’s time-travel male/male romance, Paradox Lost, in which a time-travel guide who takes clients to “whenever” must travel back to 2020 and enlist the aid of a PI to find a missing client. And in PJ Schnyder’s Fighting Kat, Kat and Rygard go deep undercover, posing as gladiators. In the interstellar arena, it’s all about who’s the strongest predator...

  I mentioned futuristic romance, but how about a trip to the past in Jeannie Ruesch’s historical romantic suspense, Cloaked in Danger. Aria Whitney’s life has taken her from the sands of Egypt to the ballrooms of London, but when her father goes missing, can the handsome earl with a dark secret help her find him, or will a dangerous scandal threaten both their lives?

  In Mistress by Magick, Laura Navarre concludes her fallen angel Magick Trilogy, a riveting historical fantasy romance trilogy set in Tudor times. Also wrapping up a trilogy this month is Fiona Lowe. In Runaway Groom, the third book in the Wedding Fever trilogy, can a Harley-riding Aussie guy on the road trip of his life allow an uptight and disgraced lawyer to steal his heart? The first two books, Saved by the Bride and Picture Perfect Wedding, are now available, as well.

  Debut author Anna Richland delivers First to Burn, the first book in her Immortal Vikings series with a hero straight from the time of Beowulf. Wulf Wardsen is an elite soldier whose very existence breaks all the rules—and he’s deep in the military zone of Afghanistan with an army doctor determined to do everything by the book. Meanwhile, Cindy Spencer Pape brings back her very popular steampunk romance series, The Gaslight Chronicles, with the latest installment, Ashes & Alchemy.

  This January, Heather Long delivers the start of a new series of contemporary romances. If you like your romance a little on the crazy, cracktastic side, this book is sure to please. Cinderella had her fairy godmother and Princess Mia had her grandmother, but Alyx—she gets a software magnate who knows that in his world, Some Like It Royal. And speaking of cracktastic, Kelsey Browning has another installment in her steamy Texas Nights series. Roxanne Eberly wants nothing more than to make her lingerie store a success. Enter up-and-coming attorney Jamie Wright, who’s all tangled up in Roxanne’s life...and her lingerie...in Running the Red Light. If you want to start from the beginning, pick up Personal Assets!

  Mystery fans will be glad to welcome another installment from Jean Harrington in her Murders by Design series. In Rooms to Die For, when interior designer Deva Dunne finds a body hanging from a balcony in the gorgeous Naples Design Mall, she soon learns she’s caught up in a mall drug bust gone viral.

  We’re thrilled to offer a large lineup of debut authors this month, in addition to Anna Richland. Joining us with books in the new-adult, erotic romance and contemporary genres are a new group of incredibly talented authors we’re proud to welcome to Carina Press. Elia Winters debuts with erotic romance Purely Professional. When a journalist explores the submissive side of her sexuality with her Dominant neighbor, she must confront what these encounters mean for her own sexual identity, her career and her budding relationship.

  Three debut authors bring new-adult offerings to Carina Press. Danube Adele proves the new-adult genre is more than just contemporary romance in Quicksilver Dreams. One moment Taylor was just a regular girl working two jobs to pay her bills, and the next, she was reading minds, dreamwalking and being saved from bad guys by her sexy neighbor, Ryder Langston. In Tell Me When by Stina Lindenblatt, college freshman Amber Scott begrudgingly lets Marcus Reid into her life, but she didn’t expect the king of hookups would share his painful past. And Kristine Wyllys brings us the first of two steamy, dark-edged stories full of action, vivid storytelling and emotional intensity. Don’t miss Wild Ones.

  Our last debut author, Rhonda Shaw, caught me by surprise with her book, The Changeup. People who know my sports tastes know I don’t normally go in for baseball. And those who know my reading tastes know I don’t usually go for an older heroine/younger man set-up. But Rhonda’s story hooked me from the start and I’m pleased to be releasing her first book this month. I hope you enjoy this contemporary sports romance as much as I did, and perhaps find a new book boyfriend in sweet and sexy pitching phenom Chase Patton!

  I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions, but I will make one—we’ll continue to strive to bring you a variety of fantastic books from authors who deliver stories that you’ll want to talk about. Thank you for joining us for another year of publishing at Carina Press—we’ll do our absolute best to make it an amazing one!

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

  www.facebook.com/carinapress

  Dedication

  For Steven—my One, my Heart, my Everything.

  And for James Marsters, whose delectable and

  infamous TV vampire was the physical inspiration for my Tudor-era pirate.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  El Escorial

  Royal Seat of Spain

  April 1588

  As a famously disgraced countess and cousin to the Queen of England, Jayne could not call spying on the greatest King in Europe one of her official duties. I
f discovered, the most merciful punishment she could expect was expulsion from Spain, a diplomatic incident, and one more blot on her scandalous reputation.

  But mercy was not a quality men ascribed to Philip II, King of Spain and Portugal, Duke of Milan and Burgundy, Lord of the Netherlands, Defender of the Faith and the scourge of Protestant Europe. More likely, she’d be interrogated in Philip’s dungeon, publicly condemned as a spy and heretic, and finally burned to ashes in one of the gruesome religious spectacles Catholic Spain called the Auto da Fé—the Act of Faith.

  That was an outcome Jayne Boleyn, the widowed Comtesse de Boulaine, preferred to avoid.

  Concealed by the flickering play of shadows and candlelight in the mausoleum that interred the remains of Philip’s royal house, Jayne crouched behind a marble sepulcher. In both hands, she clutched the billowing expanse of skirts and petticoats to still any telltale rustle. Trembling fingers crushed the fragile wire cage of her farthingale. She feared her sweating palms would leave marks on the navy silk, damaging an expensive garment her strained purse could ill afford to replace.

  But she would be fortunate indeed if a ruined gown was the worst consequence of this night’s madness.

  Over the frantic beat of her heart rose the murmured prayers of the slight figure, austere in black, who knelt before the golden monstrosity of the altar. If only she were mistaken, and King Philip had risen at midnight merely to renew his interminable prayers! Then Jayne could creep back to the somber splendor of the guest chambers assigned to the devout widow of the Catholic Comte de Boulaine, a fervent Spanish ally.

  Even as she dared to hope, booted footfalls echoed on the Toledo marble. Someone strode into the sanctum.

  Beneath her tight-laced stomacher, her heart plummeted to her velvet slippers. It seemed her intelligence had been correct. The King of Spain’s assignation with his new ally would occur tonight.

  She would not have expected otherwise. As Elizabeth Tudor’s spymaster, her mentor Sir Francis Walsingham did not make mistakes.

  As Jayne huddled behind the sarcophagus, the measured footfalls echoed like the toll of doom. Yet the monotone mutter of royal prayer rolled on. Gripping her courage in both hands, she reminded herself what she stood to lose.

  She dared not fail in this mission.

  For this, she’d crept alone through the horrors of a France riven by civil war to reach this Spanish stronghold, barely in time for this encounter.

  I chance this for my son, my sweet boy, hostage for my good behavior, locked away for six long years from his mother’s lonely arms—a lifetime for a child of nine. Between them, Elizabeth and Walsingham have me trapped like a fox in his earth.

  For Ryder’s precious safety, there is nothing I will not risk.

  Fresh resolve poured through her and stiffened her spine. Firming her jaw, she rose to a cautious crouch and looked toward the altar.

  The newcomer stood beside the kneeling King like an equal: a powerful figure clad in riding boots and the stark black robes of a priest. Legs spread, hands clasped behind his back, the interloper gazed up curiously, with no apparent reverence, at the tortured Christ nailed to His cross. In place of a priest’s tonsure, a shining fall of silver-gilt hair was clubbed smoothly at his nape.

  Incongruously, a ceremonial broadsword was strapped to the priest’s broad back, its filigreed sheath of blue enamel spangled with stars.

  Trained to observe minute details, Jayne noted the blade’s unusual hilt, crescent moon blazing on the cross-guard. Beneath his robes, expensive boots of Cordovan leather were filmed with dust from the road. A heavy gold signet flashed on a blunt, brutal hand. On his smallest fingers gleamed two silver bands.

  Recognition tingled down Jayne’s spine and eddied like smoke across her skin.

  This must be the reason Walsingham had demanded Jayne and no other for this mission. Among his far-flung web of spies, only she would recognize the subtle talismans of Faerie glamour, the magick the Fair Folk used to dull their blade-bright beauty and pass among mortals.

  Now, alerted by the silver rings, Jayne blurred her mortal vision and looked with her Sight. She claimed no more than a drop of Faerie blood. But this modest legacy from her Boleyn heritage revealed the alabaster glow that limned this armed priest, as though the moon rose behind his pale skin.

  No full-blooded Fae could have stood unflinching on consecrated ground, before the holy symbols of the Catholic faith that were anathema to the Fair Folk who worshipped the Goddess. By now, a proper Fae would be screaming.

  This meant the powerful Fae who stood beside the King of Spain like an equal must also have mortal blood flowing through his veins.

  He is a misfit, an outcast, just as I am.

  With a groan, Philip climbed stiffly to his feet. Time had not treated him kindly. Every one of his sixty-odd years had left its mark in his hollow features and thinned the gray beard that clung to his stubborn Habsburg jaw.

  “So,” the King said heavily in Spanish, the only tongue he knew, “I see it is true. Though you are one of the accursed Fae, children of their demon Goddess, you may enter the sacred precinct of this basilica, the house of blessed Christ, without being stricken by torment or the lightning of divine wrath.”

  The newcomer inclined his gilded head. “Did thou seek to test me, Philip of Spain? Or is it thy carpenter God whom thou would question? How did He put it? ‘Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe’?”

  The King stiffened.

  “Be warned, señor. I will tolerate no blasphemy in the house of God, not even from an ally as central to my holy Enterprise as you have become.”

  “God’s house? Somehow I thought it was thine. Unless thou art one and the same?”

  Hearing the priest’s mocking tone, Jayne sucked in her breath. Was he a madman to mock the faith of this fanatical Catholic King, brother to the Holy Roman Emperor himself?

  But age and grief had drained Philip of his vitality. The King of Spain was a shadow of the fervent young suitor who’d once sailed to England to woo and wed Mary Tudor, the aging Catholic daughter of King Henry VIII. Now poor Mary lay cold in her grave, her womb as barren as on the day she wed.

  But Philip had never surrendered his ambition to reclaim Protestant England for the Church.

  “You may be King of the Hagas, crowned sovereign of the Spanish Fae,” Philip said tiredly. “Yet it is a constant wonder to me God does not smite you and all your kind. The Faerie realm that hovers like a foul dream beside Christian lands, its evil hidden behind the misty Veil, is a blot upon His earth. As for your fiend Goddess—”

  “Careful,” the priest purred. Beneath his silken tone, a tendril of malice unfurled. “As thou art the servant of thy God, so am I the servant of mine. Let us agree our causes are one in this Enterprise of thine. Otherwise, Philip, we shall quarrel.”

  Against his plain doublet, the King’s fists knotted. His Habsburg jaw worked in silent fury. But if Philip of Spain had lost the vigor of youth, he’d gained the restraint of maturity—a forbearance this unconventional ally would require.

  “War makes for strange bedfellows,” the King said grimly. “None are stranger than my alliance with you, Mordred, King of the Hagas.”

  “Mordred, Prince of Camelot,” the other said swiftly, voice edged like a dagger. “I prefer my English title. Is not that ancient birthright why thou require mine aid for thine invasion?”

  Crouched behind her bastion, thighs burning from the strain, Jayne gasped.

  Mordred, Prince of Camelot.

  What woman with a drop of Faerie blood did not know that tale? Once upon a time, King Arthur of Camelot had sired a bastard son upon the sorceress Morrigan. The same Morrigan who was now England’s Faerie Queene.

  But Mordred had died a traitor’s death a thousand years past, leading a treasonous revolt against his own father.

  Father and son had vied for the double crown of mortal England and the Summer Lands—the Faerie realm that existed like a shadow beside the mo
rtal realm, barely separated from Tudor England by a mystical Veil whose magick was thinning. Mordred had slain his father and been slain himself, or at least vanquished from the mortal realm.

  If Mordred had somehow returned to join Philip of Spain in his looming invasion, the implications were staggering. Elizabeth Tudor would have not only the world’s greatest naval power on her doorstep, but also the magick of this hostile Fae.

  “Needs must,” Philip said heavily, “when the Devil drives. And the Devil does indeed drive me, Mordred. For thirty-four years, I have striven to save the doomed souls of Protestant England from those heretic Tudors. When I wedded Mary, I thought I’d succeeded. But as all men know, Mary died without issue.”

  Moving stiffly, old knees clearly aching from his vigil, the King paced.

  “Four wives have I had, señor, and three of them dead in childbed. Eleven children have I sired, yet God has left me but a single frail son—undistinguished in his talents, let us not delude ourselves!—to succeed me. Were I not a man of faith, I would believe myself accursed.”

  Philip’s voice rose. “Could not Mary have given me a son? God knows, she constantly fancied herself to be with child. But a monstrous tumor in her womb was the only fruit of our poor union.”

  “A king may wear a crown and men tremble in fear of his wrath,” Mordred murmured, gazing up at the cross. “But in this, he stands at the mercy of the gods. I too once had sons, Philip, whom I loved. Alas, they lived badly and died worse.”

  The King wrung his hands.

  “To save the souls of my English subjects, I would have made another marriage. I would have wedded Elizabeth—accursed heretic though she is, the bastard of that whore Anne Boleyn.” Philip’s voice shook with rage. “She dares to style herself the Virgin Queen? Five minutes in her presence would convince any Christian she’s a witch.”

  On that score, I am inclined to agree with you, Jayne thought dryly. When I think of my son in my royal cousin’s cold custody, I myself am convinced she is the Devil incarnate.

  Wincing, she shifted her weight to ease the painful cramps knotting her legs. Her thighs quivered with sustained tension. But that was naught to the constant pain of longing for her child that seared her mother’s heart.