Free The Admiral's Penniless Bride by Carla Kelly

door.
    ‘Not quite, dear wife. You have a worse task ahead, one I won’t even bother to immortalise on paper. You must find me something useful to do.’
     
    That will be a chore, she thought, as she removed her clothes that night in the privacy of her own bedroom. Starkey had made the bed at some point in the evening and lit a fire in the grate, which took away the chill of the rain that continued to fall.
    Dinner had been sheer delight. On short notice, Etiennehad prepared a wonderful onion soup and served it with homely pilot bread, a menu item she remembered well from the days when Andrew would bring home his work and pore over the Royal Navy victual list, as she sat knitting in their tidy bookroom.
    She had felt shy at first with Charles, spending so much time in the company of a man she barely knew, but who was utterly engaging. Thinking to put her at ease, he started telling stories of life at sea—nothing designed to horrify her, but stories of travel to lands so far away she used to wonder if they were real, when she was a child. He told them with gusto, describing the purgatory of being a ‘young gentleman’, a thoroughly unexalted position below midshipman, when he was only ten.
    She must have looked askance at such a rough life for a mere child, because he stopped and touched her hand. ‘Don’t worry. I will never send our children to sea so young.’
    He had continued his narrative, probably not even aware of his inclusion of her in his life, and she knew better than to say anything. She found herself listening to him with all her heart, filled with the pleasure of something as simple as conversation. She realised she had been hungry for it, after years of tending old women who liked to retire with the chickens. A lady’s companion didn’t quite belong in the servants’ hall, and certainly not in the master’s sitting room. There had been too many nights spent in solitude, with too much time to miss her son and agonise over her husband’s ruin. This was different and she relished the admiral’s company.
    He had said goodnight outside the door to her chamber. ‘I’m across the hall, if you need anything,’ he said, then turned smartly on his heel, looking every inch the commander, and probably not even aware of it.
    You don’t know what else to be, do you? she thought, closing the door. As for what I need, it isn’t much, Admiral. When you are destitute, you quickly discover how much you don’t need, or you die.
    She sat cross-legged on her bed, bouncing a little, pleased to feel the comfort of a mattress thicker than a bandage. She had hung on to the mirror-backed hairbrush Andrew had given her one Christmas, and applied it, after she had taken all the pins from her hair.
    She turned over the brush and looked seriously at her face, noting the anxious eyes and thin cheeks, and wondering again why Admiral Bright had even paused to look at her in the dining room. All she could think was that the poor man was desperate for a wife, and when The Mouse didn’t materialise… Well, whatever the reason, she would do her best to smooth his passage on land.
    She was in bed and thinking about pinching out the candle when he knocked.
    ‘Sophia, I forgot something. Stick your hand out the door.’
    Mystified, she got up and opened the door a crack. ‘Why on earth…?’ she began.
    He had taken off his coat, removed his neckcloth and unbuttoned his shirt; she could see the webbing of straps against his neck that bound his hook to his wrist. He held out a piece of string.
    ‘I’m determined to do something about that ring that you kept taking on and off during dinner. Did it end up in the soup?’
    What a sweet man you are , she thought. ‘You know it didn’t! I can surely just wrap some cloth around it and keep it from slipping off,’ she said. ‘You needn’t…’
    ‘Mrs Bright, I won’t have my wife stuffing cloth in herring. What would our unmet neighbours think? Besides, it was my choice for