Marrying the Royal Marine Read Online Free PDF Page A

perhaps she would live, after all.

    When she woke again, it was full light and the Colonel was gone. She sat up more cautiously this time, pleased when the ship did not spin. She wasn’t sure what to do, especially without her spectacles, except that there they were in their little case, next to the pillow. What a nice man , she thought, as she put them on.
    She looked around. He had also brought over her robe, which she had originally hung on a peg in her cabin. I think he wants me gone from his cabin , she told herself, and heaven knew, who could blame him?
    As for that, he didn’t. Colonel Junot had left a folded note next to her robe on the end of the cot, with ‘Brandon’ scrawled on it. She couldn’t help but smile at that, wondering why on earth he had decided to call her Brandon. All she could assume was that after the intimacy they had been through together, he thought Miss Brandon too formal, but Polly too liberal. Whatever the reason, she decided she liked it. She could never call him anything but Colonel, of course.
    She read the note to herself: Brandon, a loblolly boy is scrubbing down your cabin and will light sulphur in it. The stench will be wicked for a while, so I moved your trunk into the wardroom. Captain Adney’s steward will bring you porridge and fortified wine, which the surgeon insisted on.
    He signed it ‘Junot’, which surprised her. When he introduced himself, he had pronounced his name ‘Junnit’, but this was obviously a French name. That was even stranger, because he had as rich a Lowland Scottish accent as she had ever heard. ‘Colonel, Brandon thinks you are a man of vast contradictions,’ she murmured.
    She climbed carefully from the sleeping cot, grateful the cannon was there to clutch when the ship shivered and yawed. I will never develop sea legs , she told herself. I will have to become a citizen of Portugal and never cross the Channel again . When she could stand, she pulled on her robe and climbed back into the sleeping cot, surprised at her exhaustion from so little effort. She doubled the pillow so she could at least see over the edge of the sleeping cot, and abandoned herself to the swaying of the cot, which was gentler this morning.
    She noticed the Colonel’s luggage, a wooden military trunk with his name stenciled on the side: Hugh Philippe d’Anvers Junot. ‘And you sound like a Scot,’ she murmured. ‘I must know more.’
    Trouble was, knowing more meant engaging in casual conversation with a dignified officer of the King’s Royal Marines, one who had taken care of her so intimately last night. He had shown incredible aplomb in an assignment that would have made even a saint look askance. No. The Perseverance might have been a sixth-rate and one of the smaller of its class, but for the remainder of the voyage—and it couldn’t end too soon—she would find a way to avoid bothering Colonel Junot with her presence.
    In only a matter of days, they would hail Oporto, and the Colonel would discharge his last duty to her family by handing her brother-in-law a letter from his former chief surgeon. Then, if the Lord Almighty was only half so generous as both Old and New Testaments trumpeted, the man would never have to see her again. She decided it wasn’t too much to hope for, considering the probabilities.
    So much for resolve. Someone knocked on the flimsy-framed door. She held her breath, hoping for the loblolly boy.
    ‘Brandon? Call me a Greek bearing gifts.’
    Not by the way you roll your r’s , she thought, wondering if Marines were gluttons for punishment. She cleared her throat, wincing. ‘Yes, Colonel?’
    He opened the door, carrying a tray. ‘As principal idler on this voyage, I volunteered to bring you food, which I insist you eat.’
    If he was so determined to put a good face on all this, Polly decided she could do no less. ‘I told you I have sworn off food for the remainder of my life, sir.’
    ‘And I have chosen to ignore you,’ he