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

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