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A Regency Officer's Wedding: The Admiral's Penniless Bride / Marrying the Royal Marine
Carla Kelly
Escape to a world of roguish rakes and daring debutantes with this incredible Regency collection from Mills & Boon.The Admiral’s Penniless Bride by Carla KellySally Paul is homeless and down to her last penny – so the last thing she expects is an offer of marriage from a complete stranger. Admiral Sir Charles Bright is in need of a wife…but after marrying in haste, can he convince Sally to enjoy their wedding night at leisure?Marrying the Royal Marine by Carla KellyIllegitimate Polly Brandon is amazed when the Lieutenant Colonel of Marines introduces himself as they sail for Portugal. In society, Polly knows he would never look twice at her…but with only the ocean for company, there’s no avoiding their unlikely attraction…
CARLA KELLY has been writing award-winning novels for years—stories set in the British Isles, Spain and army garrisons during the Indian Wars. Her speciality in the Regency genre is writing about ordinary people, not just lords and ladies. Carla has worked as a university professor, a ranger in the National Park Service and recently as a staff writer and columnist for a small daily newspaper in Valley City, North Dakota. Her husband is director of theatre at Valley City State University. She has five interesting children, a fondness for cowboy songs and too many box elder beetles in the autumn.
A Regency Officer’s Wedding
The Admiral’s Penniless Bride
Marrying the Royal Marine
Carla Kelly
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#u29d8aa68-bd54-5bba-b905-36624c81963a)
About the Author (#ub5d27332-70c6-56d3-bd98-ba5e05283bef)
Title Page (#u00d26e4e-4adc-51f5-a582-c17cab377345)
The Admiral’s Penniless Bride (#ua78193fd-4dc8-54ac-90b2-0bbf27615baa)
Prologue (#u6624bbc7-1518-5aa8-b616-827013f0d1f3)
Chapter One (#ufb93cce2-bd6e-538f-b17b-b87186815a0f)
Chapter Two (#u94d68ebd-d445-5eb0-8dd2-6e39eb23c776)
Chapter Three (#ued22358f-3f46-5cad-b1f0-dc0ab4fcece7)
Chapter Four (#u26d992ee-4f6c-5a94-beae-3e97fc0de013)
Chapter Five (#u5d01ca56-6aa7-5b98-89a1-0aadc2ef051b)
Chapter Six (#u2c27a893-19a0-5c88-b3d9-4f0cc8f1f0c0)
Chapter Seven (#u75a64829-dbd0-582c-991c-3f8df67be898)
Chapter Eight (#u915fd685-4b4c-5492-9e13-0951123dddf9)
Chapter Nine (#ua44a0b1d-b151-5e47-b314-5b7cadce1e5b)
Chapter Ten (#uf7b57eee-c58f-52a8-87a2-bd57162d9946)
Chapter Eleven (#u3480be11-292d-57e5-b84e-2cce95119e0a)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Marrying the Royal Marine (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpage (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
The Admiral’s Penniless Bride (#ulink_588efaed-81a8-566d-a8b4-12ff05923f32)
Prologue (#ulink_8990d2ca-f8d4-57db-b7aa-ab110766c961)
1816
The last five years had been a hard school. When Sally Paul had left the Bath employment registry with a position near Plymouth as lady’s companion, but only enough money to ride the mail coach, she had known she was heading towards pinch pennies.
As she neared the Devonshire coast, Sally owned to some uneasiness, but put it down to the fact that, after Andrew’s suicide, she had sworn never to look on the ocean again. Still, times were hard and work difficult to come by. No matter how pinch penny the Coles might prove to be, she was on her way to employment, after six weeks without.
Such a dry spell had happened twice in the past two years, and it was an occupational hazard: old ladies, no matter how kind or cruel, had a tendency to die and no longer require her services.
Although she would never have admitted it, Sally hadn’t been sad to see the last one cock up her toes. She was a prune-faced ogre, given to pinching Sally for no reason at all. Even the family had stayed away as much as they could, which led to the old dear’s final complaint, when imminent death forced them to her bedside. ‘See there, I told you I was sick!’ she had declared in some triumph, before her eyes went vacant. Only the greatest discipline—something also acquired in the last five years—had kept Sally from smiling, which she sorely wanted to do.
But a new position had a way of bringing along some optimism, even when it proved to be ill placed, as it did right now. She never even set foot inside the Coles’ house.
She hadn’t minded the walk from the Drake, where the mail coach stopped, to the east edge of Plymouth, where the houses were genteel and far apart. All those hours from Bath, cramped in next to a pimply adolescent and a pale governess had left Sally pleased enough to stretch her legs. If she had not been so hungry, and as a consequence somewhat lightheaded, she would have enjoyed the walk more.
All enjoyment ended as she came up the circular drive, noting the dark wreath on the door and the draped windows proclaiming a death in the family. Sally found herself almost hoping the late member of the Cole family was a wastrel younger son given to drink who might not be much missed.
It was as she feared. When she announced to the butler that she was Mrs Paul, come to serve as Mrs Maude Cole’s companion, the servant had left her there. In a moment he was back with a woman dressed in black and clutching a handkerchief.
‘My mother-in-law died yesterday morning,’ the woman said, dabbing at dry eyes. ‘We have no need of you.’
Why had she even for the smallest moment thought the matter would end well? Idiot, she told herself. You knew the moment you saw the wreath. ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ she said quietly, but did not move.
The woman frowned. Maybe she expects me to disappear immediately, Sally thought. How am I to do that?
She could see that the woman wanted to close the door. Five years ago, at the start of her employment odyssey, Sally might have yielded easily. Not now, not when she had come all this way and had nothing to show for it.
‘Mrs Cole, would you pay my way back to Bath, where you hired me?’ she asked, as the door started to close.
‘There was never any guarantee of hire until I saw you and approved,’ the woman said, speaking through a crack now. ‘My mother-in-law is dead. There is no position.’
The door closed with a decisive click. Sally stood where she was, unwilling to move because she had no earthly idea what to do. The matter resolved itself when the butler opened the door and made shooing motions, brushing her off as if she were a beggar.
She told herself she would not cry. All she could do was retrace her steps and see if something would occur to her before she returned to the Drake. She did not feel sanguine at the prospect; she was down to her last coin and in arrears on any ideas at all.
What was it that Andrew used to say, before his career turned to ashes? ‘There isn’t any problem so large that it cannot be helped by the application of tea.’
He was wrong, of course; she had known that for years. Sally looked in her reticule as she walked. She had enough for one cup of tea at the Drake.
Chapter One (#ulink_bd3722db-51ff-54da-b6ba-5e3a8371378f)
The Mouse was late. Admiral Sir Charles Bright (Ret.) was under the impression that he was a tolerant man, but tardiness was the exception. For more than thirty years, he had only to say, ‘Roundly now’, and his orders were carried out swiftly and without complaint. True, copious gold lace and an admiral’s stars might have inspired such prompt obedience. Obedience was second nature to him; tardiness a polar opposite.
Obviously this was not the case with The Mouse. For the life of him, he could have sworn that the lady in question was only too relieved to relinquish her old-maid status for matrimony to someone mature and well seasoned. During their only visit last month, The Mouse—Miss Prunella Batchthorpe—had seemed eager enough for all practical purposes.
Bright stared at his rapidly cooling cup of tea, and began to chalk up his defects. He did not think of forty-five as old, particularly since he had all of his hair, close cut though it was; all of his teeth minus one lost on the Barbary Coast; and most of his parts. He had compensated nicely for the loss of his left hand with a hook, and he knew he hadn’t waved it about overmuch during his recent interview with Miss Batchthorpe. He had worn the silver one, which Starkey had polished to a fare-thee-well before his excursion into Kent.
He knew he didn’t talk too much, or harrumph or hawk at inopportune moments. There was no paunch to disgust, and he didn’t think his breath was worse than anyone else’s. And hadn’t her older brother, a favourite commander who helmed Bright’s flagship, assured him that, at age thirty-seven, Prunella was more than ready to settle down at her own address? Relieved, even. Bright could only conclude that she had developed cold feet at the last minute, or was tardy.
He could probably overlook Miss Batchthorpe’s plain visage. He had told her this was to be a marriage of convenience, so he wouldn’t be looking at her pop eyes on an adjoining pillow each morning. He could even overlook her shy ways, which had made him privately dub her The Mouse. But tardiness?
Reality overtook him, as it invariably did. One doesn’t live through nearly three decades of war and many ranks by wool gathering. She might have decided that he simply would not suit, even if it meant a life of spinsterhood. He knew even a year of peace had not softened his hard stare, and the wind-and wave-induced wrinkles about his mouth were here to stay.
Whatever the reason for The Mouse’s non-appearance, he still needed a wife immediately. I have sisters, he thought to himself for the thousandth time since the end of the war. Oh, I do.
Fannie and Dora, older than he by several years, had not intruded much in his life spent largely at sea. They had corresponded regularly, keeping him informed of family marriages, births, deaths and nit-picking rows. Bright knew that Fannie’s eldest son, his current heir, was an ill-mannered lout, and that Dora’s daughter had contracted a fabulous alliance to some twit with a fortune.
He put his current dilemma down to the basic good natures of his meddling siblings. Both of them widowed and possessing fortunes of their own, Fan and Dora had the curse of the wealthy: too much time on their hands.
Fan had delivered the first shot across the bows when he had visited her in London after Waterloo. ‘Dora and I want to see you married,’ she had announced. ‘Why should you not be happy?’
Bright could tell from the martial glint in her eyes— Wellington himself possessed a similar look—that there was no point in telling his sister that he was already happy. Truth to tell, what little he had glimpsed of Fan’s married life, before the barrister had been kind enough to die, had told him volumes about his sister’s own unhappiness.
Dora always followed where Fan led, chiming in with her own reasons why he needed a wife to Guide Him Through Life’s Pathways—Dora spoke in capital letters. Her reasons were convoluted and muddled, like most of her utterances, but he was too stunned by Fan’s initial pronouncement, breathtaking in its interference, to comment upon them.
A wife it would be for their little brother. That very holiday, they had paraded a succession of ladies past his startled gaze, ladies young enough to be his daughter and older and desperate. Some were lovely, but most wanted in the area he craved: good conversation. Someone to talk to—there was the sticking point. Were those London ladies in awe of his title and uniform? Did they flinch at the hook? Were they interested in nothing he was interested in? He had heard all the conversations about weather and goings on at Almack’s that he could stomach.
Never mind. His sisters were determined. Fan and Dora apparently knew most of the eligible females in the British Isles. He was able to fob them off immediately after his retirement, when he was spending time in estate agents’ offices, seeking an estate near Plymouth. He had taken lodgings in Plymouth while he searched. Once the knocker was on the door, the parade of lovelies had begun again, shepherded by his sisters.
Bemusement turned to despair even faster than big rabbits made bunnies. My sisters don’t know me very well, he decided, after several weeks. The last straw came when Fan decided that not only would she find him a mate, but also redecorate his new estate for him, in that execrable Egyptian style that even he knew was no longer à la mode. When the first chair shaped like a jackal arrived, Bright knew he had to act.
Which was why he now awaited the arrival of Miss Prunella Batchthorpe, who had agreed to be his ball and chain and leave him alone. Dick Batchthorpe, his flagship commander, had mentioned her often during their years together. Something in Bright rebelled at taking the advice of two of the most harebrained ladies he knew; besides, it would be a kind gesture to both Dick, who didn’t relish the prospect of supporting an old maid, and the old maid in question, who had assured him she would keep his house orderly and make herself small.
As he sat in the dining room of the Drake, with its large windows overlooking the street, Bright couldn’t help feeling a twinge of relief at her non-arrival, even as he cursed his own apparent shallowness. Miss Batchthorpe was more than usually plain.
He heard a rig clatter up to the front drive and looked up in something close to alarm, now that he had told himself that Miss Batchthorpe simply wouldn’t suit. He stood up, trying not to appear overly interested in the street, then sat down. It was only a beer wagon, thank the Lord.
