Shipmate: A Royal Regard Prequel Novella Read Free

daughter of the
gentry. Her aunt is sponsoring her, and I never met a more
unpleasant woman than Lady Effingale. I might marry Beelzebub
himself to be removed from her care, though the viscount is not a
bad sort. I believe I saw him head to the card room.”
    “As she is the last young lady left who has
not turned me down flat, perhaps it is time I should make her
acquaintance.”
     



Chapter Three
    Charlotte had
accepted a dance with her husband. Aunt Minerva was in deep
conversation with two other matrons, probably about the trials of
sponsoring an ugly debutante. Uncle Howard had escaped his wife in
the card room. Everyone was so accustomed to Bella playing the
wallflower that, even when she was the one husband-hunting, it was
easy enough, by force of habit, to leave her to her own devices.
Hoping against hope their party would soon depart, Bella was happy
to be left alone on a bench in a quiet, darkened hall, facing away
from the ballroom.
    Not more than a few minutes after she closed
her eyes to shut out the light now boring into her skull from the
few candles and a dying fireplace, a dark shadow fell across her
face. “Bella, my dear.” A low, familiar rumble near her ear, a hand
touching her shoulder.
    Her eyes blinked open in the dim
candlelight, and she scrambled to her feet at the sight of an
unknown gentleman bowing. Instinctively, she stared over her
shoulder, to see if he meant to speak to the brocade-covered wall
rather than her.
    She turned back and caught sight of the
source of the familiar voice: her uncle at the man’s elbow. Letting
out a deep sigh of relief, she stammered, “Unc… Uncle Howard. I—”
She dropped into a curtsey, looking around for any distraction from
the immediate requirement to speak to a man she had never seen
before.
    “Lord Holsworthy, my niece, Miss Isabella
Smithson. Bella, the baron asked if you might stand up with him for
the next set.”
    “Um.”
    She stared at Uncle Howard, waiting for him
to answer for her, as he often did—as everyone often did—and when
he only stared back in expectation of her answer, she kept
searching the room over the man’s shoulder, for her aunt, her
cousin, even her brother would do at the moment. Anyone to say
something that would carry the conversation before she might have
to.
    “Myron Clewes, Baron Holsworthy, at your
service, Miss Smithson. Your uncle tells me you are an excellent
dancer. Might you allow me the pleasure?”
    “Er.”
    Her fingers were once again twisted in her
gown, and all the blood that had drained from her face now rushed
back full force. The room must have just gained ten degrees, as she
could feel the perspiration on her forehead and upper lip, and in
light of this new, more pressing, problem, and some inconvenient
lightheadedness, her headache melted away.
    “Bella?” her uncle queried.
    “Um-hmm?” Bella replied.
    Lord Holsworthy held his arm out. Lacking
the capacity to speak a full sentence, and with an approving nod
from her uncle, she had nothing left to do but take it.
    He was quite tall. The top of Bella’s head
barely reached his chest. And broad; his shoulders seemed as wide
as a ship’s mainsail. Were he to put his arms around her, she might
disappear completely. His greying hair was long, loose, and wild,
and the lines in his face were deep, as though they had been carved
with a chisel. Much older—perhaps even older than her father—his
large hands were gentle against her fingers on his arm, and his
smile tender.
    He was the first man not a blood relation to
ask Bella to dance. Ever.
    When they took their places in the line for
the contredanse , Charlotte nearly fell over her own feet
trying to pay concurrent attention to her husband, the dance steps,
and the mysterious gentleman who had asked Bella to dance, after
she and her mother had both agreed everything had been done that
could, until the next assembly.
    “You are a lovely dancer,” Lord Holsworthy
remarked as he led Bella