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

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!’

Chapter Four

      Life resumed its normal course in the next few days, as normal as anything was before Christmas. Aunt Sal spent more time sitting with clients in the dining room when the meals were done, planning Christmas catering, and one party at Mandy’s Rose itself.

      Mandy continued fixing extra sandwiches for the sailing master to take to Walthan Manor and let him tease her about her legacy, still not forthcoming. Perhaps her father had changed his mind. Ben didn’t linger over dinner any more and spent time on solitary walks. She was usually in bed before he returned, but never asleep. Her heart sad, she heard him pace back and forth in his room. She wondered if he was trying to wear himself out so sleep would come. She convinced herself that he was wishing for Scotland and his father. ‘I would want to be with my father, if I had a good one,’ she whispered into her pillow, trying to drown the sound of pacing on boards that squeaked.

      In the next week, a solemn-faced fellow in livery delivered a note to Amanda Mathison, requesting her presence at Walthan Manor at eleven of the clock. She nodded her acceptance to the servant, then hurried into the kitchen.

      ‘Here it is,’ her aunt said, after she read the note.

      ‘I would rather go to Mr Cooper’s office,’ Mandy said, then tried to make a joke of it. ‘I doubt my father will invite me to luncheon with him.’ She sat down, struck by a sudden thought. ‘I have never seen him up close. Aunt, did he ever lay eyes on me?’

      ‘I can’t recall a time,’ Aunt Sal replied. She fixed a critical eye on Mandy. ‘I wouldn’t wear Sunday best, but perhaps your deep-green wool and my lace collar will do.’

      Mandy changed clothes, her eye on the clock. The simple riband she usually wore to pull back her hair would have to do. She looked down at her shoes that peeped from under her ankle-length dress, grateful she had blacked them two days ago, when she was desperate to keep busy so she would not think about kissing the sailing master. It hadn’t worked, but at least her two pairs of shoes shone.

      Her aunt attached the knitted lace collar with a simple gold bar pin. She indicated that Mandy should turn around so she did, revolving slowly.

      ‘I believe you will do, my love,’ her aunt said. ‘Hold your head up. Use my woollen shawl. Heaven knows it only goes to church on Sundays. This will be an outing.’ She settled Mandy’s winter hat square on her head.

      ‘I don’t even remember when you grew up,’ Aunt Sal said. ‘Could it be only yesterday?’

      ‘I grew up quite a few years ago, Aunt,’ Mandy teased. ‘You know very well that I will be twenty-seven soon.’ She fingered the fringe on her aunt’s shawl. ‘With the money—let’s think about a little holiday at Brighton this summer. We can close the Rose for a week and visit the seashore.’ She recognised Aunt Sal’s worry frown. ‘We’ll be frugal. We have never had a holiday. We are long overdue.’

      Mandy took a deep breath and started for Walthan Manor. The morning mist had broken up enough for weak sunshine to lighten the normally gloomy December. Soon she would have to hunt the wild holly and ask the butcher prettily for some of the ivy on his house. She had finished the stockings she had knitted for Aunt Sal, useful stockings. She had wrapped them in silvery paper the vicar’s wife had found in the back of a drawer.

      Mandy wished she had something for the sailing master. If she hurried, she could knit him stockings, too, because stockings weren’t a brazen gift. Maybe he would think of her upon occasion. She knew she would never forget him.

      Her courage nearly failed her at the long row of trees, with Walthan Manor at the far end. The leaves were gone now and no one had raked them into piles for burning yet, which suited her. She left the drive and walked through the leaves, enjoying the rustle and remembering leafy piles in the vicar’s yard. He had never minded when she stomped through the church leaves, because Mandy’s Rose had only three windows and two storeys in a row of buildings. There were no leaves to run through, so he had shared all of God’s leaves at St Luke’s with one of his young parishioners.

      I could never leave Venable, she told herself, her heart full. There would never be a reason to, which suited her. Why she sighed just then puzzled her. Maybe Brighton this summer would be the perfect antidote for the sudden melancholy that flapped around her like vultures