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Contents

Cover

Title

CHRISTMAS EVE PROPOSAL

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

THE VISCOUNT’S CHRISTMAS KISS

Dedication

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

WALLFLOWER, WIDOW…WIFE!

Dedication

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Copyright

CHRISTMAS EVE PROPOSAL

CARLA KELLY

CARLA KELLY started writing Regency romances because of her interest in the Napoleonic Wars, and she enjoys writing about warfare at sea and the ordinary people of the British Isles rather than lords and ladies. In her spare time she reads British crime fiction and history—particularly books about the US Indian Wars. Carla lives in Utah and is a former park ranger and double RITA® Award and Spur Award winner. She has five children and four grandchildren.

Chapter One

‘Surely you never expected to stay at Walthan Manor, Master Muir?’

What a self-righteous prig Midshipman Tommy Walthan is, Sailing Master Benneit Muir said to himself. He’s a pipsqueak, a lump of lard and an earl’s son. God spare me.

‘Oh? I assumed that since you commissioned me to drill you in navigation methods, that I would be more useful close by.’ That was the right touch. Ben didn’t hold out much hope that any amount of tutoring would improve the wretched youth’s chances of passing his lieutenancy exams next year in 1811, but it was nearly Christmas and the sailing master had no plans.

There wasn’t time to go home to Scotland, or much reason. The girls Ben had yearned for years ago were all married and mothers many times over. His mother was gone, his father too old to travel and his brothers in Canada.

Walthan gave that stupid, octave-defying titter of his that felt like fingernails on slate. It had driven other midshipmen nearly to distraction, Ben knew, but at least it was one of the irritants that spurred others to pass their exams and exit the HMS Albemarle as quickly as possible. Even the captain, an amazingly patient man, had remarked that nothing short of the loss of his ship would ever rid them of Tom Walthan. No other captain wanted him, no matter how well connected his family.

‘Stay at Walthan? Lord, no, Master Muir! I can’t imagine what my mama would say, if you stepped from this post-chaise with your duffel. Better find a place in the village, sir.’ The midshipman coughed delicately into his sleeve. ‘You know, amongst people more of your own inclination.’

Ben decided that the village would be far enough away from Walthan’s laugh, but he didn’t intend to sink without a struggle.

‘You’ll shout my room and board?’ Ben gave the midshipman the full force of the gallows glare he usually reserved for the quarterdeck. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford to pay his own whack, but he was tired of being cooped up in the post-chaise all the way from Plymouth with Tom Walthan, the midshipman from Hades.

‘If I must,’ Walthan said, after a lengthy sigh, that made Ben feel sorry for the lad’s nanny, gone now. He had no doubt that Walthan’s mother had long since given up on him.

‘I fear you must pay,’ Ben said. ‘Do you know of lodgings in Venable?’

‘How would I?’ Walthan waved his hand vaguely at the cliff edges and sea glimpses that formed the Devon coast. ‘Venable has a posting house. Try that.’

Ben gave an inward sigh, nothing nearly as dramatic as Tom Walthan’s massive exhalation of breath, because he was not a show pony. He had hoped to find a quiet place to finally slit the pages on The Science of Nautical Mathematics and settle down to a cosy read. Posting houses were not known as repositories of silence.

‘Besides, I still must explain why I have asked you here to help me study for my exams,’ Walthan said. ‘The last time I wrote Mama, I was pretty sure I would pass.’ Another delicate cough. ‘And so I informed her.’

‘That attempt in Malta?’ Ben asked. He remembered the barge carrying four hopeful midshipmen into the harbour where an examination board of four captains sat. Three had returned excited and making plans, Walthan not among them. The laggard’s disappointment was felt by everyone in the Albemarle’s wardroom, who wanted him gone.

‘Those were trick questions,’ Walthan said, with all the hurt dignity he could muster.

Ben swallowed his smile. ‘Oh? You don’t see the need of knowing how to plot a course from the Bight of Australia to Batavia?’

‘I, sir, would have a sailing master do that for me,’ Walthan said. ‘You, fr’instance. It’s your job to know the winds and tides, and chart the courses.’

Hmm. Get the idiot out of his lowly place on the Albemarle and he becomes almost rude, Ben thought. ‘And if I dropped dead, where would you be?’ The little nuisance was fun to bait, but the matter was hardly dignified, Ben decided. ‘Enough of this. I will do my best to tutor some mathematics into you. Stop here. I’ll see you tomorrow at four bells in the forenoon watch at Walthan Manor.’ Ben shook his head mentally over the blank look on the midshipman’s face. ‘Ten o’clock, you nincompoop,’ he said as he left the post-chaise and shouldered his duffel.

Now where? Ben stood in front of the public house and mail-coach stop, if the muddy vehicle visible in the ostler’s yard was any proof of that. He peered through the open door to see riders standing shoulder to shoulder, hopeful of something to eat before two blasts on a yard of tin reminded the riders to bolt their food or remain behind. Surely Venable had more to offer.

As he stared north and then south, Ben noticed a small sign in the distance. He walked in that direction until he could make out the words, Mandy’s Rose. Some village artist had drawn a rose in bud. Underneath he read, ‘Tea and good victuals.’

‘Victuals,’ he said out loud. ‘Victuals.’ It was a funny word and he liked the sound of it. He saw the word often enough on bills of lading requiring his signature, as food in kegs was lowered into the hold, another of his duties. Oh, hang it all—he ran the ship. Victuals. On land, the word sounded quaint.

‘Good victuals, it is,’ he said out loud as he got a better grip on his duffel. He tried to walk in a straight line without the hip roll that was part of frigate life. Well balanced aboard ship, he felt an eighteen-year awkwardness on land that never entirely went away, thanks to Napoleon and his dreams of world domination.

A bell tinkled when he opened the door to Mandy’s Rose. He hesitated, ready to rethink the matter. This was a far more genteel crowd than jostled and scowled in the public house. He doubted the ale was any good at Mandy’s Rose, but the fragrance of victuals overcame any shyness he felt, even though well-dressed ladies and gentlemen gazed back at him in surprise. Obviously posting-house habitués rarely came this far.

His embarrassment increased as his duffel seemed to grow from its familiar dimensions into a bag larger than the width of the door. That was nonsense; he had the wherewithal to claim a place at any table in a public domain. He leaned his duffel in the corner, suddenly wishing that the shabby thing would crawl away.

The diners had returned to their meals and there he stood, a good-enough-looking specimen of the male sex, if he could believe soft whisperings from the sloe-eyed, dark-skinned women who hung about exotic wharves. He put his hand on the doorknob, ready to stage a retreat. He would have, if the swinging door to what must be the kitchen hadn’t opened then to disclose a smallish sort of female struggling under a large tray.

He would never have interfered with her duties, except that a cat had followed her from the kitchen and threatened to weave between her feet.

Years of battle at sea had conditioned Ben Muir to react. Without giving the matter a thought, he crossed the room fast and lifted the tray from her just before the cat succeeded in tripping her. Two bowls shivered, but nothing spilled.

‘Gracious me, that was a close call,’ the woman said as she picked up the cat, tucked it under her arm and returned it to the kitchen, while he stood there looking at her, wondering if this was Mandy’s rose.

She was back in a moment, her colour heightened, a shy look on her face as she tried to take the tray from him. He resisted.

‘Nay, lass, it’s too heavy,’ he said, which earned him a smile. Thank the Lord she wasn’t angry at him for disrupting what was obviously a genteel dining room by standing his ground with the tray.

‘I do tend to pile on the food,’ she said. Her accent was the lovely burr of Devon. He could have held the tray for hours, just to listen to her. ‘Stand here, then, sir, and I’ll lighten the load.’

He did as she said, content to watch her move so gracefully from table to table, dispensing what was starting to make his mouth water. A touch of a shoulder here, a little laugh there, and he knew she was well acquainted with the diners she served. Small villages were like that. He remembered his own in Scotland and felt the sudden pang of a man too long away.

And all this because he was holding a tray getting lighter with every stop at another table. In a moment there would be nothing for him to do, but he didn’t want to leave.

‘There now.’ She took the tray from him. ‘Thank you.’

He nodded to her and started for the door. He didn’t belong there.

She never lost her dignity, but she beat him to the door and put her hand in the knob. ‘It’s your turn now, sir. What would you like?’

‘I don’t belong here,’ he whispered.

‘Are you hungry?’

‘Aye. Who wouldn’t be after breathing the fragrance in here?’

‘Then you belong here.’

It was more than the words. Her eyes were so frank and kind. He felt the tension leave his shoulders. The little miss wanted him to sit down in a café that far outranked the usual grub houses and dockside pubs where he could be sure of hot food served quickly and nothing more. Mandy’s Rose was worlds away from his usual haunts, but he had no desire to leave.

She escorted him to a table by the window. The wind was blowing billy-be-damned outside. He thought a window view might be cold, but he could see it was well caulked. No one seemed to have cut a single corner at Mandy’s Rose.

‘Would you like to see the bill of fare?’ she asked.

‘No need. Just bring me whatever you have a lot of,’ he told her.

He blushed like a maiden when she frowned and leaned closer, watching his lips. ‘I’m not certain I understood you, sir,’ she said, equally red-faced.

He repeated himself, irritated that even after years away from old Galloway, his accent could be impenetrable. He gave her a hopeful look, ready to bolt if she still couldn’t understand him. A man had his pride, after all.

‘We have a majestic beef roast and gravy and mounds of dripping pudding, and that’s only the beginning.’

Damn his eyes if he didn’t have to wipe his mouth. Gravy. He thought about asking her to bring a bowlful and a spoon, but refrained.

‘And to drink?’

‘Water and lots of it. We’ve been a long time on blockade.’

She nodded and went to the kitchen, pausing for another shoulder pat and a laugh with a diner. He watched her, captivated, because when she laughed, her eyes shrank into little blue chips. The effect was so cheerful he couldn’t help but smile.

She paused at the door and looked back at him. Her hair was smooth, dark and drawn back in a ribbon, much as his was. He had stood close enough to her to know that she had freckles on her nose. That she had looked back touched him, making him wonder if there was something she saw that she liked. He knew that couldn’t be the case. He was worn out and shabby and ready to leave the blockade behind, if only for a few weeks. The ship would be in dry dock for at least six weeks, but he was the sailing master and every inch of rope, rigging, ballast and cargo was his responsibility.

He had agreed—what was he thinking?—to devote three weeks to cram enough navigational education into Thomas Walthan’s empty head for him to pass his lieutenancy exams. Whether or not he succeeded, Ben had to report to Plymouth’s docks in three weeks, because duty called. He glanced out the window, where sleet scoured the cobblestones now. At least he would go back well fed and with the lingering memory of a kitchen girl who looked back at him. That was about all a man could ask for in perilous times.

‘Auntie, we have the most amazing man seated by the window,’ Mandy said. ‘He’s in a uniform, but I don’t know what kind. He’s not a common seaman. He’s from Scotland. He wants whatever we have the most of and lots of water. And, Auntie, he has the most amazing tattoo on his neck. It looks like little dots.’

‘Mandy’s Rose doesn’t see too many tattoos,’ Aunt Sal said. ‘Earrings?’

‘Heavens, no!’

Aunt Sal smiled over the gravy she stirred, then set it on a trivet. She turned to carve the beef roast, poising her knife over the roast. ‘Here?’

‘Another inch or two. There. And lots of gravy. You should have seen his eyes follow the gravy I served Vicar Winslow. And your largest dripping pudding. That one. We have some carrots left, don’t we?’

‘Slow down, child!’ Sal admonished as she sliced a generous hunk of beef and slathered gravy on it. She poured more gravy in a small bowl while Mandy selected the biggest dripping pudding and set it on a plate all its own. She slid the bowl on, too, added cutlery and took it into the dining room.

She stopped a moment, just to look at the Navy man. Palm on chin, he was looking out the window at the driving sleet. He had taken off his bicorn hat and his hair was a handsome dark red, further staking his claim as a son of Scotland. He looked capable in every way, but he also looked tired. The blockade must be a terrible place, she thought, as she moved forward.

‘Dripping pudding first and lots of gravy,’ she said to get his attention. ‘I’ll bring some water and then there will be beef roast with carrots. Will that do?’

‘You can’t imagine,’ he said, tucking his napkin into the neck of his uniform.

She set down the plate and smiled as he poured a flood of gravy over the pudding. A cut and a bite was followed by a beatific expression. Nothing made Mandy happier than to see pleasure writ so large on a diner’s face. She wanted to sit down and ask him some questions, but Aunt Sal had raised her better.

Or had she? Before she realised what had happened, she was sitting across from him at the small table. She made to rise, astounded at her brazen impulse, but he waved her back down with his knife and gave her an enquiring look.

‘Where are my manners, you are likely wondering?’ she said.

‘I could see a question in your eyes,’ he said. ‘Ask away, as long as you don’t mind if I keep eating. I’m used to questions at sea.’

He had a lovely accent, Mandy decided, and she could understand him now. How that had happened in ten minutes, she didn’t know. ‘It’s this, sir—I was wondering about your uniform. I know you’re not a common seaman, but I don’t see an overabundance of gold and folderol on your blue coat.’ She smiled, which for some reason made him smile. ‘Are you a Quaker officer of some sort and must be plain?’

He set down his knife and fork, threw back his head and laughed. Mandy put her hands to her mouth and laughed along with him, because it was contagious.

‘Oh, my,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll have to share that in the wardroom, miss…miss.’

‘Mandy Mathison,’ she said.

‘You’re Mandy’s Rose?’ he asked, as he returned to the dripping pudding.

‘I am! My name is Amanda, but Aunt Sal has always called me Mandy. She scolded me one day when I was two and pulled up a handful of roses, then cried because of the thorns.’

‘An early lesson, lass, is that roses have thorns.’

‘So true. When she leased this building and started the tea room, she named it for me. But, sir, you haven’t answered my question.’

‘I’m hungry,’ he said and Mandy knew she had overstepped her courtesy. She started to rise again and he waved her down again. ‘I’m senior warrant officer on the Albemarle, a forty-five frigate. Forty-five guns,’ he explained, interpreting her look. ‘It’s only been in the last three years that we masters have had uniforms.’ He held up one arm. ‘This is the 1807 model. I hear the newer ones have a bit of that folderol on the sleeves now.’

‘I shouldn’t have called it that,’ she said. ‘What do you do?’

He chewed and swallowed, looking around. Mandy leaped up and hurried into the kitchen again, returning with the pitcher of water and a glass.

‘I forgot.’ She poured him a drink.

He drank it down without stopping. He held out the glass again and he did the same. He let out a most satisfied sound, somewhere between a sigh and a burp, which made the vicar turn around.

‘We drink such poor water on blockade.’ He picked up his knife and fork again and made short work of the dripping pudding. Mandy returned to the kitchen with empty plates from other diners and came back with that healthy slab of roast and more gravy, setting it before him with a flourish, because Aunt Sal had arranged the carrots just so.

‘Sit,’ he said, as he tackled the roast beef. After a few bites, he took another drink. ‘I’m in charge of all navigation, from the sails and rigging, to how the cargo is placed in the hold, to ballast. Everything that affects the ship’s trim is my business.’

‘I’m amazed you can get away from your ship at all,’ Mandy said. She hesitated and he gave her that enquiring look. ‘Are you going home for Christmas?’

‘Too far, lass.’ He leaned back and gave her an appraising look. ‘Do you know Venable well?’

‘Lived here all my life.’

‘In a weak, weak moment, I agreed to help Thomas Walthan cram for his lieutenancy examinations.’ He lowered his voice. ‘He’s a fool, is Tommy, and this will be his fourth try. I’ll be here three weeks, then it’s back to Plymouth and those sails and riggings I mentioned. Do you know the Walthans?’

Oh, did she. Mandy decided that after this meal she would probably never see the sailing master again, but he didn’t need to know everything. ‘They’re the gentry around here. His father is Lord Kelso, an earl.’ She couldn’t help her smile. ‘Thomas can’t pass his tests?’

The master shook his head. ‘I fear there’s a small brain careening around in that head. My captain wants him to pass and promote himself right out of the Albemarle.’

He returned to his meal and she cleared away the dishes from the last group of diners, the vicar and his wife, who came in every day at noon.

‘I believe you’re flirting with him,’ the vicar’s wife whispered, as Mandy helped the old dear into her coat. ‘You’ll recall any number of sermons from the pulpit about navy men.’

Mandy nodded, hoping the master hadn’t overheard. She glanced at him and saw how merry his eyes were. He had overheard.

‘I’ll be so careful,’ Mandy whispered in her ear as she opened the door.

Reverend Winslow took a long look at the master and frowned.

Now the dining room was empty, except for the sailing master, who worked his way steadily through the roast, saving the carrots for last. When he thought she wasn’t looking, he spooned down the last of the gravy.

‘Is there anything else I can get you?’ she asked, determined to wrap herself in what shreds of professionalism remained, after her battery of questions.

‘What else is in your kitchen?’ he asked.

‘Just a custard and my Aunt Sal,’ she replied, which made him laugh.

‘How about some custard? Maybe I can chat with your aunt later.’

She returned to the kitchen, just in time to see Aunt Sal step back from the door.

‘I’ve been peeking. He’s a fine-looking fellow and that is an odd tattoo,’ Sal whispered. ‘He certainly can pack away food.’

‘I don’t think life on the blockade is blessed with anything resembling cuisine. He’d like some custard.’

Aunt Sal spooned out another massive portion, thought a moment, then a more dainty one. ‘You haven’t eaten yet, Mandy. From the looks of things, he wouldn’t mind if you sat down again.’

‘Auntie! When I think of all your lectures on…’ she lowered her voice ‘…the dangers of men, and here you are, suggesting I sit with him?’

Aunt Sal surprised Mandy with a wistful smile, making her wonder if there had been a seafaring man in Sal’s life at some point. ‘It’s nearly Christmas and we are at war, Mandy,’ she said simply.

‘That we are,’ Mandy said. ‘I suppose a little kindness never goes amiss.’

‘My thought precisely,’ Sal told her. ‘I reared you properly.’

Mandy backed out of the swinging door with the custard. The master formally indicated the chair opposite him and she sat down, suddenly shy. And sat there.

‘See here, Miss Mathison. Despite what that old fellow thought, I have enough manners not to eat first. Pick up your fork.’

She did as he said, enjoying just the hint of rum that her aunt always added to her custard. In a week, they would spend an afternoon making Christmas rum balls and the tea room would smell like Percival Bartle’s brewery on the next street.

He ate with obvious appreciation, showing no signs of being stuffed beyond capacity. Then he removed the napkin from his uniform front and set down his fork.

‘I have a dilemma, Miss Mathison…’ he began.

‘Most customers call me Mandy,’ she said.

‘I’ve only known you about an hour,’ he replied, ‘but if you like, Mandy it is. By the way, I am Benneit Muir.’ He wiped his mouth. ‘My dilemma is this—Thomas Walthan won’t hear of my staying at Walthan Manor. Apparently I am not high bred enough.’ He chuckled. ‘Well, of course I am not.’

Mandy sighed. ‘That would be the Walthans.’

‘I can probably find a room at the public house, but more than anything, I’d like some peace and quiet to read. Can you suggest a place?’

‘Venable doesn’t…’ she began, then stopped. ‘Let me ask my aunt.’

Aunt Sal was putting away the beef roast. Mandy slid the dishes into the soapy water where soon she would be working, now that luncheon was over.

‘Aunt, his name is Benneit Muir and he has a dilemma.’

Aunt Sal gave her an arch, all-knowing look. ‘Mandy, you have never been so interested in a diner before.’

‘You said it—he’s interesting. Besides, you as much as suggested I be pleasant to him, because it is Christmas.’ She took a good look at her aunt, a pretty woman faded beyond any bloom of youth, but kind, so kind. ‘Apparently he has agreed to tutor Thomas Walthan in mathematics, but you know the Walthans—they won’t allow him to stay there.’

‘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.

‘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.’

‘Do you have a good place to think?’

Tom gave Ben a half-smile. ‘We can agree that I’ve never done much of that before. I’ll find a place, sir.’

‘I’ll be back tomorrow and we’ll continue,’ Ben said. ‘Give the matter your attention, because it does make a difference.’

I can give myself the same advice, Ben thought, as the midshipmen closed the door quietly behind him. They were inland here, but Ben had two sandwiches and biscuits. He could walk to higher ground and find a spot to see the ocean he was starting to miss.

He gathered up his charts and tools, then just sat there in the library. The sofa was soft and maybe he could lie down for a nap. No one ever came in the library and his eyes were starting to close. Amanda Mathison, get thee behind me, he thought, with some amusement at his own folly. ‘You’ll forget her in a week,’ he muttered.

Mostly now, he wanted a nap.

Ben woke to the sound of angry voices. He sat up, startled, until the fog cleared and he realised the altercation wasn’t going on there in the library. He tried to remember if there was side door to the manor where he could escape without notice.

He opened the door and peered down the hall. No servants lurked anywhere, which told him they had chosen discretion, too. The voices were so loud that he knew no one would hear him even if he stomped through. He should leave right now.

And he would have, if he hadn’t recognised Mr Cooper’s deep bass voice from the choir last night. The solicitor must have read the folded paper and gone directly to Walthan Manor. Still, the matter wasn’t his business and Ben knew it. He started past the book room, then stopped, when Lord Kelso roared out Mandy Mathison’s name like a curse.

Ben leaned towards the door. He had never eavesdropped in his life, but here he was, with no plans to move until he learned more.

‘You cannot force me to honour this damned codicil!’ Lord Kelso shouted.

‘It is the law, my lord,’ Mr Cooper said, his voice much softer, but distinct.

‘Only you and that damned sailing master know!’

‘The vicar witnessed it. I cannot just ignore a matter of the law, Lord Kelso.’

‘Others do.’

‘My lord, I am not amongst them.’

How will you feel if Lord Kelso flings open the door right now? was Ben’s last thought before he sprinted to the side door. He stood on the lawn, furious at Lord Kelso, then suddenly worried for Amanda.

He wasn’t much of a runner, considering his life spent on the confines of a frigate, but he ran to Venable, passing a surprised carter. He dashed into Mandy’s Rose, then threw himself in one of the chairs, breathing hard and feeling every second of his thirty-one years.

Amanda came out of the kitchen. She took one look at him, snatched up a cloth napkin and pressed it to his sweating forehead. He gasped and took her hand, pulling her into the closest chair.

‘Ben, my goodness. What in the world…?’

He said nothing until his breathing settled into an approximation of normality. Amanda had made no effort to let go of his hand, so he tightened his grip. ‘We need to see the vicar right now,’ he told her.

‘What…why?’

‘It’s that paper I gave to Mr Cooper last night. Lord Kelso, damn his eyes, and Mr Cooper were in the middle of a mighty argument and your name came up. The vicar knows something. Will Aunt Sal mind if I drag you away?’

‘I’ll ask.’

She released his hand then and darted into the kitchen. When she returned, she had taken off her apron and the scarf was gone. She was trying to tie back her hair, with little success because her hands were shaking.

Oh, Lord, he thought, disgusted with himself. Was I using my quarterdeck voice? I’ve frightened her. ‘Amanda, I didn’t mean to shout. Here, let me do that.’

She handed him the tie and turned around promptly. He was almost less successful than she was, because her hair felt like Chinese silk in his hands and she smelled of soap, ordinary soap. He felt himself growing warm and then hot over soap. Good God, indeed. He tied up her hair, grateful he had not removed his cloak.

She threw on her coat and made no objection when he held her close as they hurried to St Luke’s.

* * *

‘He’s in his study,’ Vicar Winslow’s wife said as she opened the door. Ben saw all the curiosity in her eyes, followed by the expression of someone who never pried into clerical matters.

If the vicar was surprised, he didn’t show it. Ben knew they couldn’t be the first couple who had ever burst into his study. The vicar showed them to two seats, then sat behind his desk.

Ben condensed the story as much as he could. ‘I could hear Mr Cooper assuring Lord Kelso that he was not above the law,’ Ben concluded. ‘He said that since you had witnessed the codicil, it was valid.’ He glanced at Amanda, whose eyes looked so troubled now. ‘Would you tell us what is going on? I don’t trust the earl.’

‘Wise of you,’ Winslow said finally. He focused his gaze on Amanda, who leaned forward. ‘My dear, old Lord Kelso summoned me to his bedside the day before he died. Said he wanted to make a little addition to his will.’ He took a deep breath. ‘He was determined to leave you one thousand pounds, to make amends of a sort. I suspect the family’s treatment of you was preying on his soul.’

Amanda gasped and reached for Ben’s hand. He happily obliged her, twining her fingers through his. ‘I…I wouldn’t take it!’ she said.

Why the hell not? Ben wondered to himself. Sounds like the least the old gent could do.

‘And so I told him,’ Winslow said. ‘I knew you would refuse such a sum.’

‘I have to ask why,’ Ben said.

Amanda gave him such a patient look. ‘I neither need nor want money from that family. Aunt Sal and I have a good living without Walthan money.’

‘I’ve been put in my place,’ he said with a shake of his head.

‘No, Ben,’ she said. ‘You’re not the only proud person in the universe.’

And I thought I knew character, he told himself, humbled. Previously a man without a single impulsive bone in his body, Ben took her hand, turned it over and kissed her palm. She blushed, but made no effort to withdraw her hand.

‘I stand corrected, Amanda Mathison,’ he said. He thought about the vicar’s words. ‘What did you do, Vicar?’

‘I convinced the old fellow to leave you one hundred pounds instead,’ Reverend Winslow said to Amanda. His expression hardened. ‘Apparently even that is too much for the new Lord Kelso.’

The three of them sat in silence. ‘What should I do?’ Amanda said finally. ‘I don’t even want one hundred pounds, especially if it comes from Lord Kelso.’

‘Would you allow him to think he can trump the law?’ Ben said.

‘No!’ She shook her head, then did what he had wanted her to do again, since their walk to church. She leaned her forehead against his arm. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought, and put his arm around her.

When she spoke her voice was small and muffled in his cloak. ‘It makes me sad to think that my mother once loved such a hateful man.’

Good Lord, he still had his hat on. Ben tossed it aside, and moved his chair closer so he could lean his head against hers. He could see Amanda was on the verge of tears and he still wasn’t close enough. She would never be close enough. The thought filled up the bleak shell that war had turned him into and ran over.

‘For all that he is wealthy and titled, I think the years have not been kind to your father,’ the vicar said. ‘Yes, his father annulled the marriage of your parents and pointed him towards the current Lady Kelso.’

‘He’s a weak man,’ Ben said, feeling weak and helpless himself. ‘A stronger man would have stood up to his father, defied him and stayed married to your mother.’

‘You know Lady Kelso,’ the vicar said to Mandy with a shake his head. ‘I try not to speak ill of anyone, but…’ Another shake. ‘And his children seem not to be all that a doting father would want.’

‘That’s sadly true with Thomas,’ Ben said. ‘He’s not promising. I hear he has a sister.’

‘Violet,’ Mandy said, which reminded Ben of the two failed London Seasons. ‘You blame Lord Kelso’s distemper on disappointed hopes?’

‘I do,’ Ben said, thinking of his own kind father in too-distant Scotland. ‘I wish you could meet my father.’

Tears filled her eyes, and filled him with sudden understanding. You want a father, he thought, as wisdom bloomed in a vicar’s parlour, of all places for a seafaring man to get smart. I could hope you might want a husband some day—me, to be specific—but you need a father.

Ben sat back, shocked at his own thoughts. Me? A husband? As the vicar stared at him, Ben considered the matter and realised that he had talked himself out of nothing. War didn’t matter; neither did nonsense about not burdening a wife with fear as she waited for a husband who might never return. He thought of all the brave husbands and wives who took bold chances in a world at war and loved anyway. He was the worst kind of fool, a greater fool than any pathetic midshipman. He had tried to fool himself.

‘So sorry, Amanda. I didn’t mean to make you cry,’ he said. Angry with his ineptitude, he disentangled himself from the weeping woman, picked up his hat and left the study.

‘What do I do, Reverend Winslow?’ Mandy asked.

‘I suggest you go after him.’

‘Indeed, I will,’ she said calmly. ‘I mean the one hundred pounds?’

‘Accept it.’ The vicar gave her his own handkerchief. ‘It will drive Lord Kelso to distraction if you do. Sometimes that is half the fun.’

‘Vicar!’

‘My dear, I am human.’

She strolled along, grateful for the mist because she could keep her hood up and lessen anyone’s view of her teary eyes. She watched the sailing master ahead, moving along at a substantial clip and probably castigating himself because he thought he had made her cry. Maybe he had, but she couldn’t blame him for having a father who took an interest in his son.

‘Sir, you have eighteen days and a visit to Scotland is not out of the question,’ she said softly. Eighteen days. She stood still on the path, feeling hollow all of a sudden. What if he did go to Scotland? What if he gave up on Thomas Walthan and really did go to Scotland?

It hardly mattered. If he went to Scotland, he would not return here, but would go to Plymouth to spend the next three weeks dealing with rigging and ballast and what all. And then the Albemarle would return to the blockade and she would never see Benneit Muir again, end of story. ‘This is most unsatisfactory,’ she said, even as she knew that where he went and what he did must recede from her mind’s eye, just as surely as he was becoming a small figure in the distance.

She sat on one of the benches placed here and there around Venable by some benefactor. She had much to do at Mandy’s Rose and had promised a quick return to help prepare dinner, but suddenly it didn’t matter. The enormity of her upcoming loss rendered her powerless to take one more step.

Sailors only come to go away, she tried to remind herself, but her heart wasn’t having it. She thought he admired her; all signs pointed that way, at least. She was beginning to understand that he would never act on a man’s impulse, because he plied a dangerous trade with no end in sight. Their generation had been born to war and like everyone else—there were no exceptions—it would influence their lives until death and destruction and one man’s ambition ran its course. They were like chips of wood tossed into a stream and driven at random towards the ocean, powerless to change course.

She stared at the ground, then closed her eyes, wondering just when the pleasure of a good night’s sleep had become a distant memory. She yawned and her own cheery nature resurfaced. You are facing a life crisis and you are yawning, she thought as she yawned again.

She heard someone approach. She knew everyone in the village and she didn’t relish explaining her tears. But these were familiar shoes. She had seen them under one or other of the dining tables for the past three days. She looked up at Ben Muir.

His face solemn, he sat beside her. It was only a small bench and now they were crowded together. To accommodate matters, he draped one arm across the back of the bench, which meant she had to lean towards him.

‘There now,’ he said. ‘I looked back and saw you sitting so melancholy.’ He peered closer and she saw that he had freckles, too. ‘One hundred pounds isn’t a bad thing, Amanda.’

‘Certainly not,’ she said, almost relieved that he had nothing more serious to say. Relieved or disappointed? This man could irritate me, she thought, then smiled. What a ninny she was. He was only being kind.

‘You can tuck the money away for a special occasion. That’s what I would do.’

He stretched his legs out and crossed them, which had the effect of drawing her closer. Mandy knew she should get up. The hour was late and Aunt Sal didn’t like to prepare for the dinner rush by herself. She allowed herself to incline her head against the sailing master, which proved to be surprisingly comfortable, almost a refuge from worry over a dratted inheritance.

‘What is your special occasion?’ she asked, curious.

‘Don’t have one yet.’ His arm was around her now. ‘After Trafalgar, when we towed one of the Spanish ships into Portsmouth, the entire wardroom gathered together and got stinking drunk.’

‘I wouldn’t spend any money on spirits,’ she said.

‘I didn’t, either.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We drank dead men’s liquor, Amanda. I was serving as second master on a ship of the line that was mauled during the battle. The sailing master and two lieutenants had died. I had assumed the master’s duties during the battle, so the officers included me. We drank their stored supply—dead men’s liquor.’

She turned her face into his chest, unable to help herself, which meant that both of his arms circled her now. ‘How do you bear it?’ she whispered into his gilt buttons.

‘It becomes normal life, I suppose,’ he told her, after much silence. ‘Damn Napoleon, anyway.’

The unfairness of Ben Muir’s life broke her heart. ‘So…so you don’t spend much time on land by choice? Is that it?’

‘Partly. Granted, we have little opportunity, but you might be right.’ He inclined his cheek towards hers. ‘A sad reflection, but not your worry, Amanda.’

This would never do. A cold bench on a busy footpath was no place to discuss anything and Aunt Sal needed her. ‘It is my worry,’ she said softly. ‘It should be of concern to each one of us on land who is kept safe by the Royal Navy. Let me thank you for them.’

She kissed his cheek. His arms tightened around her. She kissed his cheek again and, when he turned towards her, she kissed his lips. Right there on the footpath, she kissed a man she had known for three days, the first man she had ever kissed. She probably wasn’t even doing it right.

His lips parted slightly and he kissed her back. He made a low sound in the back of his throat that Mandy found endearing and edgy at the same time. Warmth flooded her stomach and drifted lower, all from a kiss. Good God Almighty, Aunt Sal had never explained anything like this in her shy discourse on men and women. Of course, Aunt Sal was a spinster. Mandy could probably get better advice from the vicar’s wife.

She ended the kiss, sitting back, wondering at herself, blushing hot, wanting him to leave, praying he would stay and stay. ‘I…I don’t think I know what I’m doing,’ she said and stood up.

She thought he might apologise, but he did no such thing. He shrugged. ‘I’m not certain what I am doing, either.’

They looked at each other and started to laugh. ‘Have you ever met two more bona fide loobies?’ he asked, when he could talk. He stood up and crooked out his arm. ‘Take my arm, Amanda. This path is misty.’

She did as he said. ‘That is a most feeble effort to get me to walk close to you,’ she scolded, onto him and not minding it.

‘I thought I was rather clever, for a man with no practice whatsoever,’ he said, going along with her banter.

She stopped and faced him. ‘You realise how…how odd this is. Neither of us is young, but listen to us!’

He nodded and set her in motion again. She looked at him, mature and capable, wearing that intimidating bicorn hat and sporting those curious blue dots on his neck. It was not her business, but he had to be a man with some experience with women, probably exotic, beautiful women in faraway ports. To say he had no practice whatsoever couldn’t be true, but she thought she understood what he was saying. A man paid for those women for one night, a business transaction. He probably had no idea how to court a lady.

Not that she was a lady; she worked in Mandy’s Rose. For all that, she had been raised gently by a careful aunt. He was no gentleman, either, just a hard-working Scot with ambition, who had risen perhaps as far as he could in the Royal Navy. They were really two of a kind, two ordinary people. With enough time, something might happen, but there was no time.

She also thought that he would never make another move towards her. After all, she had kissed him, not the other, more logical way round. He knew the clock ticked. Maybe he had forgotten that for a second when he kissed back, but he was a careful man, not likely to forget again.

‘You’re looking far too serious,’ he said, as they came in sight of Mandy’s Rose.

She took a deep breath, then let it out. What could she say? There would be no happy ending to this Christmas encounter because of Ben’s vile mistresses—war and time. They were gruesome harpies she could not fight.

‘I’ll probably recover,’ she told him. She gave his arm a squeeze, let go and hurried into the restaurant, late enough for Aunt Sal to scold.

He followed her inside, then walked up the stairs to his room. He didn’t come down for dinner, but she heard him walking back and forth, back and forth. She worked quietly, distressed to her very core, uncertain, angry because until Ben Muir came into her life, she had known nothing would ever change. She and Sal would work and provide for themselves, and live a comfortable life, one better than so many could hope for.

Everything and nothing had changed. She would lie in bed a few more weeks, wondering what she would do if he tapped on her door long after Sal slept. When Master Muir left, all would return to normal, except down in that deepest recess of her heart. She would never be the same again, but how could that matter to anyone except her?

In growing discomfort, she listened to his footsteps overhead. He walked slower now and paused often, perhaps looking out the window into darkness.

‘What is the matter?’

Guilty for just standing still when there were tables to clear, Mandy turned around to face her aunt. She shook her head, tried to swallow down tears and failed miserably. She bowed her head, pressed her apron to her eyes and cried.

Tears in her own eyes, her aunt put her arm around Mandy’s waist and walked her into the kitchen. She sat her down and poured tea.

I can’t tell her how I feel about Ben, she thought, mortified. Thank God her father had given her an excuse that might brush past a careful aunt’s suspicion. ‘I told you about Ben finding that piece of paper in Lord Kelso’s library.’

Sal nodded. ‘I know he went with you to the vicar’s, but you were gone so long.’

Careful here, Mandy told herself and sipped her tea. She told her aunt about the codicil that her grandfather had written the day before he died and which the vicar witnessed. ‘He wanted to give me one thousand pounds, but Reverend Winslow said that would only frighten me. He settled on one hundred pounds and the vicar witnessed it. I am to receive one hundred pounds I don’t want.’

Sal laughed and poured herself some tea. ‘It’s not the end of the world! You looked as though you’d lost your best friend and the world was passing you by!’

Exactly, Mandy thought.

‘Into the counting house the legacy should go, until you need it,’ Aunt Sal said. She started to clear the tables, then stopped. ‘This will make you laugh, but I was afraid you…’ she pointed over her head ‘…were starting to fall in love.’

‘Heavens, Auntie! How can you imagine such a thing?’ Mandy asked, as her insides writhed. Head down, she stacked the dinner plates.

‘Silly of me,’ her aunt confessed. ‘I can’t imagine a less likely match.’ She set down her dishes and rubbed her arms. ‘They seem like marked men, almost, working in wooden ships and facing enemy fire. What does that do to someone?’

What does that do to someone? Mandy asked herself as she washed dishes later. It’s killing me.

To her relief, Sal had taken a bowl of soup and basket of bread upstairs. Mandy stopped washing when she heard laughter overhead, then washed harder, grateful that the sailing master wasn’t mourning over something that wasn’t there. It remained for Mandy to chalk this up to experience, a wonderful experience, yes, but only that.

Sal came downstairs a few minutes later, a smile on her face. ‘Such a droll fellow,’ she said. ‘He told me how your eyes widened at the idea of one hundred pounds and how you protested.’

‘I suppose I did,’ she said and made herself give an elaborate shiver that made her aunt’s smile grow. ‘I reckon I will have to make an appearance at Walthan Manor, unless Mr Cooper can arrange this in his office.’

‘We can hope, my dear.’ Sal kissed her cheek, while Mandy prayed she wouldn’t pick up the scent of lemon soap from someone else’s cheek.

Nothing. Obviously the fragrance had worn off, if it was ever there in the first place.

Sal started drying the dishes. ‘It’s odd, though,’ she mused. ‘Remember how he said he wanted peace and quiet to read that dread book of mathematics? Well, there it was still on his bedside table, still un-slit. And after I left the food and we chatted, he went to the window when I left the room. I wonder what he is thinking?’

‘Maybe that he really should be in Scotland for Christmas to see his father,’ Mandy said. She nudged her aunt. ‘Not everyone has a father like mine!’

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