Carla Kelly - A Regency Officer's Wedding - The Admiral's Penniless Bride / Marrying the Royal Marine

‘I usually have it whipped into submission by this time,’ she replied.

‘Well, that’s a shame,’ he told her. ‘I rather like it this way.’ He touched one of her curls, wrapping it around his finger. He didn’t seem at all uncomfortable and she decided she liked it.

She wasn’t sure why he had come into her room, because he seemed content to just sit on the bed while she drank her tea. She heard a thump from downstairs, grateful that it gave her something to ask him.

‘Sir, what is going on down there?’

Her question seemed to remind him. ‘Aye, madam wife, I did have a reason to come in here. Lord Brimley is not wasting a moment to help us. He has sent over an army of workers who are, as we speak, rigging up scaffolding in the sitting room, with the sole purpose of ridding us of randy cupids.’ He leaned closer and again she breathed his bay rum. ‘Mrs Bright, think how pleasant it will be to embroider in your sitting room and not worry about what those imps are doing overhead.’

She could tell his mood had lifted. ‘You feel better,’ she said.

He leaned even closer until his forehead touched hers. ‘I do, madam. Thank you for allowing me solitude.’

‘You only have to mention it and I will understand,’ she said softly, since his face was so close to hers. ‘That is our arrangement.’

Maybe an imp had escaped from the carnage in the sitting room below. For whatever reason, the admiral raised her chin and kissed her lips. ‘I’m not very good at this, but I am grateful for your forbearance,’ he told her, when his lips were still so close to hers.

On the contrary, he was quite good. In fact, she was disappointed that he did not kiss her again. He’s learned that somewhere in the world, she thought, as she sat back, careful not to spill her tea into his lap, since he sat so close.

And there they sat, eyeing each other. Sally felt herself relax under his gaze, which was benign. The imp must have still been in the room, because she found herself saying, ‘I like it when you bring me tea in the morning.’

‘I like it, too,’ he said, his voice as soft as hers, almost as if he felt as shy. ‘It could become a habit.’ He dispelled the mood by flapping his empty sleeve at her and getting to his feet. ‘If you are equal to the task, I thought we would abandon Chez Bright today and go to Plymouth. The under-steward that Lord Brimley sent is a paragon, and he so much as informed me in such a polite way, that I am a supernumerary.’ He ruffled her hair, which made her laugh. ‘So are you, madam. If we intend to cut a dash in the neighbourhood, we had better get ourselves some clothing that doesn’t brand us as vagrants or felons.’

‘I am certain you do not pay Starkey enough,’ Sally told Bright as they settled back into a post chaise that the butler had arranged to convey them to Plymouth.

‘You are most likely correct,’ he replied. ‘To show you the total measure of his devotion to me, he even enquired to find the most slap-up-to-the-mark modiste in Plymouth. His comrades in the fleet would never believe such a thing. Starkey is normally quite a Puritan.’

He hoped his wife would pink up at this news, and she did, to his pleasure. Amazing how a woman teetering on the other side of thirty could blush at the mention of a modiste, and still manage to maintain her countenance in a roomful of cupids doing things some people didn’t even do behind bolted doors. He did not pretend to understand women. Looking at the pretty lady seated across from him, he thought it politic not to try. Better to let her surprise him with her wit, and most of all, her humanity. He was beginning to think the most impulsive gesture of his life was shaping into the best one.

The first thought on her mind, apparently miles ahead of new clothes, was to seek out a bookshop. ‘I want to find something to entertain Mrs Brustein,’ she explained, as he handed her down from the chaise. ‘I intend to visit her as often as I can, and read to her.’

Even on the short few days of their acquaintance, he already knew it would be fruitless to pull out his timepiece and point out that they were already late to her modiste’s appointment, but he tried. She gave him a kindly look, the type reserved for halfwits and small children, and darted into the bookshop. Knowing she had no money, he followed her in, standing patiently as she looked at one book, and then another.

He knew he had been attracted by her graceful ways, but his appreciation deepened as he admired the sparkle in her eyes. He wasn’t entirely certain when the sparkle had taken up residence there, but it might have been only since early morning, when he had screwed up his courage and knocked on her door, bearing tea. His dealings with women had informed him early in his career about the world that few women looked passable at first light. Sophie Bright must be the exception, he decided. She was glorious, sitting there in bed in a nightgown too thin for company, if that was what he was. The outline of her breasts had moved him to kiss her, when he wanted to do so much more.

And here she was in a bookshop, poring over book after book until she stopped, turned to him in triumph and said, ‘Aha!’

He took the little volume from her and glanced at the spine. ‘Shakespeare and his sonnets for an old lady?’

‘Most certainly,’ his wife said. ‘I will love them until I die, and surely I am not alone in this. Have you read them, sir?’

He wished she would call him Charles. ‘Not in many years,’ he told her. ‘I am not certain that Shakespeare wears well on a quarterdeck.’

She surprised him then, as tears came to her eyes, turning them into liquid pools. ‘You have missed out on so many things, haven’t you?’ She had hit on something every man in the fleet knew, and probably few landsmen.

‘Aye, madam wife, I have,’ he said. He held up the book. ‘You think it is not too late? I am not a hopeless specimen?’

She dabbed at her eyes, unable to say anything for a moment, as they stood together in the crowded bookshop.

He took her arm. ‘Sophie, don’t waste a tear on me over something we had no control over. I saw my duty and did it. So did everyone in the fleet.’ He paused, thinking of Lord Brimley’s young son, dead these many years and slipped into the Pacific Ocean somewhere off Valparaiso. ‘Some gave everything. Blame the gods of war.’

She is studying me, he thought, as her arm came around his waist and she held him close. I try to comfort her and she comforts me. Did a man ever strike a better bargain than the one I contracted with Sally Paul? Bright handed back the book. He gave her a shilling and returned to the post chaise, unable to continue another moment in the bookshop and wondering if there was any place on land where he felt content.

Maybe he was not so discontent. He watched his wife through the window as she quickly paid the proprietor, shook her head against taking time to wrap the sonnets in brown paper and hurried back to the chaise.

‘I’m sorry to delay you,’ she said, after he helped her in. ‘I don’t intend to be a trial to a punctual man.’

He held out his hand for the book. ‘Do you have a favourite sonnet?’ He fanned the air with the book. ‘Something not too heated for a nice old lady?’

To his delight, she left her seat on the opposite side of the chaise and sat next to him, turning the pages, her face so close to his that he could breathe in the delicate scent of her lavender face soap.

‘This one,’ she said. ‘Perhaps Mr Brustein will want to read this one to her: “Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws, and make the earth devour her own sweet brood…”’ She shook her head. ‘It’s too sad.’

He brushed away her fingers and kept reading. ‘Sophie, you’re a goose. This is an old man remembering how fair his love once was, but that doesn’t mean he’s sad about the matter.’ He kept reading aloud, thinking of the woman beside him, wondering how she would look in twenty years, even thirty years, if they were so lucky. I believe she will look better and better as time passes, he thought. ‘Sophie, Mrs Brustein cannot argue with this: “Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong; My love shall in my verse ever live young.”’