A Country Christmas (Timeless Regency Collection Book 5) Read online

  Grateful for any diversion, she looked up with relief when someone tapped on the open nursery door, then sighed inwardly to see her sister. She felt a shiver of fear dart down her back, because Amanda looked grim. We were too loud on the stairs last night, she thought in misery, as her phony expression slipped away entirely.

  “May I join you?” Amanda Ripley said as she sat down on a stool beside Meridee. “I don’t think I can manage the floor, but you understand.”

  Miserable, Meridee folded her hands in her lap and waited for the ax to fall. She hadn’t long to wait.

  “I don’t sleep well because I am so uncomfortable, sister,” Amanda said, choosing her words carefully.

  Meridee said nothing, which made Amanda sigh.

  “I heard you and Master Six talking and laughing at the top of the stairs,” she said, handing back a block that her daughter handed to her. “Meridee, I don’t know what to think. What is going on?”

  Why should such a simple question be so hard to answer? Better to tell Amanda Ripley about the amazing man who was teaching her children. She started slowly, picking her own way through words, then warmed to her subject, because that was her generous nature. While the little ones played, oblivious, Meridee described Able’s early life in the workhouse.

  When Meridee dared to look into her sister’s eyes, she saw only kindness there, accompanied by wistfulness.

  “He should be teaching disadvantaged children,” Meridee said and wiped tears off her cheek. “He deserves so much more.” She took a deep breath. “How is it fair for life to be so hard for one so clever?”

  Amanda looked down at her lap, then she looked into Meridee’s eyes. “It is unfair for you to be exiled to the country with no chance, really, to meet eligible men.”

  “What good will it do me when I have no marriage portion?” Meridee asked, genuinely dismayed to hear her sister’s regret. “I am talking of Master Six here.”

  “And you love him,” Amanda said calmly. “I am not a fool, either.”

  Chapter Ten

  Meridee closed her eyes and rested her head against Amanda’s knee. Her sister’s hand went to her head and rested there as gently as a benediction.

  “I didn’t think I was wrong. Are you prepared to do something about Master Six?” Amanda asked.

  “If I knew what to do,” Meridee said, happy to turn some portion of her despair over to someone else. “I . . . I’ve thought about writing to our Uncle Bonfort in Portsmouth. Perhaps he has some influence. And there is Captain Hallowell, Able’s former captain on the Swiftsure. I don’t know of anyone else. I don’t know what to do, sister, but don’t tell me not to try.”

  “I won’t,” Amanda said, her serenity taking some of the pain from Meridee’s heart. “What I will do is this: you are going to Portsmouth to visit Uncle Bonfort.”

  “I can’t. You need me,” Meridee said, which earned her a flick of a finger to her head, the same punishment Amanda meted out to her boys.

  “You will lay this out before our uncle and ask for help,” Amanda continued, as if Meridee had not spoken. “You will find out where this Captain Hallowell lives and visit him, too. Surely the navy can do without one sailing master.”

  “I don’t think it’s that easy,” Meridee said.

  “You will never know if you do not try,” her eldest sister told her firmly. “Pack. Edmund will drive you to Plymouth to catch the mail coach. I wish we could afford a post chaise, but we cannot. I will let you have ten pounds for mail coaches, and such incidentals as you need for travel. I wrote a letter to Uncle Bonfort yesterday, so he will be expecting you.”

  “You did what? Yesterday?”

  “You heard me.”

  “But, but, you cannot spare ten pounds,” Meridee said.

  “Before she died, our mother gave me twenty pounds to give to you, should you ever find someone suitable to marry and need a wardrobe and some money to set up housekeeping,” Amanda said, calmly and quietly as she said everything, but with a relentless tone to her voice that told Meridee she didn’t really know this older sister as well as she thought. “Master Able is eminently unsuitable, except that you love him and he appears to be smitten, as well.”

  “Are we that obvious?” Meridee asked.

  “Completely. Even Edmund is wondering when you two will elope or do something equally improper.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “My thoughts precisely, Meridee,” Amanda said. “When you send Master Six outside this afternoon to walk with your nephews, go along and tell him I am sending you to Portsmouth to visit your uncle.”

  “I have never traveled alone, sister.” Who is this person whining? Meridee thought, wondering if she had any courage at all. “Besides, Able will think I am meddling in his affairs.”

  “You are! He needs a meddler!” Amanda retorted. “You’re twenty-five, a spinster, and perfectly respectable,” Amanda reminded her. “Tell Uncle Bonfort you need his advice.”

  “Sister, am I up to this?”

  Amanda kissed her cheek. “Not for you the ordinary fellow, apparently. I should tell you: as we speak, my estimable husband is talking to Master Six. I think you will have a proposal soon.”

  “Speak of meddlers!” Meridee hugged her sister. She sniffed back tears because she hadn’t time for them. She sat up, alert, when she heard firm footsteps coming down the hall.

  Amanda’s hearing was equally acute. She held out her hands to her daughters and informed them they were to come with her now. Meridee watched in wide-eyed amazement as these headstrong little females who occasionally butted heads with her did exactly as their mother said. She stood up, wanting to be on her feet when Master Six came into the nursery.

  “Beg pardon, ma’am,” Able said as he stood aside for Amanda and her little ones to pass.

  “Close the door behind you, Master Six,” her thoughtful sister said.

  He did as instructed, then crossed the small room in two strides and grabbed Meridee around the waist. “I have been informed by the vicar who holds the living in this parish that I had better propose, as he is calling banns on Sunday.”

  Meridee put her hands to his chest, but she didn’t push hard. “Don’t do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “You’re quizzing me,” he said, his eyes so intense.

  She looked right into those amazing eyes of his, those windows to a brain so astonishing she would never be able to keep up with it—no one could. She thought about taking herself bravely to Portsmouth to plead his case for what, she wasn’t even certain.

  “I would never quiz you about loving me,” she said, “but I cannot even fathom a more unlikely couple than we will make. I cannot begin to match you for brains, Able.”

  He laughed at that and pulled her closer. “No one can, Meridee Bonfort, but what is that to me? You have enough heart for both of us. My captain was right, however: I need a keeper.”

  “Do you? Propose to me.”

  He took her face so gently between his hands. “Here it comes. Miss Bonfort, I was found as a baby, naked and an orphan, on a church step and have not a single thing to recommend me. I have no money, no employment, and no prospects if war doesn’t resume. If it does, I’ll be at sea continuously and only show up now and then, provided I stay alive. Hush now.” He held up his hand. “Or you’ll find a way to keep me inshore and teaching children.”

  She touched his upraised hand and pulled it back to her cheek. “All you have done is list reasons why you are supremely unsuited. Here are my reasons: I have no dowry or money, either. Socially, we could not be farther away from each other.” She stopped. “I can’t think of any other reasons.”

  “Your list is shorter than mine, by far.” He released her, then pulled her closer. “Here is what I do have: great love for you, plus respect and admiration.”

  Meridee found it distressingly easy to press against his back and haul him closer. Mama would have been scandalized, but she doubted Amanda Ripley would be. “That’s preci
sely what I have, too.”

  “Meridee Bonfort, will you marry me?”

  “I thought you would never ask. After all, it’s been all of two weeks.”

  He laughed, started to kiss her, but broke it off when they were nearly lip to lip. “But is that a yea or nay?”

  “You exasperate me. It’s yea.”

  It all sounded so simple in the nursery. At noon, Meridee stammered her way through luncheon like an idiot, then just closed her mouth and listened to her nephews tell their father and mother about their adventures with fractions. Able Six looked on, beaming at his pupils, then gave her a slow wink.

  “I’m going walking, too,” she announced and had not the courage to look at her sister.

  “We’re taking Master Six to our favorite view of the moors,” Gerald announced.

  She walked beside the sailing master, pleased when he twined his fingers through hers. When she told him she was leaving for Portsmouth in the morning to speak to her Uncle Bonfort, he tightened his grip.

  “Do this: ask your uncle if he knows anything about Trinity House.”

  “I don’t even know what that is,” she said, then had the good sense to smile at herself. “Master Six, there is far too much you will tell me that I will not have a clue about.”

  “Less than you think, Miss Bonfort,” he said. “Trinity House manages all lighthouses in our realm and teaches navigation to seamen, among other things.” He held up their twined hands while the boys skipped ahead. “My background will never open that particular door for me, although I wish it could. Maybe in another age.” He kissed her fingers. “I have heard rumors that Trinity House also runs a school somewhere for the children of dead seamen. These are children with nothing in their favor—my kind of children.”

  Suddenly, the day didn’t seem so gloomy. “I can ask my uncle about that. Tell me, where does your Captain Hallowell live?”

  “In Portsmouth. I have his direction.”

  “Send him a letter this afternoon and tell him I am coming to see him, too. Can he help us?”

  “Flash your beautiful smile at him, Meridee. Bat your eyes, tell him you’ve elected yourself my keeper.”

  She stopped and put her hands on his shoulders. “This is the world’s strangest courtship, you realize.”

  “It’s going to get stranger. If you are really lucky and if the sun is shining when you return, I’ll show you and your nephews how to use a sextant.”

  Chapter Eleven

  In this and so many other ways, Amanda Ripley was right. Meridee had no difficulty negotiating the mail coach from Plymouth to Portsmouth.

  Able insisted on coming along with her brother-in-law to Plymouth as they took the modest family carriage to the inn where the mail coach waited. Since her nephews refused to be left behind, too, she watched Able go over fractions during the ten-mile drive. She saw Gerald’s eyes light up when he got a correct answer and delighted in the way Gerald’s father beamed at this slightly slower son of his, who was being brought along so patiently by a master teacher.

  Holding tight to Able’s hand, she decided on the drive that although his full name might be Durable, it could just as easily have been Capable or Reliable or Estimable. At times, if their lives were allowed to intertwine, she imagined Able Six also being Unfathomable but not Inflexible.

  The sailing master touched her heart by his determination to see her well-seated on the mail coach. “When you get to Portsmouth, speak for one of the jarveys about the inn to drive you to your uncle’s house.” He leaned closer, reluctant to be overheard. “If nothing happens, then nothing happens, and I will go to sea again when war returns. We may have to wait a while.”

  She knew he was right. She tried not to cry, but she felt the heaviness of tears in back of her eyelids. She willed the pesky things to remain in place and not slide down her cheeks. She was nearly successful. He patted her hand, unable to speak himself, then closed the door.

  Meridee leaned back and found herself looking into other kindly eyes belonging to a woman long in years.

  “Dearie, he’s a handsome one,” the woman said.

  Meridee smiled through her tears. “Yes, he is.”

  “Where did you find him?”

  “He came to teach my nephews,” she replied, wondering about conversations on the mail coach. She could be silent and say nothing more because she was a lady of quality. She could also chat and find out about the ordinary folk who were probably going to be more a part of her life than people of quality, if she was lucky enough to marry Able Six.

  She decided to chat, and the time passed quickly, with brief stops in Exeter, Dorcester, Bournemouth, and Southampton to change horses. The woman bid her good evening in Southampton and wished her luck with her handsome sailing master.

  Night came early. Meridee was content to sit in the gathering dusk and think about what lay ahead as the coach made the final distance to Portsmouth. Able had tucked a letter for Captain Hallowell into her hand. She took it out of her reticule and nearly read it because he said she could. She didn’t; she felt too shy to read a missive between two men, neither a relative.

  There was so much she did not know about men or the sea, or any part of Able’s hard world. Living as she did in the country, and certainly not permitted to read a newspaper because she was a woman, war had always been something vexatious but remote. As the coach bowled into Portsmouth, that Royal Navy base far larger than Plymouth, she stared at ship after ship at the numerous docks, each warship capable of carrying husbands and fathers and sons to death and destruction, all because a Corsican upstart thought he should rule the world.

  “We are hinged, wooden creatures in the hands of a puppeteer who makes us dance to his tune,” she whispered softly into the glass, fogging it over. “We must do as he dictates.”

  So it was that Meridee Bonfort, a woman now most serious, left behind her youth and childhood in the mail coach and knocked on her Uncle Bonfort’s door, determined to do her best to help one hinged, wooden creature. Two, actually.

  After the usual pleasantries over dinner—answers to queries about Amanda’s family and the news of her other sisters—Meridee spent another hour in her uncle’s book room, where the talk turned serious. She told Uncle Bonfort about Sailing Master Able Six, his peculiar genius, and his unmatched ability to teach. He chuckled over the Christmas angles Gerald and James had drawn especially for him. The angels’ wings now included the proper degrees for each angle drawn small, which made Uncle Bonfort nod and comment, “Scrupulous about his angles is your lad, Meri.”

  Finally, he folded his hands on his desk and asked, “What is it that I can do for this interesting young man of yours?”

  “Use your influence within the Royal Navy to find him a place to teach,” she said promptly. “He mentioned Trinity House.”

  “Alas, that august group of Elder Brothers is not directly affiliated with the Royal Navy, where I do own some influence,” her uncle said with considerable regret in his eyes and his tone of voice. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across a well-fed paunch. “I do know one or two of the Brothers. I’ll send a note ’round first thing. Will that do?”

  “It will help,” Meridee said. “Master Six is a good man with no patronage or influence whatsoever.”

  She knew the interview was over when her uncle began to speak with fondness about her late father. He then expressed some regret that he could not have done more for her and her sisters. “War times are hard times,” he said, as he ushered her from his book room and handed her off to his housekeeper, then closed the door.

  She tried not to cry once she was alone, but she couldn’t help herself. Uncle Bonfort was polite and kind, but that was all. She suspected he thought Able Six unsuitable as a husband and probably would not write any such letters.

  Sad beyond belief, she dutifully knelt beside her bed, offering her whole heart to the Lord, even if He might not approve of Master Six, either. Finally, there weren’t any words, only a
silent plea to the Almighty that if some path could be smoothed for an extraordinary man, she would be a willing, loving, and efficient keeper.

  She breakfasted with Uncle Bonfort, delighted when he showed her the letters he had written to two men known as Elder Brothers, who lived in London and worked for Trinity House, doing what, she did not know. She thanked him prettily.

  He was kind enough to let her take his coach around to 63 Water Street, the address of Captain Hallowell, he of the White Fleet who was also cast ashore on half pay, hardly an onerous situation, in his case.

  “Hang it, I’ll accompany you myself,” Uncle Bonfort told her as he was about to close the door and send her on her solitary way. “Move over, Meridee. Let’s go see a captain of the Royal Navy.”

  The drive was a short one, to her dismay, because Meridee Bonfort did not know what to say to Able’s captain of the Swiftsure, who had lost his ship and also served some time in that French prison before he was repatriated. She looked out the window at the bustle of Portsmouth, noisy even with the Peace of Amiens in force. She was far removed from her small world in the countryside and felt it acutely.

  She and Uncle Bonfort arrived at the grand home at 63 Water Street of Captain Benjamin Hallowell, Massachusetts born and bred, but a victim of the American Revolution. Able had told her that much and more of his captain’s audacious courage at the Battle of the Nile, which had earned him a place in Rear Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson’s aptly named Band of Brothers.

  “Does this man have any influence?” she asked her Uncle Bonfort as they stood together on the front steps.

  “Possibly a great deal of influence,” he replied, then nodded to the footman who opened the door. “I am Aloysius Bonfort, quartermaster of victualling in Portsmouth Harbor,” he said. “We would speak with Captain Hallowell. My card.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The footman, a supercilious tadpole, made them stand there a moment longer than necessary, which was sufficient time for Meridee’s heart to plunge into her stomach, teeter there, and descend to her toes. Dear me, we cannot even command the respect of a footman, she thought.