The Sailor Without a Sweetheart, page 1
The Sailor Without a Sweetheart
Katherine Grant
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Katie Flanagan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: katherine@katherinegrantromance.com
Cover design by Julia Gerbach
ISBN 9798986125992 (ebook)
ISBN 9798990252202 (paperback)
www.katherinegrantromance.com
Contents
What to Expect from The Sailor Without a Sweetheart
Also on Kobo by Katherine Grant
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Next In The Series: The Countess Without Conviction
About the Author
Thanks for reading!
What to Expect from The Sailor Without a Sweetheart
Is love worth giving a second chance?
Six years ago, Amy Lamplugh decided not to elope with Nate Preston. Ever since, she has been working hard to convince herself she was right to choose her family over Nate.
Now, Nate is back. After an illustrious career as a naval captain, he faces a court martial for disobeying orders while fighting the slave trade. He accepts an invitation to await the trial at a country estate outside of Portsmouth - and discovers he is suddenly neighbors with Amy.
Nate is shocked to find that Amy didn’t end up marrying someone rich and titled. Instead, she is a glorified companion to her younger sister - and is clearly battling some unnamed illness.
Thrown together by circumstances outside their control, Nate and Amy try to be friends. Soon, it becomes clear that their feelings for each other never died.
Has anything changed, or are they destined for heartbreak once more?
For content advisories, please visit www.katherinegrantromance.com/contentadvisories.
Also on Kobo by Katherine Grant
The Countess Chronicles:
The Ideal Countess
New Year's Masquerade
The Duchess Wager
The Husband Plot
The Prestons:
The Baron Without Blame
The Viscount Without Virtue
The Governess Without Guilt
The Charmer Without a Cause
The Sailor Without a Sweetheart
The Countess Without Conviction
Northfield Hall Novellas
(an unordered series for the mood reader)
The Hellion of Drury Lane
It's In Her Kiss
Three Nights With Her Husband
Letters to Her Love
Plus, a free short story, The Spinster, available exclusively at www.katherinegrantromance.com
Prologue
Swanhill House, 10 miles northeast of Portsmouth, England
Late summer 1814
The hedges poked Nate Preston in the back as he waited, but he hardly even noticed.
He was too excited. Anxious. Excited. A little anxious, but even more excited.
At any moment, the Honorable Amy Lamplugh would emerge from the great house at the end of the drive. He could picture her now: hugging her arms around her chest, sticking to the shadows as she hurried through the dusk, a smile igniting across her lips—no, her whole face!—when she spotted him.
She wouldn’t have much. This was to be a proper elopement, done under the cover of darkness and in disguise. They would travel to London by stagecoach as a working couple. They would get themselves a room in an inn, pretending they were already married, until Nate could procure a special license from the archbishop at Lambeth Palace.
And then it wouldn’t be a fiction or a wish or a dream at all.
Amy would be his wife, and he her husband, and the rest of their lives would be decided.
First, however, she had to show up.
Nate shifted his weight. He had been waiting for half an hour or so; when he’d first taken his position in the hedge at the edge of Swanhill House’s park, the sun had shone long golden rays across the summer fields. Now the sky burned orange in a last gasp of sunset. Before long, they would have only the light of the waxing moon to guide them to the coaching inn.
It didn’t concern Nate that Amy hadn’t yet emerged. Leaving home was a production even when one was doing it with the support of one’s family and servants. Doing so in secret required more time and stealth to pack one’s bag, change into travel clothes, and sneak out without a single person in the household noticing.
His only fear was that she would be discovered and locked in a room. Lord Warre, her father, had already refused to give his permission for their marriage. The gall of you, boy, to even ask. What have you to recommend yourself? You are eighteen, about to disappear on a naval ship to be killed in this war, and you are a Preston. That last article—Nate’s family name—Warre had spit out with a sneer of disgust. His saliva had landed on Nate’s cheek.
It turned out that Lord Warre considered Nate’s father, the radical Lord Martin Preston, a sworn enemy. Nate could only guess it was because the Prestons had turned their estate into a safe haven for any Briton and shared their profits with all who labored there; or perhaps it was Papa’s endless crusade against slavery; Lord Warre’s hatred might even stem from the family’s insistence on eschewing anything imported from the colonial empire.
Whatever Lord Warre’s reasons, it was not the first time anyone had denigrated Nate’s family to his face. It was only the first time that such a person had wielded so much power over him.
Nate didn’t care, so long as Amy would still marry him. And—when he had found her after that interview and told her its disastrous outcome—she had promised him she loved him no matter who his family was.
As he loved her, despite Lord Warre. There was no end to what Nate loved about Amy. They had met at a musicale at the Greenwood Assembly Hall in Portsmouth, just a week after Nate had first arrived as a new lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Her rosy cheeks and curved body—especially the parts a gentleman didn’t mention—had caught his attention first; then they had spoken, and her wit had carried away his heart. She could turn any situation, even the worst, into a moment worth smiling over. She was smart, too, with a natural curiosity that meant she always seemed to ask him just the right questions.
When Nate was with Amy, even if they were on opposite sides of the room, his whole being elevated to another plane. A better plane. She was his soul mate, his helpmeet, the person whose spirit had been cleaved from his, and now they could spend the rest of their lives reunited.
No matter that he was only eighteen. Papa would give his consent for the marriage license, if Nate had to spend a whole night debating him for it. After all, Papa had finally helped procure Nate his commission after years of trying to dissuade him, and Papa believed in love far more than he believed in the Royal Navy.
Nor did it matter that as soon as they married, Nate would be off on a ship for months at a time and Amy would be waiting at port. Their paths would be joined, their hearts complete.
If only she could escape the confines of her father’s house.
At last, he spotted a figure hurrying down the gravel drive. Nate’s excitement surged. He wiped sweat from his palms onto his trousers. He fixed the perch of his hat atop his brown hair, ensuring it was at that just-right angle that he happened to know best flattered his face. He spit out the mint leaves he had been chewing to freshen his breath.
This was the moment. The start of the rest of his life. And his whole body was ready to meet it.
He stepped out of the hedge to greet Amy. In the same moment, the figure got close enough for him to see. For his heart to stop.
It wasn’t Amy at all.
It was her friend, Miss Henriette Curry.
Nate forgot to breathe for the ten steps it took for Miss Curry to draw within speaking distance of him. “Lieutenant Preston.”
“Is Miss Lamplugh…” Nate didn’t know how to ask what he wanted to know. Was Amy safe? Was she unhurt? Were their plans discovered? “Is she at liberty?”
Miss Curry stretched out her arm, offering a folded letter. Still, she did not step closer, as if afraid to get within reach of him.
As if he were a villain.
So long as he could marry Amy, Nate didn’t care if Miss Curry thought him the worst scoundrel in all of England.
He took care not to alarm her as he stepped forward, accepted the letter, and retreated. The orange of sunset had given way to gray dusk; it was almost too dark to read.
“She asked me to say most emphatically that she is sorry, and that she wishes you well,” Miss Curry said. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must get back.”
Nate d
It might not have been until a week later when his ship, HMS True, departed from Portsmouth and Amy still did not appear at the docks to beg him to stay that Nate believed it.
Miss Amy Lamplugh had forsaken him for good.
Chapter One
Selsea Park Dower House, 10 miles northwest of Portsmouth
April 1820 (Six years later)
In a way, it was a relief to be deposited at her sister’s house like a crate of wine—aged, creaking, and waiting unendingly for someone to finally open her seal. Amy had spent the last six months with her father and his new wife, Cora, and if she had to remain with them at Swanhill House for even another week, she might find herself committing step-matricide.
Then again, Amy wasn’t sure that going from inane gossip about Britain’s finest peers to spending day and night tending her sister’s two young children was really trading up.
She told herself to feel relief anyhow, especially as Pater and Cora spent the whole half-hour ride from Swanhill to Selsea Park discussing exactly what Cora would wear in London to each ball. The green silk, they agreed, was too pale for a married woman; the dark maroon did not suit her on its own but would make her glow when ornamented with the proper jewels. Pater, of course, had opinions on which jewels would most make her look like a viscountess; diamonds were to be reserved for only the most formal occasions, and pearls were too common, but he would purchase her more amethysts, emeralds, and especially jade to show off her slender, delicate, and perfect neck.
Amy tightened the scarf tied just below her chin, which hid the goiter that seemed to grow larger and more unusual every day. She was glad not to be going to London, where she had no close friends and where she was—at age twenty-eight, her bloom of youth long since lost—of interest to neither the bachelors, the rakes, nor even the matrons of Society with a capital S. She would much prefer to be at Mary’s, where she was very much of interest to her nephews. Even if every single moment of her day would be accounted for, at least at Selsea Park Amy felt useful. Sometimes, on a good morning, she could even still have a meaningful conversation with Mary.
And she wouldn’t have to see Pater looking at Cora in that particular way, which she did not care to parse for its ratio of lust to love.
They arrived at the dusty court of the dower house—where Mary lived with her husband Fred, four-year-old Charles, and two-year-old Christopher—just in time for the boys to come tumbling out the door in a whirl of fisticuffs. Pater took one look at them, his very own grandchildren, and proclaimed, “My legs feel too weak to leave the carriage. You can see to yourself, Amy?”
She could. Of course she could. In a way, it felt like Amy had been seeing to herself for an entire decade, if not her entire life.
She pressed a kiss to Pater’s hand, then to Cora’s, then jumped out of the coach—ignoring the step entirely. The coachman, God bless him, was already untying her trunk, so she could go straight to her nephews and tear them apart. “Charles, Kit, give your Aunt Amy a kiss.”
The morning disappeared in a blur after that. The boys were delighted to see her; Charles wanted to show her every toy of his in the house, even though she had been there only a week since. Kit clung to her skirts with fingers that were surprisingly hard to pry off. Mary was abed, for she was in the family way again and it always sapped her of the energy to do anything except vomit. The housemaid, Iris, was so happy to let Amy take the boys that she managed to remain invisible; poor Cook was overseeing a luncheon stew and couldn’t take her eyes off the fire. And Fred, like any good father and husband, was nowhere to be found.
It wasn’t until the grandfather clock chimed two that Amy managed to steal a moment to settle herself in. The boys were napping; Mary was napping; Cook was napping; Iris, by Amy’s guess, was probably napping.
Amy didn’t take a nap. She wouldn’t have been able to sleep even if she wanted to. Her heart palpitations were back. Not at the rapid pace that could overwhelm her and force her to sit down, but fast enough that she couldn’t possibly rest. She went to her room instead. Compared to her room at Swanhill House it was embarrassingly modest, with only an armoire instead of a dressing room, a quilt instead of a silk coverlet, and a single window that looked out at the kitchen garden instead of her Swanhill view of an open park and glimmering lake.
Still, it was a room she could call her own, with a door she could shut and lock. Which she took advantage of that very moment. Someone—probably dear John Coachman—had managed to bring up her trunk, so she set about unpacking. Four good day dresses and two evening gowns, for the inevitable supper invitations by Fred’s parents to the great house, were hung in the armoire. Her petticoats, scarves, fichus, shawls, stockings, garters, and hair ribbons were tucked away in drawers. A string of pearls, a pair of sapphire earrings, and a ring were placed in their locked case at the bottom of the armoire.
And then there were her medicines. Those went on the stand beside her table: dried seaweed, of which she took a portion every morning; the Cordial Balm of Gilead that she kept on hand for palpitations; and a stomachic essence for tremors. Evidence of her illness, no matter how little notice anyone else took of it. No matter how poorly the physician could define it.
How she wished she could throw the whole lot into the chamber pot for Iris to clear out in the morning.
Moments like these jarred Amy. When she was in transition, defining her life by the things she took with her, it felt like she had suddenly put on a new set of spectacles. Gone was the Amy who was settled as dutiful daughter and invaluable sister; in sharp focus, she saw the life she had chosen. A fading woman, who had never left her father’s protection nor traveled beyond Southern England, whose own family didn’t have the energy to care that for five years she had been growing thinner and weaker. A woman who, when she inevitably slipped away in the next decade or so, might be mourned only by her two nephews.
Always, she wondered what he would make of it, if he saw her.
And always, she cursed herself for still caring.
For she was sure that wherever he was in the world, Nathaniel Preston wasn’t still thinking of her.
The boys stirred in their room down the hall, jolting Amy back to her usual self. She retied the scarf around her neck—for Kit had the worst habit of fondling the lump below her chin if she allowed him to see it—and went to see to them. She got there just as Charles prowled towards his brother’s bed; she caught the four-year-old in one arm and scooped up Kit in the other and sat them on either side of her for a story.
They were just about to find out what happened to the great big lion who ate a tiny peapod when Lady Olivia Bremridge, their grandmother, called up the stairs, “Miss Lamplugh, are you here?”
At which the boys leapt from the bed and raced down with cries of “Grandmama, grandmama, grandmama!”
Amy followed them without their hurry. She met Mary, who looked rested yet exhausted, at the landing. “I thought I’d try to join you for tea,” Mary explained, taking Amy’s arm for balance without waiting for it to be offered.
For the most part, Amy couldn’t blame Mary for being so out of sorts. Being enceinte didn’t suit her the way it did some women; she was incessantly sick to the stomach, plagued by headaches and cramping in the back, or otherwise inconvenienced. And yet she and Fred did insist on having marital relations that resulted in the condition. The first two, Amy had understood to be the course of nature.
This third one seemed rather unnecessary, for all the trouble it caused.
Lady Olivia had the boys settled at the formal dining table with plates of tea cake. She had, as usual, brought a footman with her from the great house to assist in serving; he pulled out a seat first for Mary, then for Amy. Mary poured tea, which looked more red than black for how weak it was.
