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

‘No surprise,’ Aunt Sal said as she removed her apron.

‘The posting house is too noisy and he wants quiet to read, when he’s not tutoring. We have that extra room upstairs. What do you think?’

‘A room inches deep in dust.’ Aunt Sal took another peek out the door. ‘We don’t even know him.’

Mandy considered the situation. She had never been one to cajole and beg for things, mainly because she had everything she needed. She didn’t intend to start now, but there was something about the master that she liked.

‘No, we don’t know him,’ Mandy said, picking her way through uncharted water. ‘Maybe he would murder us in our beds. Or shinny down the drainpipe and leave us with a bill.’

‘That seems doubtful, dearest. He just wants peace and quiet? There’s plenty of that here.’

Mandy said no more; she knew her aunt. After a moment in thought, Aunt Sal gave her another long look.

‘On an hour’s acquaintance, you think you know him?’

‘No,’ Mandy replied. She had been raised to be honest. ‘But you always say I am a good judge of character. And besides, didn’t you just encourage me?’

Aunt Sal folded her arms. ‘That chicken is coming home to roost,’ she said. ‘Remind me not to be so soft-hearted in future.’

‘It could also be that I am tired of my half-brother riding roughly over everyone,’ Mandy said softly.

Aunt Sal put her hands on Mandy’s shoulders and they touched foreheads. ‘Should I have started Mandy’s Rose in another village?’

‘No, Aunt. This is our home, too.’

Aunt Sal kissed Mandy’s forehead. ‘Let’s go chat with the sailing master.’

Here comes the delegation, Ben thought, as the door to the kitchen swung open. At least I’m not on a lee shore yet.

This could only be Aunt Sal. He took her in at a glance, a woman past her prime, but lively still and obviously concerned about her niece. He knew he was looking at a careful parent. He got to his feet, swaying a little because he still didn’t have the hang of decks—no, floors—that remained stationary.

She came closer and gave a little nod of her head, which he returned with a slight bow. She moved one of the chairs closer from the nearest table, but Mandy sat at the same table where he had eaten that enormous lunch. That gesture told him whose side Mandy was on and he thought he might win this. It was a game he had never played before, not with war and eighteen years at sea.

‘I am Sally Mathison, proprietor of this tea room. My niece tells me you are looking for quiet lodgings for a few weeks.’

‘Aye,’ he replied. ‘I am Benneit Muir, sailing master of the Albemarle, in dry dock near Plymouth. I’ll be here three weeks, trying to cram mathematics into young Thomas Walthan’s brainbox. It will be a thankless task, I fear, and I would most appreciate a quiet place at night, the better to endure my days.’

‘Is he paying you?’ Sal Mathison asked.

‘Aunt!’ Mandy whispered.

‘No, it’s a good question,’ he said, quietly amused. ‘He is paying me fifty pounds.’

He could tell from the lady’s expression that the tide wasn’t running in his favour, despite Mandy’s soft admonition. Honesty meant more honesty.

‘I’m tired, Miss Mathison. I often just stay with the ship during dry dock, because I am invariably needed because my ship’s duties are heavy. Scotland is too far to go for Christmas, and besides, my mother is dead and my brothers live in Canada. I…I wanted something different. And, no, I do not need the money. I bank regularly with Brustein and Carter in Plymouth.’ That should be enough financial soundness, even for a careful aunt, he thought.

‘I was rude to ask,’ Sal Mathison said.

‘I rather believe you are careful,’ he replied, then put his hands palm up on the table, petitioning her. ‘Just a quiet place. I don’t even know if you have a room to let.’

Hands in her lap, Aunt Sal looked him in the eye for a long moment and he looked back. This wasn’t a lady to bamboozle, not that he had any skill along those lines. He could only state his case.

‘I don’t drink, beyond a daily issue of grog on board. I don’t smoke, because that is dangerous on a ship. I mind my own business. I am what you see before you and, by God, I am tired.’

He knew without looking that Mandy’s eyes would soften at that, because he was a good study of character, a valuable trait in a master. It was Sal Mathison he had to convince.

Her face softened. ‘Right now, the room is thick in dust. It used to be my mother’s room, Mandy’s grandmama.’ Her eyes narrowed and he knew the matter hinged on the next few seconds. She nodded, and he knew he had won. ‘Two shillings a week—that includes your board—paid in advance.’

Happy for the first time in a long while, he withdrew six shillings from his pocket. He handed them to her. ‘I can dust and clean, Miss Mathison.’

‘I’ll let you. Mandy can help. I have to start the evening meal.’ She stood up and he got to his feet as well. She indicated that he follow them into the kitchen.

‘Go upstairs, Mandy, and open those windows. We need to air it out.’

Mandy did as she was bid. Curious, he watched her go to an inside door which must lead to stairs. There it was again—she looked back at him for the briefest moment. He felt another care slide from his shoulders. He looked at Miss Mathison, knowing what was coming.

‘Under no circumstances are you to take advantage of my niece, Master Muir,’ she told him. ‘She is my most precious treasure. Do you understand?’

‘I do.’

‘Then follow me. I have a broom and dustpan.’

He reported upstairs with said broom and accoutrements, left them with Mandy after a courtly bow, then went below deck again for mop and bucket. Mandy’s hair was tied back in a scarf that displayed the even planes of her face. He thought she was past her first bloom, but she still radiated youth. On another day, it might have made him sour to think of his own missed opportunities, thanks to the Beast from Corsica. Today, he felt a little younger than he knew he was. Maybe he could blame such good tidings on the season.

But there she stood, broom in hand, lips pursed.

‘Uh, I paid six shillings for this room,’ he teased, which made her laugh.

‘Master Muir…’ she began.

‘I am Ben if you are Mandy.’

‘Very well, sir.’

‘Ben.’

‘Ben! I’ll dust and then you sweep.’

She dipped the cloth in the mop water, wringing it out well. He watched her tackle the nightstand by the bed, so he did the same to the much taller bureau. He took off his uniform coat and loosened his neckcloth, then tackled the clothes press.

‘Why haven’t you let out this excellent room before?’ he asked, dusting the top of the window sill. He looked out. God be praised, there was a view of the ocean.

‘Auntie and I rattle along quite well without lodgers,’ she told him. ‘Besides, it was Grandmama’s only two years ago, when she died.’ Mandy stopped dusting and caressed the headboard. ‘What a lovely gram she was.’

She started dusting again, whistling under her breath, which Ben found utterly charming. She laughed and said, ‘It’s “Deck the Halls”. You may whistle along, too.’

To his astonishment, he did precisely that. When she sang the last verse in a pretty soprano, complete with a retard on the final la-la-la-la, he sang, too. ‘Do you know “The Boar’s Head” carol?’ he asked.

She did and he mopped through that carol, too, with an extra flourish of the mop on the last ‘Reddens laudes Domino’.

‘We have some talent,’ she said, which made him sit on the bed and laugh. ‘Move now,’ she said, her eyes still bright with fun. ‘The dusty sheets go downstairs.’

He waited in the room until she came back up with clean sheets and they made the bed together.

‘Aunt Sal thinks we’re too noisy,’ Mandy said and she squeezed the pillow into a pillow slip with delicate embroidery, nothing he had ever seen in a public house before. ‘I told her that you will come with me to choir practice tomorrow night at St Luke’s.’ She peered around the pillow, her eyes small again, which he knew meant she was ready to laugh. ‘You will, won’t you? Our choir needs another low tenor in the worst way.’ She plumped the pillow on the bed. ‘Come to think of it, most of what our choir does is in the worst way.’

‘I will be honoured to escort you to St Luke’s,’ Ben replied and meant every syllable.

She gave a little curtsy, and her eyes lingered on his neck, more visible now with the neckcloth loose. He knew she was too polite to ask. He pointed to the blue dots that started below his ear and circled around his neck.

‘The result of standing too close to gunpowder,’ he told her.

‘I hope you never do that again,’ she said. It touched him that she worried about an injury he knew was a decade old.

‘No choice, Mandy. We were boarding a French frigate. As a result, I don’t hear too well out of this ear and my blue tattoo goes down my back.’

She coloured at that bit of information, and Ben knew he should have stopped with the deaf ear.

‘I pinched my finger in the door once,’ she said. ‘I believe we have led different lives.’

‘I know we have,’ he agreed, ‘but I’m ready for Christmas on land.’

‘That we can furnish,’ she assured him, obviously happy to change the subject, which he found endearing. ‘Help me with the coverlet now.’

After the addition of towels and a pitcher and bowl, Mandy declared the room done. ‘Your duffel awaits you downstairs, Master Muir,’ she said, ‘and I had better help with dinner. We’ll eat at six of the clock.’

He followed her down the stairs, retrieved his duffel and walked back upstairs alone. He opened the door and looked around, vaguely dissatisfied. The room was empty without Mandy.

‘You sucked all the air out of the place,’ he said out loud. ‘For six shillings, I should get air.’

Chapter Two

‘Mandy, you’re moping,’ Aunt Sal observed in a tiny break in the busy routine of dinner, made busier tonight because the vicar and his wife and half of St Luke’s congregation seemed to have found their way to Mandy’s Rose.

‘Am not,’ she replied, with her usual cheery cheekiness. ‘It’s this way, Aunt Sal—when have we ever had a guest as interesting as Master Muir?’

‘I can’t recall.’ Aunt Sal nudged her niece. ‘The shepherd’s pie to table four.’

Mandy delivered as directed, charmed to discover that Vicar Winslow had put two tables together to include the sailing master. Ben Muir was the centre of attention now, with parishioners demanding sea stories. She wanted to stay and listen.

Empty tray in hand, she felt a twinge of pride that the sailing master was their lodger. His uniform looked shabby, but he was tidy and his hair nicely pulled back into an old-fashioned queue. He had a straight nose and eyelashes twice as long as hers.

But this wool-gathering was not getting food in front of paying guests. Mandy scurried into the kitchen and did her duty.

By the time the last patron had set the doorbell tinkling on the way out, Mandy’s feet hurt and she wanted to sit down to her own dinner.

Aunt Sal helped her gather the dishes from the dining room. ‘This was a good night for us,’ Sal said as she stacked the dishes in the sink. ‘I wonder what could have been going on at St Luke’s to merit so many parishioners. Mandy, gather up the tablecloths.’

She did as her aunt said, ready to eat, but feeling out of sorts because the sailing master must have gone right to his room. She had gathered the linens into a bundle when the doorbell tinkled and in walked Ben Muir.

‘I was going to help you, but Vicar Winslow wanted to show me where St Luke’s is.’

‘St Luke’s would be hard to miss. It’s the biggest building in town.’

‘He expects me there tomorrow night at seven of the clock, and you, too. I said I would oblige. Now, is there anything I can do for you?’

Mandy surprised herself by thinking that he could kiss her, if he wanted, then shoved that little imp of an idea down to the cellar of her mind. ‘I’ve done my work for the night. Martha comes in tomorrow morning to wash the linens and iron them. It’s my turn to eat.’

Dismiss him, while you’re at it, she scolded herself, wondering why she cared, hoping he would ignore her rudeness.

‘Could you use some company?’ he asked. ‘The Science of Nautical Mathematics is calling, but not as loudly as I had thought it might.’

‘It would never call to me,’ she said honestly, which made him laugh.

‘Then praise God it falls to my lot and not yours. D’ye think your aunt has some dinner pudding left?’

‘More than likely. I can always use company, if you don’t mind the kitchen.’

‘Never.’ He opened the swinging door for her. ‘Mandy, my father was a fisherman in a little village about the size of Venable. All I know is kitchens.’

Now what? Mandy asked herself, as Aunt Sal set her long-awaited dinner before her. She could put on airs in front of this man and nibble a little, then push the plate away, but she was hungry. She glanced at him, and saw the deep-down humour in his eyes. He knows what I’m thinking.

‘I could be missish and eat just a tiny dab, but that will never do,’ she found herself telling him.

‘And I would think you supremely silly, which I believe you are not,’ he replied. ‘Fall to, Amanda, handsomely now,’ he ordered, in his best sailing master voice.

She ate with no more hesitation, nodding when he pushed the bread plate in her direction. Aunt Sal delivered the rest of the dinner pudding to Ben and he wielded his fork again, happy to fill up with good food that didn’t come out of kegs and barrels, as he said between mouthfuls.

When the edge was gone from her hunger, she made the decision not to stand on ceremony, even if he was a sailing master. Nothing prompted her to do so except her own interest.

‘You called me Amanda,’ she said. ‘No one else does.’

‘Mandy is fine, but I like Amanda,’ he said. He finished the pudding and eyed the bread, which she pushed back in his direction.

‘Well then,’ was all she said.

He loosened his neckcloth, then looked at her. ‘D’ye mind?’

‘Heavens, no,’ Mandy said. ‘I’m going to take off my shoes because I have been on my feet all day.’

‘Tell me something about the Walthans,’ Ben said. ‘I have known that dense midshipman for three long years. What is his family like? I mean, I wasn’t good enough to stay at the manor. Are they all like Thomas?’

What do I say? Mandy asked herself. She glanced at her aunt at the sink, who had turned around to look at her. ‘Aunt Sal?’

‘Mandy and Thomas are half-brother and sister,’ Aunt Sal said. She returned to her task. ‘My dear, you carry on.’

Mandy doubted that the master had been caught by surprise on any topic in a long while. He stared at her, eyes wide.

‘I find that…’

‘…difficult to believe?’ she finished. ‘We share some resemblance.’

He gave her a look so arch that she nearly laughed. Aunt Sally set down a glass beside his hand and poured from a bottle Mandy knew she reserved for amazing occasions. Was this a special occasion? Mandy thought it must be, to see the Madeira on the table.

‘You need this,’ was all her aunt said.

Ben picked up the glass and admired the amber liquid. ‘Smuggler’s Madeira?’ he asked.

‘It’s a sordid tale,’ Mandy teased. ‘No! Not the Madeira!’ She sighed. ‘My half-brother.’

It wasn’t a tale she had told before, because everyone in Venable already knew it, with the sole exception of Thomas and his sister Violet. As Mandy told him of her mother and the current Lord Kelso falling in love, Mandy looked for some distaste in his expression, but saw nothing but interest.

‘They were both eighteen,’ Mandy said. ‘They eloped all the way to Gretna Green and married over the anvil. Old Lord Kelso was furious and that ended that. The marriage was promptly annulled, but by then…’ He was a man grown; let him figure it out.

‘Ah, well,’ he said, twirling the stem of the empty glass between thumb and forefinger. ‘And here you are, neither fish nor fowl, eh?’

No one had ever put the matter like that, but he was right. ‘I would probably be even less welcome at Walthan Manor than you,’ she said. ‘My mother died when I was born and my dearest aunt had the raising of me.’

‘You did a lovely job,’ he said, with a slight bow in the direction of the sink, which made Mandy’s face grow warm.

‘I believe I did,’ Aunt Sal said, sitting with them. ‘She is my treasure.’ She touched Mandy’s cheek with damp fingers. ‘I can take up the story here. Old Lord Kelso gave me a small sum, which I was supposed to use to disappear into another village with his granddaughter. I chose to lease this building and open a tea room, instead.’

‘Was Lord Kelso angry?’ Ben asked.

From his expression, Mandy thought he was imagining the squall that must have broken over one woman and an infant, just trying to make their way in the world.

‘Outraged,’ Sal said, her eyes clouding over. She grasped Mandy’s hand now. ‘He mellowed through the years, especially after James—the current Lord Kelso—made a better match a year later with a Gorgon who gave him two irritating children—Thomas…’

‘The ignorant midshipman,’ Ben teased, his eyes lively.

‘And Violet, who has endured two London Seasons without a single offer,’ Sal said in some triumph. Her face fell. ‘I shouldn’t be so uncharitable about that, but if it had been my Mandy…’

‘Life can bruise us,’ he said.

‘Only if we choose to let it,’ Mandy said. ‘What on earth would I have done with a London Season?’

‘Find a title, at the very least,’ Ben said promptly.

‘How? You said it yourself, Master Muir—I am neither fish nor fowl.’

‘I didn’t mean…’

‘I know,’ she said, her eyes so kind. ‘Old Lord Kelso did mellow. He came in here now and then for tea and Aunt Sal’s hot-cross buns at Easter.’

‘And mulled cider and Christmas date pudding,’ Sal said. She inclined her head towards Mandy’s. ‘We even missed him when he died two years ago.’

Mandy nodded, remembering how odd it felt to experience genuine sorrow, but with no leave to declare it to the world. ‘I…I even wanted to tell the new Lord Kelso—my father—how sorry I was, but he would only have laughed. But I miss old Lord Kelso,’ she said simply.

She stood up, gathering her plate and his. ‘It’s late, sir, and morning comes early at Mandy’s Rose. Let me take a can of hot water to your room.’

‘I’ll take my own and yours, too,’ the master said. ‘I don’t have to be at Walthan Manor until four bells in the forenoon watch.’ He bowed to her. ‘Ten o’clock. After years at sea, this is dissipation, indeed.’

‘I dare say you’ve earned it,’ she said as she filled a can of hot water for Ben and another for herself.

Shy, she went up the stairs first as courtesy dictated, knowing that when she raised her skirts to keep from tripping, he would see her ankles. They’re nice ankles, she thought, wondering if he would notice.

He had carried up both cans of hot water while she managed the candlestick, so he told her to go into her room first. He followed her in with the hot water and set it on the washstand. She lit her own candle by her bed, then handed him the candlestick, shy again.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘For what?’ he asked, with that pleasing humour in his eyes.

‘For coming to Mandy’s Rose,’ she said, feeling brazen and honest at the same time. ‘We’ll show you a merry Christmas.’

‘I already feel it,’ he said, as he closed her door.

She lay in bed a long time that night, wondering how far down his back those blue dots ran.

If that had been Amanda’s London Season, she’d be married and a mother by now, Ben thought, and I’d be eating alone with Nautical Mathematics propped in front of me. Of course, if it had been her Season, she never would have given a sailing master a glance.

The mystery of life seemed a fitting topic to consider the next morning, as Ben lay with his hands behind his head, stretched out in total comfort. Nautical Mathematics still remained unopened on the bedside table. He contemplated the pleasure of a bed that didn’t move. Because he had paid his six shillings, he let his mind wander and contemplated what it might feel like for Amanda Mathison to curl up next to him with her head on his chest.

There had been other women curled up so, but after he paid them, they left. How would it be to have a wife who didn’t go anywhere after making love? A wife to admire across the breakfast table? A wife to have a bulge and a baby moving inside her? A wife to scold a child or two, then grab them close, kiss and start over? A wife he could tease and tickle? A wife to tell him to behave when he needed it? A wife to open the door to him on a snowy evening, his duffel slung over his shoulder, home from the sea?

He couldn’t imagine it, except that he could, so he felt more grumpy than usual as he set out for Walthan Manor after breakfast. He tipped his hat to Amanda at the door to the tea room and had the most wonderful intuition that if he looked back, she would still be standing in the open door. He resisted the urge to look because he was an adult, after all. Not until he was nearly at the end of the street did he look back, and there she was, still in the doorway. He doffed his hat with some drama. He saw her put her hand to her mouth, so he knew she was laughing. He was too far away, but he just knew her pretty eyes were squinting and small because she was laughing. Did he know her so well in one day?

‘I am turning into a fool,’ he said out loud, after looking around to make sure there was no one within earshot. He thought of his resolution through the years never to burden a wife with a navy man always at sea. As the war ground on, he had considered the matter less and less, mainly because he knew no woman in her right mind would marry a sailor. He decided to blame his uncustomary thoughts on the tug and pull of the season. He knew nothing would come of it.

The thought kept him warm through the village, then down the long row of trees bare of leaves that ended in a handsome three-storey manor with a gravel half-moon drive in front.

A butler ushered him in from the cold, gave a bow so brief as to be nearly non-existent, then led him directly into what was the library. What a magnificent manor this was, worlds beyond what a sailing master could ever hope for. Ben looked around with real pleasure when he entered the library, inhaling the fragrance of old leather and paper. He set his charts on a table and took out tablet, compass and protractor, confident that Tom Walthan hadn’t thought to bring along his own from the frigate.

The butler was replaced by a maid bearing a tea service. She set it on the table, curtsied and started to scurry away until he stopped her to hand off his boat cloak and bicorn. Funny that the butler hadn’t seen to the matter.

Then it struck Ben that the inmates of Walthan Manor, probably on that little prig’s advice, considered him a sailor with only slightly more seniority than an earthworm. It was a humbling thought. Maybe he needed such a snub; a man could get so used to deference that he forgot he was just a sailing master, and no earl.

Four bells in the forenoon watch came and went as Ben cooled his heels in the library. The clock struck eleven before Thomas Walthan appeared, surly and sullen. The wretched youth had evidently forgotten how he had importuned and begged the sailing master to throw him an academic line with some badly needed tutelage. The sooner they began, the sooner…

The sooner what? Master Ben Muir realised that he had no desire to go anywhere other than directly back to Mandy’s Rose. If an imp had suddenly collided with his shoulder, perched there and demanded, ‘Where away?’, Ben probably could not have remembered the name of his frigate. He just wanted to sit in Amanda Mathison’s vicinity and moon away an hour or two. But Ben was a lifelong realist and such was not his lot.