Shipmate: A Royal Regard Prequel Novella by Mariana Gabrielle Page A

father and both brothers stared with
exactly the same dropped-mouth look. For the first time any of them
could remember, she had directly defied Jasper.
    The first to gather himself to speak was
John, who employed a reasonable, if slightly pleading, tone. “You
have to, Sissy.”
    “Don’t indulge her missishness, John,”
Jasper snarled, dropping his boots heavily on the scarred wood
floor. “She’ll do it because I say so, or I’ll slap the mouth off
her face.”
    John wheedled, “You don’t want to be left
with no husband when you could be a baroness.”
    Bella set her head at the angle she imagined
a duchess might use when talking down to her servants. “I have no
wish to be a baroness.”
    The sly look John sent her way spoke volumes
about what she might expect as the wife of a man who outranked
their father—some small measure of power, and increased demands to
ensure their support. She stared directly at a bright square of
wallpaper where a painting had once hung, before everything in the
house had been sold, one item at a time. She could acknowledge no
one, or her challenge would be met swiftly with terrible
punishment. Not that it wouldn’t be anyway.
    If Lord Holsworthy acted even remotely like
the baronet who had sired her, she would prefer to marry a night
soil man than a nobleman. She would rather be buried alive in a
coal mine than be joined to a man like the one eyeing her like
excrement left on his armchair.
    “I hope, at least, you have agreed he will
marry me,” she said in her most high-handed Cousin-Charlotte voice,
“not ruin me in pursuit of his own pleasures.”
    Jasper’s cheek twitched and the throbbing
vein in his forehead carried a familiar implication. “I will have
none of your tempers. You’ll do whatever he asks of you, vows or
no. It is no business of mine why he wants you, nor why he insists
on gallivanting all over England with you in tow before you board
his ship. Don’t know what he’s about. Plenty of dressmakers and hat
shops in Bath.” Jasper continued with a wheezing chuckle, “Not that
dressing you up will make you any easier to bed. Better to buy a
burlap sack so he don’t have to look at you.”
    “He is older than you are!”
    Bella realized her mistake before his eyes
could even narrow. Her father’s vanity precluded any mention of his
sagging jowls and dull, grey hair. She glanced over at John, but he
just raised his eyebrows, took the slightest step back and turned
attention to his snuffbox. Jeremy, on the other hand, smirked, eyes
sparking with the same excitement he might show when a pair of dogs
attacked a fox.
    Her father continued, “All the better to
keep you in line. Not like another offer from a rich man is going
to fall from the sky—or any offer at all. Can’t say why he wants
such an ugly girl in his bedchamber, but he’s willing to pay for
the privilege of taking you off my hands, so I say let him have
you.”
    “You’ve… You’ve sold me?” Handing her
off to a man who would not ask for a dowry was one thing, outright
purchase another.
    Jeremy chimed in, “I know a brothel that
would buy her, since she’s still a virgin.” He turned to Bella,
“You are still a virgin?”
    She snapped, “Of course I’ve not—”
    At the same time, her father rejoined, “You
think any man in his right mind wants to defile her ?”
    “I think plenty of men won’t give a damn
what she looks like,” Jeremy offered, “if they have a chance at her
maidenhead without having to take her home. Even better if she’s
squeamish.” He nodded his head, convincing himself further by the
second. “Might be we could get just as much from an abbey as the
cit is willing to pay. Maybe more if we bargain.”
    Humiliation and anger triggered a blush, and
Bella sucked in a breath; the males in her family didn’t make
threats they wouldn’t carry out. Her twisting fingertips clenched
into fists, nearly as tight as the knots in her stomach and throat,
just