Aunt Sal hurried to the shelf where she kept various remedies, some of a female nature, others not, while Mandy took Ben by the arm and sat him down at the kitchen table. Some mysterious leaves in the tea strainer, a little hot water, then honey, and her aunt set it before the sailing master. Like a dutiful child, he drank it down, then made such a face that Mandy almost laughed.
‘Good God, that must be effective,’ he managed to gasp.
‘Dinner might help,’ Mandy said. ‘Mr Cleverly just left, but he wanted to remind you about choir practice tonight.’
‘Mandy, I don’t believe our guest is up to singing and certainly not listening to St Luke’s choir,’ her aunt said.
‘I am made of sterner stuff than that,’ Ben assured them. ‘Believe me, it will be the highlight of an otherwise wretched day. Sit down, Amanda.’
She sat while Aunt Sal served him consommé and toast. When the line between his eyes grew less pronounced, Mandy followed soup with a little of last night’s beef roast mixed in with potatoes and turnips. He shook his head over anything else and leaned back in his chair.
‘Amanda, what a day…’ he began and told her about the late start, and Thomas Walthan’s vast dislike of all things mathematical. ‘This is a hopeless task. I despair of teaching him anything, particularly when he has no willingness to try.’
She listened to him, imagining that he was her husband, or at least her fiancé, who had come home after a trying day and just needed a listening ear. Although she knew she would never do it, she wondered what he would do if she took her turn with complaints about a late poultry delivery, and a soufflé that refused to rise to the occasion. She knew he would listen. How she knew, she could not have told a jury of twelve men; she just knew and the thought was a comfort.
With an embarrassed sigh, he told her about the humiliation of being served luncheon on a tray in the library, instead of at least in the breakfast room.
‘You’re not used to such Turkish treatment, are you?’ she asked. ‘I mean, if I were in charge of the sails and rigging and all that business that keeps a ship afloat, I’d expect a little deference.’
She saw the embarrassment in his eyes.
‘Am I too proud?’
‘Maybe a little,’ she told him, because he had asked. ‘You know what will be the outcome of this—my ignorant half-brother will still be a midshipman when he is my age and blame it on you.’
‘You, my dear Amanda, are a mighty judge of character,’ he said, which made her blush. ‘At your advanced age of…’
‘Twenty-six.’
He made a monumentally faked show of amazement, which suggested that his headache had receded. ‘Foot in the grave,’ he teased. He grew more serious almost at once. ‘Perhaps my continued incarceration in the library might prove useful to someone.’
‘How?’
‘I had finished a sandwich and had another half hour before Thomas told me he would leave his luncheon—must’ve been more than a sandwich for him.’
‘Poor man,’ she teased. ‘I dare say you have gone days and days without food.’
‘Aye to that. Anyway, I thought I might look around in what I was informed was old Lord Kelso’s library—apparently your father barely reads—and I sought out Euclid’s Elements.’
She made a face and Ben’s lips twitched. ‘I have noticed that you’re a bit of a reluctant school miss when I mention mathematics.’
‘I see no evidence that you have delved into that forbidding text on your night table,’ she retorted, then blushed. ‘I tidied your room, so I noticed. The pages aren’t slit.’
He put a hand to his chest. ‘Forbidding? I happen to enjoy the subject, for which everyone on the Albemarle, except your nincompoop half-brother, is supremely grateful.’ He leaned closer. ‘My cabin is invariably tidy. That is a consequence of close quarters at sea.’
She rose to clear away his dishes and he took her wrist in his light grasp. ‘It can wait, Amanda. I just like you to sit with me.’
‘Euclid’s Elements,’ she reminded him. ‘And?’
‘Sure enough, the old boy had a copy of that esteemed work. I opened it and look what was marking Chapter Eight.’
He pulled out a folded paper sealed with the merest dab of wax and held it out to her. ‘Behold.’
‘My goodness.’ She read, ‘“Codicil. In the event of my death, to be given to my solicitor.”’ She handed back the sheet as though it burned.
He took it. ‘“In the event”, indeed,’ he said. ‘We of the Royal Navy know death to be more of a certainty than an earl, evidently.’
‘It’s a turn of phrase,’ she said, happy to defend the old man who had always treated her kindly, once he overcame the initial shock of her birth.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘You have told me he was a good sort.’ He ducked his head like a little boy. ‘Should I apologise?’
‘Don’t be silly.’ She looked at the folded paper. ‘His solicitor is Mr Cooper and you’ll see him tonight, if you feel brave enough to chance the choir practice.’
‘My dear, I served at Trafalgar. I can manage a choir practice, headache or not.’
He gave her such a look then, the kind of look she thought she always wanted some day from a man.
‘If I may escort you?’
She nodded, suddenly too shy to speak.
‘Should I ask your aunt’s permission?’
‘Master Muir, you already know that I am six and twenty. No need for permission.’
‘You’ll point out Mr Cooper, will you?’
‘Certainly. I wonder, sir, were you tempted to break the seal and take a peak?’
‘Tempted, but I wouldn’t. I hope it’s good news for someone.’
‘Lord Kelso died two years ago. I assume the will was read at the time.’
‘Maybe there is a new wrinkle. I do like a mystery,’ the master said as he rubbed his hands together.
Mandy hurried through the rest of dinner, a model of efficiency and speed. She thought Aunt Sal must be having a silent chuckle over her niece’s obvious excitement over something as simple as a walk to the church for choir practice, but she kindly kept her own council.
Mandy hurried up the stairs for one look in front of the mirror, even though she knew the face peering back at her too well. She mourned over her freckles and nose that no poet would ever rhapsodise about, then dismissed the matter. Her figure was tidy, teetering just slightly on the edge of abundance, and Aunt Sal had always seen to a modest wardrobe of good material. ‘You will never shame anyone,’ Mandy said out loud, but softly.
She sat on her bed, thinking about the mother she had never known, but fully aware that without the love, generosity and courage of her maiden aunt, her life would have taken a difficult turn. She owed the Walthans nothing and that knowledge made her wink back tears and know that in church tonight, she could spend a minute just sitting in the pew, thinking of the Babe of Bethlehem and His lucky blessing of two parents—no, three—who loved Him.
‘Some day, dear Lord,’ she whispered, more vow than prayer, ‘some day the same for me.’
She looked up at a slight tap on her door. She opened it to see the sailing master, smelling nicely of the lemon soap she had sniffed that morning. She had no mother or