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