Marrying the Royal Marine. Carla Kelly

as the storm intensified. She moaned with the motion, so he braced the sleeping cot with his body so it would not swing. As he watched her face, it suddenly occurred to him that part of her problem was fear.

      ‘Miss Brandon, I assure you that as bad as this seems, we’re not going to sink,’ he said. He spoke loud enough to be heard above the creaking and groaning he knew were normal ship noises in a storm. ‘Ships are noisy. The sea is rough, I will grant you, but that is life in the Channel.’

      She said nothing, but turned her face into his shoulder. Hugh kept his arms tight around her, crooning nothing that made any sense, but which seemed to calm her. He held her close as she clung to him, terrified.

      When the waves seemed to subside, he released her and went back to cleaning her long hair. When he felt reasonably satisfied, he knew he could not avoid the next step. ‘Miss Brandon, do you have another nightgown in your luggage?’

      She nodded, and started to cry again.

      ‘I’d happily turn my back and let you manage this next part by yourself, my dear, but I don’t think you’re up to it. You can’t stay in this nightgown.’

      After another long silence during which he made no attempt to rush her, her hands went to the buttons on her gown. She tried to undo them, but finally shook her head. Without a word, he undid her buttons. ‘Where’s another nightgown?’ he asked quietly.

      She told him and he found it, fragrant with lavender, in her trunk. Taking a deep breath, Hugh pulled back the sheet. Her hand went to his wrist, so he did nothing more until she relaxed her grip.

      ‘I’m going to roll up your nightgown, so we can best keep the soiled part away from your face and hair when I pull it over your head. Miss Brandon, I regret the mortification I know I am causing you,’ he said.

      She was sobbing in good earnest now, and the parched sound pained him more than she possibly could have realised. Not only was he trampling on her female delicacy now, but jumping up and down on it.

      ‘No fears, Miss Brandon, no fears,’ he said quietly, trying to find a balance between sympathy and command.

      Maybe she finally realised he was an ally. He wasn’t sure he would have been as brave as she was, considering her total helplessness to take care of herself. Feeling as stupid and callow as the merest youth, he couldn’t think of a thing to say except, ‘I mean you no harm. Not ever.’

      He wondered why he said that, but his words, spoken quietly but firmly, seemed to give Miss Brandon the confirmation she needed of his utter sincerity. She stopped sobbing, but rested her head against him, not so much because she was tired now, but because she needed his reassurance. He could have been wrong, but that was what the moment felt like, and he wasn’t one to quibble.

      Without any talk, he continued rolling up her nightgown as she raised her arms. His fingers brushed against her bare breast, but they were both beyond embarrassment. Even though the night was warm, she shivered a little. He quickly popped her into the clean nightgown, pulling it down to her ankles, then helped her lie back. She sighed with relief and closed her eyes.

      The winds picked up and the ship began another series of torturous swoops through the waves. He braced the cot against his hip and kept his arms tight around Miss Brandon as she clung to him and shivered.

      ‘I don’t know how you do this,’ she said finally, when the winds subsided.

      ‘It comes with the job,’ he replied and chuckled.

      ‘Are you never seasick?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Are you lying?’

      He wasn’t, but he wanted her to laugh. ‘Yes.’ He knew nothing in the rest of his life would ever put him at ease more than the slight sound of her laugh, muffled against his chest.

      Since his arms were around her, he picked her up. She stiffened. ‘I’m going to carry you across the wardroom to my pathetic cabin, and put you in my cot. You’re going to promise me you won’t be sick in it, and you’re going to go to sleep. I’ll come back in here and clean up everything.’

      ‘A Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Marines,’ she murmured, and Hugh could hear the embarrassment in her voice again.

      ‘I can’t help that,’ he told her, and was rewarded with another chuckle. ‘I’ve swabbed a deck or two in my earlier days.’ He wasn’t going to tell her how unpleasant that had been, cleaning up a gun deck after a battle. Nothing in her cabin could ever compare with that, but he wasn’t going to enlighten her further.

      He was prepared to stay with her in his cabin until she felt easy, but she went to sleep almost before he finished tucking his blanket around her. He looked down at her, smelling of vinegar now, but as tidy as he could make her, in his clumsy way. He looked closer. There was something missing. He gave her a slight shake.

      ‘Miss Brandon, where are your spectacles?’

      She opened her eyes, and he saw nothing but remorse. ‘I … I fear they landed in that basin by the cot, when I vomited.’

      She started to laugh then, which must have hurt because her hand went to her throat. ‘Don’t look so stunned, Colonel,’ she told him. ‘I am quizzing you. They’re in my trunk, next to my hair brush.’

      He grinned at her, relieved that she could make a joke. ‘I’ll get you for that.’

      ‘You and who …?’ she began, then drifted to sleep.

      He stood there another long moment, watching her sleep, dumbfounded by her resiliency, and not totally sure what had just happened. ‘I’d have looked for them in that foul basin, I hope you know,’ he whispered, then left his cabin.

      He spent the next hour cleaning Miss Brandon’s cabin. Before Private Leonard went off duty and was replaced by another sentry, he swore him to utter secrecy on what had passed this evening.

      ‘Sir, I would never say anything,’ the Private assured him. ‘She’s a brave little trooper, isn’t she?’

      Hugh would have spent the night in her cot, except that it was wet with vinegar and he didn’t relish the notion. He could put his greatcoat on the floor in his cabin and not disturb Miss Brandon at all. He put her nightgown to soak in the bucket with sea water, and poured in the remaining vinegar. He found his way to the orlop deck, where the surgeon, eyes bleary, was staring at a forefinger avulsion that gave Hugh the shivers.

      ‘He caught it on a pump, if you can imagine,’ the surgeon murmured. He patted the seaman who belonged to the finger. ‘Steady, lad, steady. It looks worse than it is, as most things do.’

      While the seaman stared at his own finger, Hugh took the surgeon aside and explained what had happened to Miss Brandon.

      ‘Poor little lady,’ the surgeon said. ‘I hope you were gentle with her, Colonel.’

      ‘I did my best.’

      The surgeon shook his head. ‘Only two days out, and already this voyage is more than she bargained for, I’m certain. All’s well that ends. Give her some porridge tomorrow morning and a ship’s biscuit, along with fortified wine, and all the water she will drink. That should take care of the dehydration.’

      Hugh walked thoughtfully back to his deck, after looking in on the unconscious foretopman, with the surgeon’s mate sitting beside him. A howl from the orlop told him the surgeon had taken care of the avulsion. Give me Miss Brandon and her troublesome seasickness any day, he thought with a shudder.

      Counting on his rank to mean something to one of the captain’s young gentlemen, he asked for and received a blanket and returned to his cabin. He looked down at her, asleep in his gently swaying cot. Poor little you. The surgeon was right; you didn’t bargain on this, he thought.

      Surprisingly content with his lot, Hugh spread his overcoat and pulled the blanket over him. He woke up once in the night to check on her, but she was breathing deeply, with a