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

but this was so elegant, despite the small-minded people that lived within. She looked at the ground-floor windows and saw the sailing master looking back at her, his hands behind his back. On a whim she regretted immediately, she blew him a kiss. He was far too dignified to do anything of the sort in return, but his head went back in what she knew was silent laughter. Obviously her half-brother was in the room, probably sweating over charting a course.

      She knocked and the door was opened immediately by a grand personage that might even be the butler, although something told Mandy that the butler himself wouldn’t open a door for her. At least the man bowed her in and didn’t tell her to find the servants’ entrance. Whether the supercilious look on his face was worth one hundred pounds, she couldn’t have said. Think of Brighton in summer, she reminded herself. Aunt Sal deserves a holiday.

      With a motion of his hand, he indicated she was to follow him down the hall. He didn’t slow his pace, so she hurried to keep up.

      Mandy stopped for a moment at the grand staircase, because a young woman had started down from the floor above. She hadn’t seen her half-sister Violet in several years, not since the time Violet and Lady Kelso stopped in Mandy’s Rose for tea. She wanted to say hello, but there was nothing in the look Violet gave her that suggested she would respond. Two London Seasons, Mandy thought, feeling suddenly sorry for the young lady who glared at her down a nose too long, in a face designed by a committee.

      The servant Mandy decided was a footman opened the door and she entered a small room lined with ledgers and a desk so cluttered that it lacked any evidence of a wooden surface. There sat her father.

      She had seen him a time or two from the dining room window of Mandy’s Rose, once on horseback, but generally in a barouche in warm weather and a chaise in winter. The years had not been gentle to his features. His red complexion suggested he drank too much, as did the myriad of broken blood vessels on his nose.

      The nose was familiar; she looked at it when she gazed in the mirror: a little long for general purposes, but thankfully not as long as his other daughter’s nose. Beyond that, she saw little resemblance.

      Elbow on the desk, his chin in his hand, Lord Kelso appeared to be studying her, too, perhaps looking for a resemblance to the young woman he had loved so many years ago. Mandy knew she bore a pleasing likeness to the miniature that Aunt Sal kept on her bedside.

      ‘My lord?’ she asked, when the silence continued too long.

      Mr Cooper was on his feet. He took her hand and led her to the chair beside him, squeezing her fingers to either calm her or warn her. She could not overlook his serious expression and vowed to make this interview brief. The air seemed charged with unease.

      The silence continued. Mandy leaned forward, ready to rise if no one said anything. Glancing at the solicitor’s deep frown line between his eyes did nothing to reassure her.

      After a put-upon sigh from the earl, Mr Copper cleared his throat. ‘Miss Mathison, you are no doubt aware of the codicil to your…grandfather’s will that the sailing master found.’

      ‘Yes, sir. Master Muir told me about it and took me to see the vicar, who had witnessed the codicil. Reverend Winslow explained the ma—’

      ‘A damned nuisance,’ the earl said, glaring at her.

      ‘It is the law,’ Mr Cooper said with firmness. He looked at Mandy. ‘Lord Kelso has agreed to the hundred pounds.’

      She nodded, afraid to speak because she saw the warning in the kindly man’s eyes. In her mind, I should leave