Shipmate: A Royal Regard Prequel Novella

by Mariana Gabrielle

  Charlotte smiled and adjusted his collar. “Don’t be ridiculous, my love. You are most distinguished and would look frightful in a frock. You haven’t the figure for it,” she laughed, continuing, “You will be pleased to know if Bella has her way, we shall be removed from the guest list entirely before the evening is out. Naked savages, indeed. Myron, it is scandalous you give her license to throw indecent stories around like brickbats.”

  Myron patted his wife’s hand. “She needs no license from me. She is a grown woman, perfectly capable of speaking her own mind.” Myron inclined his head toward Charlotte’s mutinous expression in a half-conciliatory gesture. “Though I’m sure you understand the way of things in London much better than I.”

  Irritated at being discussed as though she weren’t present, Bella spoke just as the music stopped: “I don’t give a tuppenny damn for the way of things in London!” Her voice carried much further than she had intended, and a collective gasp rose from everyone in hearing distance, followed by a buzz of denigration that spread across the room like a wave across water.

  Charlotte snapped her fan much harder on Bella’s hand, her mouth opening and closing, choking on the words to express her outrage. Lips twitching, Alexander and Myron covered their amusement with observations about the orchestra’s rapidly chosen next selection, a polka.

  “You will kindly moderate your language, or I will take you home at once,” Charlotte hissed, rounding on the gentlemen. “And you two! Encouraging her!”

  “I am not a child to be sent to my room without supper, Charlotte,” Bella snapped. “I have a voucher, so I will be staying.” She would rather dine on rotten meat than endure another hour at Almack’s, but a breakfast of ground glass was preferable to yielding to Charlotte.

  “If anyone is to send her to her room without supper, my dear Lady Firthley, it will be me.” Myron spoke gently, in the tone he always used to forestall further argument. Bella’s coy smirk sent a message to him that shut out everyone else in the room without being at all inappropriate.

  Charlotte snapped, “I might think you would encourage her to act like a proper wife, before it gets back to the king that she is still an incurable hoyden.”

  “I daresay you might think so,” Myron answered, “but I assure you, His Majesty is well aware she is a hoyden. He has come to see it as a great asset.” Bella flushed at this encomium and lowered her eyes under Myron’s indulgent smile. “He has never failed to ask after her, and often remarks on the outstanding results of her wit and charm.”

  “‘Tis true, Charlotte,” Alexander agreed. “Prinny holds a great fondness for Bella. He has said so several times in my hearing.” Angling his head away from Charlotte, he winked at Bella, adding, “No one can credit his partiality for such a hoyden.”

  “I fail to see any wit or charm,” Charlotte sniffed. “She will be barred from polite society, and Seventh Sea Shipping will follow suit.”

  “Pray, do not act like those stuffy women, Charlotte. You shall become old and boring long before your time.” Bella could not resist the jibe. “The look on your face will bring on even more wrinkles.”

  Clearly afraid talk of wrinkles might turn into a brawl, Myron interceded. “I expect my business can withstand a bit of scandal. In fact, I know it can.” Myron held Bella’s arm tightly, running his thumb across the back of her hand. He said, though not loudly, “This is not the first time she has deservedly shown an aristo the rough side of her tongue, nor will it be the last, and I’m certain plain speaking causes no affront to God.”

  Nodding her head sharply in agreement, Bella turned her nose up at Charlotte in a childish pretense. Finally unable to contain his building mirth, Alexander started laughing aloud.

  “I say, Holsworthy,” he remarked with a grin, “you and your wife are just the fresh air we need at Court. It is so very dull listening to the same on-dit day after day. You’ll ruin yourselves by morning, but it will liven things up nicely.”

  “I take back everything I said about missing you all this time,” Charlotte declared, looking down her nose at her wayward cousin. “I had forgotten what a heathen you are.”

  “Then I shall endeavor to remind you as often as I can,” Bella released a melodramatic harrumph. “There are more ladies headed our way. Shall I tell the story of the Gongulobibi priests revering me as a goddess?”

  Read the rest of Bella’s story in Royal Regard, available now in print and for e-reader at all major online retailers.

  For Charlotte’s love story, pick up ‘Tis Her Season.

  Charlotte Amberly would rather eat a lump of coal for Christmas dinner than marry the Marquess of Firthley, so when her parents cancel her London Season in favor of a rush to the altar, the feisty debutante takes husband-hunting into her own hands.

  Alexander Marloughe, reluctant heir to a marquessate, would rather not spend his holiday dashing through the snow after a flibbertigibbet just out of the schoolroom, but no woman before Charlotte has ever led him such a merry chase.

  Available exclusively in:

  Mistletoe, Marriage, and Mayhem: A Bluestocking Belles Collection

  In this collection of novellas, the Bluestocking Belles bring you seven runaway Regency brides resisting and romancing their holiday heroes under the mistletoe. Whether scampering away or dashing toward their destinies, avoiding a rogue or chasing after a scoundrel, these ladies and their gentlemen leave miles of mayhem behind them on the slippery road to a happy-ever-after.

  ***All proceeds benefit the Malala Fund.***

  ‘Tis Her Season

  Chapter 1

  December 15, 1803

  Somerset, England

  The snow falling outside the frosted drawing room window blanketed Charlotte Amberly’s mood as surely as it did the garden on which she gazed. Usually, she loved the Yuletide season, but she could hardly keep her mind on wassail and holly berries, knowing who would be staying at least through Twelfth Night, assuredly planning to meet her under the kissing bough.

  The Marquess of Firthley, Charlotte’s new betrothed, was expected in a few days for an indefinite stay, and if Charlotte’s mother had her way, he wouldn’t leave until they were married. When a viscount’s daughter snared a marquess, it behooved her to leg-shackle him before he could run.

  "Lord Firthley’s note said he was bringing his grandson." Minerva Amberly, Lady Effingale, calmly stitched the outline of a Christmas rose on an altar cloth intended as a gift for the vicar’s wife.

  "Yes, Mother. You’ve told me twenty times. I must be kind to the poor, motherless child, so the marquess will believe me a good grandmother for his heir."

  "Quite right, and you needn’t take that tone."

  "I will be a grandmother before I am eighteen," she grumbled.

  "Better than a spinster before you are twenty."

  "I’ve not even met him!" she argued, going so far as to stomp her foot.

  Lady Effingale would brook no such nonsense from a recalcitrant daughter. "Then it is fortunate he wants you sight unseen."

  Between the flare of her mother’s nostrils and the arch of her left eyebrow, Charlotte’s rebellion fizzled—briefly.

  "He wants Papa’s voting bloc, not me," Charlotte protested under her breath, but before her mother could castigate her again, she moaned, "I was to make my curtsey next month! How can you just ignore an invitation from the queen?"

  "One of your husband’s relations will present you at Court as his marchioness. He has the king’s ear, you know."

  Dropping onto the window seat, hiding her grimace behind the curtain, Charlotte muttered, "Yes, Mother. You’ve said."

  Lady Effingale set down her needlework to sort through her basket of silks, finally finding a length of dark green. "You should be grateful to be the wife of a man of considerable fortune and influence."

  "Yes, Mother."

  The sounds of running and yelling down the hall came rapidly closer until Charlotte’s two younger brothers dashed into the room, throwing a rou
nders ball between them. The ball promptly slammed into the teapot and sent it flying off the table next to Charlotte, into the skirts of her new pale pink dress, leaving a huge brown stain. Guy and Hugh, ages twelve and fourteen respectively, stopped short at their mother’s screeching and Charlotte’s rage.

  "You hellions! Get out! Get back to the nursery before I break you into pieces and return you to Eton in a box!"

  Although she had complained endlessly to her mother and Bella about the wishy-washy color of the gown, it was not improved by being soiled. And she was in a far worse temper now than she had been a week ago.

  Guy scurried to retrieve the ball, while Hugh drew himself up into a dignified and offended stance worthy of the viscount he would one day become.

  "We no longer reside in the nursery, and you have no call to screech. I heard Mother tell you just this morning, you ‘must improve your sense of decorum.’"

  By contrast to his brother’s false indignity, Guy’s sheepish smile apologized for the teapot, the yelling, and Charlotte’s dress, though he was not contrite enough for their mother.

  "But for her execrable language, your sister is quite right," she snapped. "Where is Isabella? She was to be keeping watch over you, was she not?"

  Now Hugh looked a bit chary. "Er, she is… was… uh… detained. And we are too old for a governess, at any rate." He straightened his shoulders. "We are both Eton men now. Papa said so."

  Charlotte strode toward him, and he fell back. "Little Eton boys, rather. Go let Bella out of whatever closet you’ve locked her into, or I will shut you up in the nursery on bread and water and give your Christmas gifts to the children in the poorhouse!"

  Both boys ran out of the room, still throwing the ball between them, gaining more volume once they cleared the door. Lady Effingale took up her embroidery again, remarking, "You will wish to be gentler with the marquess’s grandson."

  Charlotte dabbed at her dress with a table napkin, but the exercise was hopeless. The stain reached from waist to hem and crossed the dress from side to side. She dropped the napkin on the tea tray, waved her hand toward the door, and turned up her nose. "No sane woman will ever want to marry either of them. You will be stuck with them your entire life."

  "I’m sure that is not true," her mother said. However, her lips quivered just slightly when she added, "They are both growing up too handsome for any girl’s good, and Hugh will be Effingale one day. Surely some woman will suffer him, if only for his title and lands. I do agree, though, his brother may ever be a bachelor, and probably an incorrigible rake." Dropping the altar cloth in her lap, peering through her lorgnette at her daughter’s dress, she added, "You’d better go find Isabella, so that she can help you change your dress and try to remove the stain."

  Yes, Charlotte thought, Bella is sure to be more sympathetic.

  Table of Contents

  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

  Acknowledgements

  About Mariana Gabrielle

  Royal Regard Sample

  ‘Tis Her Season Sample