Stand and Deliver! by Anthony Barton

Author:Anthony Barton [Barton, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1927721334
Publisher: Bulmer Press
Published: 2019-05-16T04:00:00+00:00

DESCENDING the companion way steps was like floating down a river. She was in pain. Her father and her lover carried her down between them to the utter astonishment of the marine sentry on duty guarding her cabin, who flung open the door, his eyes like saucers and his mouth agape. The sentry was not the brightest of the ship’s marines. Perhaps he thought she was wounded?

‘I refuse to lie down to have a baby,’ she said firmly.

She remembered Margaret Dundas’s screams echoing through the governor’s residence on Prince of Wales Island. She was damned if she was going to caterwaul. Yes, this was her groaning time, her crying-out, the time for her family to eat their groaning-bread. But no two births were the same. There was no sure way to know for sure when her cramping would begin or how long it would last.

‘I am going to give birth standing up,’ she went on. ‘We have to make you look like Nelson, Tom. Pass the word for Anne. She is to make an eye patch for you. The right eye, mind you.’

‘I never saw Nelson wear an eyepatch to protect his blind eye. Are you sure I need a patch to play the part?’

‘Trust me, you need a patch. Linois will have heard of Nelson’s blind eye, but I doubt that he will have heard that Nelson refuses to wear an eyepatch. We have to make Linois think he is seeing an admiral with one arm and one eye. Understood?”

Tom nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’ He walked to the door and spoke to the bewildered marine. ‘Pass the word for Mrs. Keeper and the surgeon.’

The word was passed.

Anne arrived first, clutching her silk-lined sewing basket, gave a searching glance at Corrie, and then she caught sight of Tom dressed as Nelson, and burst out laughing. ‘Let me guess. You need an eyepatch.’ She was a quick thinker, Anne, adept in the art of espionage. ‘I’ll use a scrap of black velvet to make the patch as visible as possible, and eighteen inches of soft leather to hold it in place.’ Her quick fingers went to work, and in no time at all, so it seemed to Corrie, Tom’s disguise was complete.

Corrie clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Up on deck with you, Tom! Start acting the part! ‘Strut your stuff! Look as if you are giving orders! You have my permission to annoy the hell out of my brother!’

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