The Sea & The Storm

one

I wasn't that kind of girl. Not from the start, not ever.

I never realized it more than now, walking along the dirt road with not a penny to my name and a sack filled with mittens and odd change.

A carriage passed me by without a backward glance. For once in my life, I was completely invisible. They didn't give a damn about my last name or who my grandfather is-was.

But I didn't think it mattered all that much. Rich or poor, I still didn't think to bite my tongue despite all of my mother's efforts. I didn't think much of manners either, apparently. According to Lady Parnell, I ought to be called "a beast." She meant wild and untamed, I knew. Those old gossips only stopped to think first about my connections and that shut them up quickly enough.

Now, I had none, or all of them were pretty much useless.

My grandfather passed and my father was...

No. I shut it out. I didn't want to think what my father was or what he had become, rather.

That was behind me, miles behind me, in that greying estate in London. It's only redeeming quality was that it used to be a palace in its best days. Back when my particular Braye line wasn't the name whispered behind closed doors to mean my father's scandal.

I inhaled a deep breath of sharp spring air. Rain was coming, meaning I needed to find Uncle Henry and soon.

I was traveling on foot, to my uncle's home on the coast. It was more like running away than anything. My brother had abandoned my family years ago for the Royal Navy. He left me to tend to my father by myself.

I didn't leave, I couldn't convince myself to. His health was dwindling quickly. Doctor Thornton told me the obvious: it was the alcohol running through his veins like water itself.

It was a miracle a few weeks ago when my father handed me a pouch, nearly sober for the first time in a while, with enough to make my way to Lancashire. The famous Braye pride filled his eyes and there was an ounce of the man he used to be, the father I adored.

My mother's eldest brother would take me. They'd offered years before when my mother passed, but my father was too proud. He'd not be having Jamie or I shipped away to some relative. Father drove all of our "nosy, good for nothing busybody kinsmen" away, insisting that he would care for us himself.

I believed him, like I always did. Foolishly.

I waited till the carriage rounded the bend into the small town up ahead, then I pulled up the tattered breeches and drooping shirt I had borrowed from my older brother. It was the only thing that suit the weeks travel, and this way I didn't worry at all about being harassed by strange men.

Dusk was setting in, and like hell would I be subjected to a miserable night, cold and wet and without a roof over my head, all because of something I'd already left behind.

Oh, focus, for god's sake, Natie. Don't be such a ninny.

___________________

The town was a poor one, or rather there was a clear divide between the filthy rich and the starving poor.

Fishing and mining seemed to be their livelihood, a fact I'd guessed based off of the sheer number of mills, blacksmiths, and docks.