LITMIR.BIZ

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‘I doubt anyone teaches that in the Royal Navy, and didn’t he say a ship has been his home since he was thirteen? And there’s a war to consider. He probably convinced himself he was sparing you.’

      ‘That is utter nonsense,’ Mandy said, and her aunt nodded.

      They sat close together in silence, just breathing in and out, probably what women had done since for ever, when matters went contrary to desires.

      ‘Will I recover?’ Mandy asked finally. ‘We didn’t do anything to regret.’

      ‘I almost wish you had,’ her aunt whispered.

      ‘Aunt!’ Mandy put her hands to her face. ‘I wanted to, oh, I did.’ Miserable beyond words, she looked up as the morning light changed. The rain had changed into snow. She sat there and watched the snow fall, covering ugly woodpiles and ash heaps. If only there were such a remedy to disguise a broken heart.

      Mandy folded her hands in her lap. You can survive Ben Muir, she told herself. Look at Aunt Sal. She never married. Look how well she has done.

      She looked at Aunt Sal, shocked to see tears on her cheeks. She wondered if, years ago, there had been a Ben Muir for her aunt. She put out her hand and clutched her aunt’s balled fist. We’ll just sit here and breathe, she thought.

      Just breathing never paid a single bill, so Mandy turned the horrible day into a usual day, with work and diners who expected her good cheer and happy commentary. By the time the last dish of the evening was dried and the dough set for tomorrow’s bread, Mandy knew she could manage.

      She wasn’t so certain next morning, when everything fell apart with an official-looking document delivered by Mr Cooper, more solemn than she had ever seen him. She wanted to offer him some refreshment, but she accepted the blue-sheathed document instead, with Sal Mathison, Mandy’s Rose, Venable, Devon, written in plain script.

      Sal had come into the dining room, wiping her hands and ready to chat with Mr Cooper. She stared at the paper in Mandy’s hand, then took it. Her face went white and she dropped the document. Mandy picked it up and read without permission. She read it again, then looked at Mr Cooper’s equally stricken face.

      ‘He can do this?’ she asked.

      ‘He can and did.’ The solicitor took the pages from her slack grip. ‘He has entered into verbal agreement with your landlord to purchase this row of buildings for the sum of three hundred pounds.’ His voice shook with emotion. ‘You will be gone by December the twenty-fourth, 1810.’

      Sal burst into tears and buried her face in her apron. Mandy watched her in horror, beyond tears because she had already shed all the tears in the entire universe last night in her bedroom. There weren’t any more, so she did not cry.

      ‘Do you have any money at all?’ Mr Cooper asked.

      Mandy knew the books as well as her weeping aunt. She shook her head. ‘Nothing beyond fifty pounds,’ she said. ‘How…?’

      Mr Cooper paced the room, his rage evident with each step he took. ‘Lord Kelso paid a visit to Mr Pickering. You know how foggy the dear old man is! I doubt Mr Pickering has any idea what he has done.’

      ‘Has any money changed hands yet?’ Mandy asked.

      ‘No, but Mr Pickering gave his word and I have been charged to draw up the papers, to be signed as quickly as possible. Mandy, I cannot tell you how sorry I am.’

      He let himself out of the tea room and Mandy held her aunt close. A wave of anger passed over her as she remembered the scene in the book room—from her father’s indignation, to her half-brother’s stupefaction, to Ben Muir’s fury and his ill-timed revelation to Thomas Walthan. She thought forgetting Ben Muir might suddenly become much easier. She could blame this mess on him, except that she couldn’t. After all, who had refused the terms of the codicil and stormed out of the room?

      So much blame: if Lord Kelso had been a stronger man, he could have resisted old Lord Kelso’s decision to annul that Scottish wedding so many years ago. If the old earl hadn’t experienced some change of heart through the years, he would never have altered his will and raised even miniscule hopes. If Ben Muir hadn’t been looking in Euclid’s Elements he never would have found that scrap of paper and given the damned thing to Mr Cooper. If she had accepted her father’s humiliating terms, the matter would have rested, with her half-brother none the wiser.

      Without a word, she helped her sobbing aunt upstairs and set to work by herself. When the first diners arrived, Aunt Sal had joined her in the kitchen, her eyes red-rimmed and her lips pinched, but her fingers as sure as ever as she chopped and diced. Her love for her aunt nearly took Mandy’s breath away. They were in this mess together.

      Mandy was almost on time to choir practice, even though she had to run. She slipped and slid along the snow-covered path, yearning for Ben Muir’s steady hand. She knew she would be late, but Aunt Sal lost all strength after the last dinner guest left. She helped her aunt upstairs to bed again, told the dishes just to rest for a while in the dishwater and hurried to church.

      She paused inside the chapel door to catch her breath. ‘Angels We Have Heard on High’ calmed her heart, even though she missed Ben Muir’s commanding second tenor, that voice he had assured her was only half the size of his voice in battle when his crew manoeuvred the Albemarle close to enemy guns and he kept his ship trim through turmoil she couldn’t imagine.

      * * *

      When the rehearsal ended, Mandy remained. The wind blew cold as the other choir members opened and closed the door. She likened the cold wind to the disaster soon to envelop Mandy’s Rose and knocked on the vicar’s study door.

      Reverend Winslow didn’t seem surprised to see her. She saw the worry on his face and knew that Mr Cooper must have whispered something to him during the rehearsal. She told him everything.

      The vicar paced the room much like Mr Cooper that morning. ‘Christmas Eve?’ he asked. She knew he had heard her, but she also understood his disbelief. Her disbelief had faded more quickly, but Mandy was only beginning to appreciate her own courage.

      ‘I fear so,’ she told him. ‘Sir, do you know of anyone in Venable who could use a cook and an assistant?’

      His tear-filled eyes dismayed her, but she kept her gaze clear. She had already cried every tear, but she wanted advice. ‘I need you to think of something,’ she said. ‘Please help us.’

      Her quiet words seemed to brace him. ‘Mrs Winslow and I need a cook and an assistant,’ he said, after long thought. ‘Her joint ache is growing worse by the day and you know how busy I am.’

      She nodded. ‘You needn’t pay us.’

      ‘We can’t afford to,’ he said with real apology in his voice and not a little shame. His expression hardened and, for just a moment, he was an angry man and not a servant of the Church of England.

      Mandy shook her head. ‘We’ll cook for you this winter, and maybe by spring we’ll think of something else.’ What, she couldn’t imagine, but her own grief hadn’t driven away all her optimism.

      He gave her a searching look then. ‘Would you consider writing a letter to Master Muir? He might take an interest.’

      She had mulled over the matter for a long time that afternoon, then tucked it away. ‘I’m not the brazen sort,’ she said. ‘I have no leave to write him a letter.’

      Reverend Winslow nodded. ‘Just a thought.’ His slight smile died on his lips. ‘I doubt the Royal Navy pays sailing masters much, if he took a tutoring job with Thomas Walthan.’

      He stood up as the clock chimed nine. It was time for Mandy to hurry home and lie in bed wide awake for another night.

      ‘Perhaps you and your aunt could come here before Christmas Eve.’ Anger gleamed in the vicar’s eyes again, plus something else, a stubbornness she had never noticed before. Evidently vicars were not perfect, either.

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