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

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.

‘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.’