You are cordially invited to the weddings of
Lord Ratliffe’s three daughters
as they marry their courageous heroes
A captain, a surgeon in the
Royal Navy and a Royal Marine prove true husband material in
this stirring trilogy from Carla Kelly
Look for:
THE SURGEON’S LADY
February 2012
MARRYING THE ROYAL MARINE
March 2012
Praise for Carla Kelly:
‘A powerful and wonderfully perceptive author.’
—New York Times bestselling author Mary Jo Putney
‘A wonderfully fresh and original voice…’
—RT BOOK Reviews
‘Kelly has the rare ability to create realistic
yet sympathetic characters that linger in the mind.
One of the most respected… Regency writers.’
—Library Journal
‘Carla Kelly is always a joy to read.’
—RT BOOK Reviews
‘Ms Kelly writes with a rich flavour that
adds great depth of emotion to all her characterisations.’
—RT BOOK Reviews
Marrying the
Captain
Carla Kelly
MILLS & BOON
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About the Author
CARLA KELLY has been writing award-winning novels for years—stories set in the British Isles, Spain, and army garrisons during the Indian Wars. Her speciality in the Regency genre is writing about ordinary people, not just lords and ladies. Carla has worked as a university professor, a ranger in the National Park Service, and recently as a staff writer and columnist for a small daily newspaper in Valley City, North Dakota. Her husband is director of theatre at Valley City State University. She has five interesting children, a fondness for cowboy songs, and too many box elder beetles in the autumn.
Novels by the same author:
BEAU CRUSOE
CHRISTMAS PROMISE
(part of Regency Christmas Gifts anthology)
To my dear sisters, Karen Deo and Wanda Lynn
Turner, who showed me Plymouth.
Said the sailor to his true love, ‘Well, I must be on my way, For our topsails they are hoisted and the anchor’s aweigh; And our good ship she lies awaiting for the next flowing tide, And if ever I return again, I will make you my bride.’
—Pleasant and Delightful (English folksong)
Prologue
After five years in Plymouth following her 1803 expulsion from Miss Pym’s Female Academy in Bath, it still burned Nana Massie to be an Object of Charity.
She closed the door to the Mulberry Inn behind her and looked down at the hand-lettered placards in her hand. In these hard times of war, made harder for Plymouth by the blockade of the French coast, the inn-keeps at the bigger inns closer to the harbor still had no objection to the placards, even though everyone knew there was no need for them, because there was no overflow of clientele.
We Massies are engaged in a great deception, Nana told herself as she hurried toward the harbor, blown along by the stiff November wind. She glanced back at the Mulberry, knowing Gran would be watching her from an upstairs window. Nana waved and blew her grandmother a kiss. This grand deception is for my benefit entirely, she thought, and I am hungry.
She was cold, too, even though she wore Pete’s cut-down boat cloak and two petticoats under a wool dress. She knew Gran was knitting her a cap to cover her short hair, and it wouldn’t be done a moment too soon. After a look of deep worry when Nana returned from the wigmaker last week with short hair and a handful of coins for the more pressing bills, Gran had turned straight to her knitting.
Even though Nana could see one small frigate bobbing in anchor at the harbor below, Gran and Pete both had insisted it was time to take placards to the large inns. Time meant noon, when the inns would be serving dinner. Those two old conspirators knew the keeps and cooks would see that their darling Nana ate.
The sailors were seldom allowed off the warships, but the officers and petty officers were usually free to go ashore and stay in Plymouth’s inns. Many ships meant more officers. If the larger inns were full, some could be persuaded to stay at the Mulberry on far-distant Gibbon Street, if there was a placard announcing the little inn’s existence.
Nana almost turned around after she passed St. Andrews Church. The matter was hopeless because the admiral of the Channel Fleet, in his wisdom, had decreed that his warships would not leave their watery stations for anything except dire emergency. They were to be revictualed at sea—with food and water—and remain there, because of Boney and his threats.
One frigate in the harbor. Nana stopped and nearly crammed her signs in a bin, then reconsidered. Gran would be devastated if she returned from the harbor unfed, and would see right through a lie to the contrary.
Besides, the wind carried the fragrance of sausages from the Navy Inn, her first stop. Nana wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and let the wind coax her along.
There was a sausage for her at the Navy Inn, with a crunch when she bit into it that nearly brought tears to her eyes. She went through the charade of protesting when the keep insisted on wrapping an extra one in oiled paper, then hurried to the Drury Inn, where she left another placard and sat down to potato soup with hunks of ham and onion, bubbling in the broth of cream flecked with butter.
The keep even handed her a pot of it to take along, declaring the soup would just sit around, uneaten and unappreciated, if she didn’t take it back to the Mulberry. Maybe Gran or Pete could have it, if Nana was full. She accepted it with a smile, even as her face burned from shame.
At Drake’s Inn, the bill of fare was pasties, as she had hoped. Mrs. Fillion, the keep, insisted she eat one quickly, before it went bad, then packaged two more for her, all the while complaining about an admiral so mean-spirited as to keep his ships from Plymouth and make life a trial for the quayside merchants.
“Well, we are at war, Mrs. Fillion,” Nana ventured.
Mrs.