Free Shipmate: A Royal Regard Prequel Novella by Mariana Gabrielle Page B

had packed her head. She was not a person accustomed to
restless energy, and pacing back and forth across the carpet was
not making it any easier to compose herself. There was nothing for
it. There was no chance she could clear her mind sitting here in
the midst of the same wretched thoughts.
    She pulled a front-lacing house dress over
her nightrail, tugged on a pair of walking shoes and her traveling
cloak, which always, now, seemed close at hand, wrapped her bedtime
braid into a coil and pinned it at the nape of her neck. She locked
the door on the way out and pocketed the key.
    Stepping into the stable yard, Bella saw no
one about, though it wasn’t nearly late enough to be so quiet, even
in the country. She took the walking track behind the row of shops
toward the wood that bordered the town limit. She breathed deep of
the cool, night air and felt some of the tension leave her
shoulders.
    Bella’s relations filled the inn she had
just left: Lord and Lady Effingale, Hugh and Guy Amberly, Charlotte
and Lord Firthley. Her father and brothers had not been invited,
and were not at all welcome, but no one expected they would stay
away. Charlotte had been rehearsing her set-down of Jeremy Smithson
in her looking glass for days, and the gentlemen roaming about the
inn were rather better-armed than one might expect for a happy
occasion. Only by sheer force of will had Bella secured general
agreement that no Smithsons would be killed on her wedding day,
provided they kept to themselves.
    Bella hoped they would keep to themselves.
She didn’t fool herself that her father would attend out of
sentiment, but he surely would to ensure his promised payment was
made before the Holsworthys left England. If he could find a way to
torture and threaten Bella one last time, too, she expected he
would find that a worthy endeavor, though Uncle Howard promised she
would never again have to be alone with Jasper.
    Lord Holsworthy was spending this night in
his childhood home, which was so like Bella’s father’s cottage as
to be a mirror image—three rooms above, three below, and twenty
acres to farm—in the Clewes’ case, a vineyard. His aging parents
could not have been kinder to her, and assured an open-hearted
welcome to their family, whether on land or at sea. His mother,
particularly, took a liking to Bella, and her teasing tales of his
boyhood went a long way in making the somewhat stiff Lord
Holsworthy seem like someone with whom Bella could be friends. He
laughed more, here in Saltash, than he ever had in her presence
before.
    Stopping in the streaming moonlight, Bella
looked to see where the path had brought her. On the edge of the
wood, adjacent to a clearing, she could just see the harbor and the
Seventh Sea ships docked there, on the horizon. Several important
guests from London were housed on one of Lord Holsworthy’s
merchantman, including the Prince of Wales and Princess Amelia and
their retinues, Lord and Lady Pinnester, and several of Lord
Holsworthy’s other investors. The royals had traveled to the
wedding on the Amelia’s maiden voyage, but would return to London
on the fleet ship, for the new flagship would leave with the bride
and groom on the morrow, directly after the wedding breakfast. In
less than a day, Bella would leave England, probably for good.
    As she took up her skirt to begin her walk
again, Jasper stepped out from behind a tree. She stopped short and
stepped back.
    “I was hopin’ I might come across you,
lassie, before you take to the high seas with your new lord and
master.”
    She flinched when Jeremy stepped out from
the other direction.
    She turned as though she would run, and John
was behind her. Her hands rose to guard her face, and she tried to
turn away from all of them.
    “Please let me be. Uncle Howard said you
wouldn’t be—”
    “Skip me own daughter’s wedding? Not on your
life, Miss.”
    She tried to sound like Charlotte when she
said, “Lord Holsworthy will be sorely displeased