It Happened One Christmas: Christmas Eve Proposal / The Viscount's Christmas Kiss / Wallflower, Widow...Wife!

‘Sit down, Walthan,’ he snapped. ‘You’re an hour late. Let us begin.’

Mandy started watching for the sailing master as four o’clock came and darkness gathered. She had wanted to start watching sooner, but couldn’t think of a single excuse to offer Aunt Sal why the dining room, tables already set, needed her attention. That the dining room windows boasted the only view of the road had suddenly become her cross to bear.

In her matter-of-fact way, Aunt Sal had commissioned Mandy to tidy the master’s room after he left that morning. For no reason—she knew he was gone—Mandy had hesitated before the closed door, shy for no particular purpose.

The room was already tidy. Ben’s bed was made, his shaving gear neatly arranged, his hairbrush squared away on the bureau. Nothing was out of place, right down to that daunting book on his bedside table. She looked at it, shaking her head to see that he hadn’t even begun to read it. I’m wasting your time, she thought, then reminded herself that she had not forced him to sit with her while she ate last night. He had seemed genuinely pleased to while away an hour in the kitchen.

Mandy had straightened out imaginary wrinkles from the bed. She did the homely tasks the room required, dumping the night jar, emptying out the wash water, sniffing his strongly scented lemon soap, wondering if he slept on his back or his side. Exasperated with herself, Mandy had swept out the room, closed the door behind her and resolved not to think of the sailing master, a man she barely knew.

Her resolve lasted to four o’clock. Were the dreadful Walthans going to keep him slaving there until dark? Didn’t they have a Christmas party to attend somewhere? And so she pouted, earning her a glare from Aunt Sal.

To her relief, one of the tea room’s patrons of long standing came early for dinner, so Mandy could linger in the dining room. Never in the history of serving guests had one patron received such attention. She was pouring the old gentleman his second cup of tea when she saw the sailing master out the window.

He walked with purpose, still with that pleasant rolling stride that would probably brand him forever as a navy man. And, no, it wasn’t her imagination that he started walking faster, the closer he came to Mandy’s Rose.

‘Have a care, Mandy,’ her patron cautioned. ‘Don’t need tea in the saucer, too.’

She stopped pouring, hoping he wouldn’t mind bending closer to the table to sip from the cup before trying to lift it. Mandy gave what she hoped was a repentant smile, ready for a scold.

The scold never came. Dear Mr Cleverly just nodded as if she drowned his saucer every day.

‘Where’s your fine-looking fellow with the blue neck?’ he asked.

‘My fellow?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘Whatever could you mean? Oh, he’s not my…’ she started, then stopped as the doorbell tinkled and that fellow with the blue neck came into the dining room.

He looked like a man with a headache: frown lines between his eyes, a droop to his shoulders. He smiled at her, but it was a tired smile. Wordless, she held out her arms for his hat and cloak, which he relinquished with a sigh.

‘Long day,’ was all he said as he nodded to her, winced as though the movement hurt and headed for the stairs. In another moment, she heard the door close to his room.

‘I’d never willingly spend a day at Walthan Manor,’ Mr Cleverly said.

After he left, Mandy cleared the table and went into the kitchen, where Aunt Sal took one practised look and asked her what was the matter.

‘I think Ben has the headache. Must have been a wretched day,’ Mandy said.

‘You can take him some…’

Aunt Sal stopped. They heard footsteps on the stairs. Please just come in the kitchen, Mandy thought, then sighed when the kitchen door opened after a quiet knock.

He looked at Mandy, at Aunt Sal, then back to Mandy. ‘If you have something for a headache, give it to me now.’

Aunt Sal hurried to the shelf where she kept various remedies, some of a female nature, others not, while Mandy took Ben by the arm and sat him down at the kitchen table. Some mysterious leaves in the tea strainer, a little hot water, then honey, and her aunt set it before the sailing master. Like a dutiful child, he drank it down, then made such a face that Mandy almost laughed.

‘Good God, that must be effective,’ he managed to gasp.

‘Dinner might help,’ Mandy said. ‘Mr Cleverly just left, but he wanted to remind you about choir practice tonight.’

‘Mandy, I don’t believe our guest is up to singing and certainly not listening to St Luke’s choir,’ her aunt said.

‘I am made of sterner stuff than that,’ Ben assured them. ‘Believe me, it will be the highlight of an otherwise wretched day. Sit down, Amanda.’

She sat while Aunt Sal served him consommé and toast. When the line between his eyes grew less pronounced, Mandy followed soup with a little of last night’s beef roast mixed in with potatoes and turnips. He shook his head over anything else and leaned back in his chair.

‘Amanda, what a day…’ he began and told her about the late start, and Thomas Walthan’s vast dislike of all things mathematical. ‘This is a hopeless task. I despair of teaching him anything, particularly when he has no willingness to try.’

She listened to him, imagining that he was her husband, or at least her fiancé, who had come home after a trying day and just needed a listening ear. Although she knew she would never do it, she wondered what he would do if she took her turn with complaints about a late poultry delivery, and a soufflé that refused to rise to the occasion. She knew he would listen. How she knew, she could not have told a jury of twelve men; she just knew and the thought was a comfort.

With an embarrassed sigh, he told her about the humiliation of being served luncheon on a tray in the library, instead of at least in the breakfast room.

‘You’re not used to such Turkish treatment, are you?’ she asked. ‘I mean, if I were in charge of the sails and rigging and all that business that keeps a ship afloat, I’d expect a little deference.’

She saw the embarrassment in his eyes.

‘Am I too proud?’

‘Maybe a little,’ she told him, because he had asked. ‘You know what will be the outcome of this—my ignorant half-brother will still be a midshipman when he is my age and blame it on you.’

‘You, my dear Amanda, are a mighty judge of character,’ he said, which made her blush. ‘At your advanced age of…’

‘Twenty-six.’

He made a monumentally faked show of amazement, which suggested that his headache had receded. ‘Foot in the grave,’ he teased. He grew more serious almost at once. ‘Perhaps my continued incarceration in the library might prove useful to someone.’

‘How?’

‘I had finished a sandwich and had another half hour before Thomas told me he would leave his luncheon—must’ve been more than a sandwich for him.’

‘Poor man,’ she teased. ‘I dare say you have gone days and days without food.’

‘Aye to that. Anyway, I thought I might look around in what I was informed was old Lord Kelso’s library—apparently your father barely reads—and I sought out Euclid’s Elements.’

She made a face and Ben’s lips twitched. ‘I have noticed that you’re a bit of a reluctant school miss when I mention mathematics.’

‘I see no evidence that you have delved into that forbidding text on your night table,’ she retorted, then blushed. ‘I tidied your room, so I noticed. The pages aren’t slit.’

He put a hand to his chest. ‘Forbidding? I happen to enjoy the subject, for which everyone on the Albemarle, except your nincompoop half-brother, is supremely grateful.’ He leaned closer. ‘My cabin is invariably tidy. That is a consequence of close quarters at sea.’

She rose to clear away his dishes and he took her wrist in his light grasp. ‘It can wait, Amanda. I just like you to sit with me.’

‘Euclid’s Elements,’ she reminded him. ‘And?’

‘Sure enough, the old boy had a copy of that esteemed work. I opened it and look what was marking Chapter Eight.’

He pulled out a folded paper sealed with the merest dab of wax and held it out to her. ‘Behold.’

‘My goodness.’ She read, ‘“Codicil. In the event of my death, to be given to my solicitor.”’ She handed back the sheet as though it burned.

He took it. ‘“In the event”, indeed,’ he said. ‘We of the Royal Navy know death to be more of a certainty than an earl, evidently.’

‘It’s a turn of phrase,’ she said, happy to defend the old man who had always treated her kindly, once he overcame the initial shock of her birth.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘You have told me he was a good sort.’ He ducked his head like a little boy. ‘Should I apologise?’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She looked at the folded paper. ‘His solicitor is Mr Cooper and you’ll see him tonight, if you feel brave enough to chance the choir practice.’

‘My dear, I served at Trafalgar. I can manage a choir practice, headache or not.’

He gave her such a look then, the kind of look she thought she always wanted some day from a man.

‘If I may escort you?’

She nodded, suddenly too shy to speak.

‘Should I ask your aunt’s permission?’

‘Master Muir, you already know that I am six and twenty. No need for permission.’

‘You’ll point out Mr Cooper, will you?’

‘Certainly. I wonder, sir, were you tempted to break the seal and take a peak?’

‘Tempted, but I wouldn’t. I hope it’s good news for someone.’

‘Lord Kelso died two years ago. I assume the will was read at the time.’

‘Maybe there is a new wrinkle. I do like a mystery,’ the master said as he rubbed his hands together.

Mandy hurried through the rest of dinner, a model of efficiency and speed. She thought Aunt Sal must be having a silent chuckle over her niece’s obvious excitement over something as simple as a walk to the church for choir practice, but she kindly kept her own council.

Mandy hurried up the stairs for one look in front of the mirror, even though she knew the face peering back at her too well. She mourned over her freckles and nose that no poet would ever rhapsodise about, then dismissed the matter. Her figure was tidy, teetering just slightly on the edge of abundance, and Aunt Sal had always seen to a modest wardrobe of good material. ‘You will never shame anyone,’ Mandy said out loud, but softly.

She sat on her bed, thinking about the mother she had never known, but fully aware that without the love, generosity and courage of her maiden aunt, her life would have taken a difficult turn. She owed the Walthans nothing and that knowledge made her wink back tears and know that in church tonight, she could spend a minute just sitting in the pew, thinking of the Babe of Bethlehem and His lucky blessing of two parents—no, three—who loved Him.

‘Some day, dear Lord,’ she whispered, more vow than prayer, ‘some day the same for me.’

She looked up at a slight tap on her door. She opened it to see the sailing master, smelling nicely of the lemon soap she had sniffed that morning. She had no mother or father to give her advice or admonition, but Aunt Sal had raised her to think for herself. No one had to tell her she was putting herself into capable hands, even for something as prosaic as a saunter to St Luke’s. She just knew it.

One thing she could certainly say for this navy man: whatever his years at sea, he had a fine instinct for how to treat a lady, if such she could call herself. He helped her into her overcoat, even while she wished, for the first time ever, that the utilitarian garment was more à la mode. He swung on his boat cloak with a certain flair, even though he had probably done just that for years. How else did one don a cloak without flinging it about? But the hat, oh, my. It made him look a foot taller than he already was and more than twice as capable. Did navy men have any idea what dashing figures they cut? Mandy doubted it, especially since Ben seemed so unconcerned.

As usual, the winter mist was in plentiful supply. Years of experience with salt air and mist had trained Mandy to negotiate even the slickest cobblestones. The sailing master had no idea of her ability, evidently. Without a word, he took her arm and tucked it close to his body, until she couldn’t fall down. She almost told him she didn’t require such solicitation, but discovered that she liked being close to him.

‘It gets icy on the blockade,’ he said. ‘You should see the lubbers slip across the deck.’

‘We haven’t seen snow in several years,’ she said, wondering when she had ever resorted to talking about the weather with anyone. Perhaps after the master left, she would have to broaden her acquaintance beyond the poulterer, the butcher and the dairyman. How, she wasn’t sure, but other females did and she could, too.

‘Is Mandy’s Rose open on Christmas Day?’ he asked, slowing down so she could match his stride, a nicety she enjoyed.

‘No, but we’ll fix you a fine dinner,’ she said, surprised at how breathless she felt. Before she realised what she was doing, Mandy leaned into his arm. Her footing was firm and she had no particular reason for her action, except that she wanted to lean. The experience was comforting and she liked it. He offered no objection, except she thought she heard him sigh. Hopefully, she wasn’t pressing on an old wound.

Maybe there was mist, but she thought it highly unfair of St Luke’s Church to loom so quickly out of the dark and fog. She slowed down and the sailing master slowed down, too.

‘Girding your loins for an entrance?’ he teased. ‘Is it that kind of choir?’

She could laugh and tease, but why? He was here three weeks, then gone. ‘The choir is good enough. I just like walking with you.’

He was silent for a long moment and Mandy wondered if she had offended him.

‘Amanda, you need to get out more.’

‘Happen you’re right,’ she replied, honest to the core.

The other choir members were already gathered in the chapel. To a person, they all turned to look at Mandy and her escort. She smiled—these were her friends—and wondered at their uniformly serious expressions.

‘We leave our coats here?’ Ben whispered.

‘Back here in the cloakroom,’ she said and led the way. The glances continued and she wondered about them.

The sailing master didn’t appear to wonder. He hung up his cloak and hat and helped her, then leaned close to whisper, ‘I think I know how the wind blows, Amanda.’

‘What do you mean?’ she whispered back, feeling surprisingly conspiratorial for St Luke’s, where nothing ever happened except boring sermons.

‘If I am not mistaken, those are the very people who ate in Mandy’s Rose yesterday evening.’

She looked at him, a frown on her face, then felt herself grow too warm, not so much because he was standing close, which was giving her stomach a funny feeling, but because she understood. ‘Oh, my,’ she whispered. ‘They are looking you over. Poor, poor Ben.’ She leaned closer until her lips almost touched his ear. ‘Should I just assure them that you’ll be gone after Christmas?’

By the Almighty, she wanted to kiss that ear. An ear? Did people do that? It was probably bad enough that she was breathing in it, because he started to blush. A girl had to breathe, so she backed away.

He surprised her. ‘Amanda, whether you know it or not, you have an entire village looking after your welfare. I’m not certain I would ever measure up. It’s a good thing I’ll be here only three weeks.’

‘Nineteen days now,’ she whispered and couldn’t help tears that welled in her eyes. Thank the Lord the cloakroom was dark.

‘Your coat?’ he asked.

Silent, she handed it over, wishing she had never heard of choir practice, or Venable, or the Royal Navy. Why hadn’t she been born the daughter of an Indian chief in Canada?

The humour of her situation saved her, because it surfaced and she started to breathe normally again. Three weeks, Royal Navy, her stupid half-brother, sailing masters and blue tattoos: beyond a smile or two over her silliness and a resolve to be smarter, she’d have forgotten the whole matter in a month or two.

‘Choir practice awaits,’ she told him, indicating the chapel. ‘We’re singing our choirmaster’s own version of “O Come All Ye Faithful”, and he does need another low tenor. But not necessarily in the worst way.’

There. That was the right touch. The sailing master chuckled and she knew he had no idea what she had wanted to do in that cloakroom.

Feeling brave, she introduced Benneit Muir to most of the people who had already met him yesterday at Mandy’s Rose. She was casual, she was friendly. It only remained to introduce him to Mr Cooper, the solicitor, when the practice was over.

As it turned out, that wasn’t even necessary. As men will, they had been chatting with each other while the choirmaster laboured with his sopranos on their descant, ‘O come let us adore him’, and the men had nothing to do. Out of the corner of her eye, she had watched Ben hand over that mysterious folded sheet of paper to the solicitor, who stood directly behind him in the bass section.

They walked home with other singers going in the same direction. Again, Ben was quick to take her arm firmly. She knew better than to lean against his arm this time. Something told her that was a gesture best reserved for someone hanging around longer than nineteen more days.

Nineteen days! The thought made her turn solemn and then grumpy, but not until she was upstairs and in her room. She pressed her face into her pillow and resolved to be sensible and sober and mind her manners. After he left, the room across the hall would get dusty and that would be the end of lodgers. Mandy knew she would never suggest the matter again to her aunt.

Chapter Three

Good Lord, I wish you weren’t just across the hall, Ben thought.

Sleep did not come, but the idea of counting sheep just struck him as silly. He had slept through hurricanes and humid tropical nights. Once a battle was over and he had done all he could, he had no difficulty in closing his eyes and not waking until he was needed. The way things were shaping up tonight in this charming room, he was going to still be awake at two bells into the morning watch.

He lay on his side, staring at the door, wishing Amanda would open it. He knew she wouldn’t, not in a million years, but a man could hope. He lay there in utter misery, wondering how pleasant it would be to do nothing more than share a pillow with her. All the man-and-woman thing aside, how pleasant to chat with her in a dark room, talk over a day, plan for the next one. He felt his heart crack around the edges as he remembered the fun of bouncing into his parents’ room and snuggling between them. He wondered now if he had ever disturbed them and that made him chuckle.

Thank the Lord she had no inkling how badly he wanted to kiss her in that cloakroom. But, no, he had reminded her that he was only there for three weeks. She had murmured something after he said that, so soft he couldn’t be sure, into his bad ear. He pounded his pillow into shape and forced himself to consider the matter.

You just want a woman and any woman will do, he told himself. Yes, Amanda is charming, but you know better. She is far too intelligent to care about a seafarer. Where are your manners, Benneit Muir?

He thought of his near escape from the sister of the ship’s carpenter several years ago. True, Polly hadn’t possessed a fraction of Amanda’s charm, which made bidding goodbye an easy matter, when he returned to Plymouth. He had paced the midnight deck off the coast of France a few times, scolding himself, until that was the end of it. This would be no different.

He put on his usual good show over breakfast, even though he couldn’t overlook the smudges under Amanda’s eyes, as though she hadn’t slept much, either. Ben, your imagination borders on the absurd, he told himself as he ate eggs and sausage that might as well have been floor sweepings, for all he cared.

Amanda only made it worse by handing him his cloak and hat, and two sandwiches twisted in coated paper.

‘I think you need more than one sandwich on a tray,’ she said at the door. ‘I put in biscuits, too. Have a good day, Ben.’

He took the sweet gift, bowed to her and left Mandy’s Rose. By the time he reached Walthan Manor, he was in complete control of himself and feeling faintly foolish.

To his surprise, Thomas was ready for him, a frown on his face, but awake, none the less. Ben thought about a cutting remark, but discarded the notion. No sense in being petty and cruel to a weak creature, not when he himself had exhibited his own stupidity. Ben explained charting a course, and explained it again until a tiny light went on somewhere in the back of Thomas Walthan’s brain.

Together, they worked through two course chartings. By the second attempt, Thomas nearly succeeded. A little praise was in order.

‘Tom, I think you could understand this, with sufficient application,’ he said.

The midshipman gave Ben a wary look, perhaps wondering if the sailing master was serious. Ben felt a pang at Tom’s expression and an urge to examine his own motives in teaching. Was he trying to flog his own disappointments, show off, or was he trying to teach? The matter bore consideration; maybe now was the time.

Sitting there with Tom Walthan, inept midshipman, Ben took a good, inward look at himself in the library of Walthan Manor, of all places, and didn’t like what he saw. He was proud and probably seemed insufferable to a confused lad. He had a question for the midshipman, a lad from a titled, wealthy family.

‘Tell me something, Thomas, and I speak with total candour. Do you like the Royal Navy? Answer me with equal candour, please.’

Tom’s expression wavered from disbelief to doubt, to a thoughtful demeanour that Ben suspected mirrored his own.

‘I…I am not so certain that I do,’ Tom said finally. He blushed, hesitated and had the temerity to ask the sailing master his own question. ‘Do you, sir?’

Tom’s unexpected courage impressed Ben. He thought a long moment and nodded. ‘I do, lad. The navy was a stepping stone for me. My father was a fisherman and we lived in Kirkcudbright. He lives there still. I wanted more than a fishing smack. I discovered a real facility with mathematics, geometry in particular.’

‘I hate geometry,’ Tom said, with some heat.

‘It shows. Do you like the ocean?’

With no hesitation this time, Tom shook his head. He stared at the ink-smudged paper in front of him. ‘Not even a little.’

‘I do. I love wind in sails and I feel I am greatly needed in this time of national alarm. For all that I am a Scot, I do care for England.’

Tom saw that for the gentle joke it was and relaxed.

‘Then why, lad? Why? Could you find a better way to serve your country? You’ll be an earl some day, I have no doubt. Why the sea?’

Tom said nothing for a long while. ‘He thinks it would make me a man,’ Thomas said with considerable bitterness. ‘I must do as he bids.’

‘Must you?’ Ben asked. He felt suddenly sorry for the miserable young man before him. ‘Could you find the courage to tell your father that the navy will not do for you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I hope you will.’ Ben went to the window, turning deliberately to face Venable. He idly wondered what Mandy was doing, then shook his head, exasperated with himself. He turned back. ‘I could pound this maths into your brain, Thomas, with a little help from you, but here is what I fear—some day you might be a lieutenant on a quarterdeck and you might make a fearsome mistake. Men’s lives, lad, men’s lives.’

Thomas nodded, his lips tight together. ‘I don’t think I can sit here any longer today,’ he said. ‘I need to…’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know what I need, sir.’