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

‘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.