A Season of Love

by Carla Kelly

  “Mr. Jenkins?”

  “Yes?”

  “Beth insists that she say goodnight to you.” She gestured and he followed her into the bedchamber, which a quick look around told him that she shared with her daughter. A glance toward the unoccupied side of the bed showed him a miniature sitting on the night table of a man in regimentals. That and a child were all that remained of a marriage cut short. He congratulated himself that he had never taken such a serious step in wartime, then felt like a fool, because he obviously lacked Lt. and Mrs. Poole’s courage.

  He stood there and smiled down at Beth, decorous in a nightgown that looked like it had been cut down from one of her mother’s, and a nightcap tied under her chin. Now what?

  “There is a ritual,” Mrs. Poole said. “We have already been on our knees praying for poor George and our country. We thanked the Lord for whatever is to come, and prayed for strength to withstand it. Have a seat. She just wants to tell you goodnight.”

  Charmed, he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Goodnight, Beth. Thank you for coming to dinner,” he said.

  To his surprise, she sat up and hugged him, then patted his cheek. “Mama always does that to me,” she whispered, then lay down again. “Goodnight. I hope your sister doesn’t scold you because you ate too much.” She yawned. “I think it is fun to eat too much.”

  He got up, knowing in his heart that his Christmas probably couldn’t get much better than this. Mrs. Poole kissed her daughter again then joined him in the sitting room after she closed the door.

  What was he there for? His mind—his analytical, careful, scientific mind—felt mushy. He put it down to far too much dripping pudding and cake. Ah, that was it. Might as well lower the boom on his continued meddling in her affairs. He sat at the table and she sat across from him.

  “I paid a visit to St. Clement’s School today,” he said, and continued when he saw her questioning look. “It’s a charity school in Plymouth, run by Trinity House.” He thought her questioning look would continue and it did. “Trinity House is a sort of red-haired stepchild,” he began, which made her smile. “It’s an entity governed by a three-hundred-year-old royal charter and some thirty Elder Brothers, as they are called. They oversee lighthouses and harbor and channel buoys, and license navigators. I am licensed through Trinity House, as are some captains—not enough, in my opinion.”

  He waved his hand. “That’s neither here nor there. Trinity House also runs a school in Plymouth and another in Portsmouth for the children of seaman killed in the line of duty.”

  “That’s well and good but—” Mrs. Poole began.

  “The school in Plymouth has an extraordinary teacher of mathematics,” he said. “I want Beth enrolled there.”

  He watched Mrs. Poole’s face and saw a longing so huge that if let loose could fill a coronation room. “She’s bright, isn’t she?” she asked, but it was more of a statement.

  “So bright,” he agreed. “Before you came home this afternoon, I started her on the rudiments of algebra and she had no trouble following me.” He laughed, because the atmosphere was charged with Mrs. Poole’s interest. “She is either a prodigy, or a miniature lady.”

  “I’ve wondered,” Mrs. Poole said, sounding wistful now. “I would give the earth to see her enrolled in such a place.”

  “St. Clement’s takes girl, too,” he assured her. “The obvious obstacle is—”

  “Bart was in the army,” she finished. Her brows drew together, and he sensed a change in her, not altogether in his favor. “Why tell me this? Why tease me with something that cannot happen?” She sat back, and took her gaze from his face to her feet. “I am sorry. That was rude of me, but I’m so tired.”

  He could tell she was tired, her exhaustion more mental than physical. He wanted to pull her close and transfer some of his heart to her heart, but that would just frighten her into throwing him out.

  “I intend to make it happen,” he said, in his best sailing-master voice. “Don’t ask me how, because you would most certainly not approve.” There. He would let her wonder. He didn’t think she would believe in her wildest imagination that he was planning to put down a sum of money that would demand the Elder Brothers’ attention. Mrs. Poole had been reared in her own hard school, one that did not hold out much hope anymore.

  She said nothing for a long time, but at least she looked him in the eyes again, her own eyes so pretty and brown and deeper than wells. “I won’t ask. I am almost unemployed and there is rent due on New Year’s Day that I have no way to pay …”

  Her voice trailed off, then grew firm again, as he saw the fight in her. “Do your best, sir,” she said.

  “I will.” He took a deep breath. “On a far lighter note, Mrs. P, would you be my guest at a noisy, stuffy, overcrowded dull party on Christmas Eve?”

  Ah, relief. She laughed. “You make that endlessly appealing and easy to turn down, Mr. Jenkins.”

  “I thought so! Every year, the harbormaster throws such a party. I always attend out of obligation. I forgot to add overcooked food and monumental small talk. Would you care to accompany me?”

  She surprised him, as she had been surprising him throughout their acquaintance. “I honestly wish I could, Mr. J! However, I don’t have a dress fit for even a dull party, so I must decline.”

  He relaxed, admiring her … her what he couldn’t say. What a woman. “So you are telling me that if you did have such a dress, you would go with me?”

  “Certainly! We could talk to each other and not be bored. I have a prior engagement on Christmas Eve, however. Beth and I are going caroling.”

  “You will have more fun than I will,” he replied, pleased that she would have come. He stood up. “I have kept that poor post rider in the cold for too long. Good night, Mrs. P. Hang it all, Mary Ann.”

  She laughed at that and did not correct him. She followed him to the door, a far-too-short distance to suit him. “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  An honest question deserved an honest answer. “Mary Ann, a day or two before you knocked on my door, I complained to my sister that I was bored. She told me to do something about it.”

  “That seems reasonable, Thomas,” she replied.

  “I am not bored now, because I intend to make things better for you.” Might as well unload the whole thing on her, since it wasn’t of much consequence to someone with far more troubles than he had. “After I have succeeded, and I will, I will go to the Navy Board in London and grovel and whine until they give me another ship.”

  Her face fell, which he found unaccountable, but it was late and he knew she was worn out. He was tired, too, and his stomach was starting to object to ill usage. Better to leave right now. He patted her shoulder in lieu of a bow and showed himself out.

  He told the post rider to direct the chaise to the posting house instead of Notte Street, knowing that a walk would do his insides good. He strolled along in the cold darkness, thinking of other walks like this up from the harbor. He thought of all the times he consciously tried to correct his sailor’s roll and walk with his legs closer together like a landlubber. He had walked that way for months now, but he knew how easily he could readjust to a pitching deck.

  Someone bumped his shoulder in the dark and he stepped back, not looking for trouble, but ready for it. The bump was followed by a shoulder slap and then a grin minus two or three teeth. The man was short and Thomas knew him.

  “Rob Beazer, you’re too old to be out so late,” he said, and shook the much shorter man’s hand.

  “Thomas Jenkins, you’re too careful to be out so late,” the little man declared.

  They walked together now, Thomas shortening his gait to match that of one of the kindest victuallers in contract to the Royal Navy. Rob Beazer had been the subject of appreciative ward room chats on days in the doldrums, when the food in kegs was going bad—at least, food not furnished by Beazer and Son, Victuallers. Officer and seaman alike generally wondered how someone so pleasant could avoid being
cheated by subcontractors, hard-nosed scoundrels to a man. No one ever arrived at any answer, but Beazer had even been toasted aboard grateful ships, or so the rumor went around the fleet.

  “You’re out late,” Thomas said again. “Did Mrs. Beazer toss you over for a younger sailor?”

  “Nothing like that,” Beazer assured Thomas. “My clerk quit—oh, why quibble? I sacked the drunkard—and I’ve been pulling the long hours.” He poked Thomas in the chest. “The navy still keeps me busy, laddie.”

  Trust a man aged at least seventy to call a forty-three-year-old a laddie, Thomas thought. “Where away your latest contract?”

  “Australia, a frigate shepherding four prisoner transports. Jailbirds have to eat, even though Boney is gone to his own island prison.”

  “Can’t your son take over the late-night entries?” Thomas asked, concerned for the man’s health.

  Beazer took off his watch cap. “Dead these four months from something I can’t spell or pronounce. Meggie is so low and sad.”

  “I am sorry to hear this,” Thomas said, thinking of all the reams and reams of lading bills from Beazer and Son that he had initialed through the years, before having his crew sling the tonnage into the hold so he could balance the burden. “I truly am, Rob.”

  “I know ye are, lad. Man might be inclined to evil as the sparks fly upward, but sometimes the good ones go, too.” Another gusty sigh. “I need a clerk.”

  Thomas stood still on the sidewalk, his breath coming quicker. He took the old man gently by the shoulders. “Rob Beazer, how much do you trust me?”

  If the elderly gent was surprised, he didn’t show it. “More than most men.”

  “I can solve your clerk problem.”

  “When?”

  “Day after Christmas. It’s a bit unorthodox, but I can do it. You’ll never have a regret.”

  Rob Beazer regarded him with that shrewd look Thomas remembered from countless visits to the victualling warehouse. He rubbed his chin and never took his eyes from Thomas’s. “No Catholics or Irish? No drunkards?” he asked.

  “No. I’ll bring her and her daughter around on Christmas Day,” Thomas said.

  The old man slapped his cap back on his head. “What game are you playing, laddie?”

  “No game. I am in dead earnest.”

  They continued looking at each other. Beazer finally nodded. “I can tell ye are.”

  Thomas knew the matter hung on a thin wire. “Just give her a chance,” he said softly. “The same way the navy gave me a chance, and the same way, for all I know, the victualler did who took you in years ago as a common laborer.”

  “Aye, then, lad. Make it Christmas Day. My warehouse.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  U

  Mary Ann’s last day of work for Lady Naismith frightened her less than she thought it would. She expected no extra Christmas token, not on this last day when the stingy woman counted out coins into Mary Ann’s palm as though they were crown jewels.

  She had to write her own letter of character, so she larded on all the skills she possessed, not just a modest few. Even Beth would have told her this was no time to hide her candle under anyone’s bushel. She needed employment, and soon.

  Lady Naismith barely glanced at the letter, which confirmed Mary Ann’s belief that the woman was almost illiterate. Her signature, cramped and crabbed, would indicate such was the case.

  Mary Ann put the coins in her reticule, afraid to look at them for fear they would shrink if scrutinized. She put on her cloak, nodded to Lady Naismith, and went to the door.

  “You’re not even going to wish me Happy Christmas, gel?” the old screw asked.

  “It slipped my mind,” Mary Ann said, feeling surprisingly serene. “I hope you have the Christmas you deserve.”

  She left Lady Naismith stewing over that one, and did not look back. As she walked home, she passed sweet shops with proprietors sliding marzipan and candy chews into cone-shaped twists, a poulterer’s with forlorn-looking turkeys slung up on hooks, and a linen draper’s with handsome swatches of fabric ready for customers with a good deal more money than she had.

  She spent a long moment in front of a clothier’s bow window, admiring a white rabbit-fur muff that Beth would probably moon over, if she were there. It saddened her that Beth has quit asking for anything, and angered her that Bart Poole’s darling, brilliant child had learned to appreciate colored pictures, instead.

  But at least there would be colored pictures this year. She cast her cares to the wind and bought a slice of beef for dinner to accompany the cake they had hoarded. They had decided to leave it alone until Christmas Day, to eat with the beef and potatoes, courtesy of Mr. Laidlaw, that would constitute a respectable dinner.

  Tonight it would be milk and bread again, but that was no hardship. As soon as it was dark, they would join other carolers at St. Luke’s and stroll and sing of new babies and a virgin mother and carpenter father who probably didn’t have much between them and ruin, either, if they had to spend the night in a stable. Afterward, the vicar had promised hot chocolate and biscuits, and a little something for his students.

  Beth was finishing up her painting when Mary Ann opened the door. She looked over her daughter’s shoulder, admiring the bouquet of roses, perfect for some day in January when winter seemed to be hanging on and on. Her own watercolor was finished and dry, so she slid it into a paper sleeve with Happy Christmas on the front and painted holly and ivy sprigs. They could walk to 34 Notte Street tomorrow and deliver them in person as a small token of friendship.

  When Beth finished, Mary Ann took her watercolor pans next door and touched up last year’s Christmas drawing of beef roast for Mr. Laidlaw, making the beef medium rare, with that tinge of pink he liked. In no time at all she had added dripping pudding, and then in the background, a slice of cake.

  “Done! I hope you have a Happy Christmas,” she told the landlord as she cleaned her brush and dried it.

  He nodded to her from the depths of his ancient, rump-sprung chair, wrapped in a blanket and looking about as content as a man could. “Same to you, missy,” he told her. “Let’s have a better new year.”

  He said the same thing every year since Mary Ann had arrived at his doorstep dressed in black, with a tear-stained face and an infant in her arms. She said the same thing she always said. “Let’s do.”

  By the time Mary Ann and Beth finished supper, the sky was black with only a few tinges of light low on the horizon. By the time they reached St. Luke’s, snow was falling.

  The vicar and his wife were dab hands at organizing caroling parties. In no time they started out, two by two, to sing to anyone in Haven who was kind enough to open their door and listen. One of the older girls, proud and careful, carried the collection box, counting on Christmas generosity to make a little difference in the lives of the poor.

  We’re not there yet, Mary Ann thought, her hand on Beth’s shoulder. Where they would be in a week was anyone’s guess, but it was Christmas Eve, and not a time for worry. Feeling like a lion tamer with a whip in one hand and a chair in the other, she forced her fears back into a corner of her mind and told them to stay there through Christmas.

  They sang first for the merchants on Haven’s modest High Street, which earned a few coins and marzipan for the children. They sang past Haven’s great houses, where the doors remained shut. The proverbial butcher, baker, and candlestick makers were more receptive audiences, along with the constable, who shook his cudgel at the bigger boys and made the older girls shriek.

  The choir had just finished “A Spotless Rose,” when Mary felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked around in surprise, her fist raised, to see Thomas Jenkins.

  He gave her fist a shake. “You’re ferocious.”

  “You frightened me,” she said honestly, and relaxed when he crooked out his arm and pulled her arm through. She looked at Beth, pleased to see Susan Davis walking alongside her daughter.

  She stopped and turned to face him. “You
are supposed to be at a boring, crowded party.”

  “I couldn’t even get Suzie to go with me. Whatever charm I ever had must have been shot off in the war.”

  “Really, Mr. Jenkins,” she murmured, happy to be towed along, even happier not to feel alone as she usually did on Christmas Eve, and discouraged and frightened at what the new year would bring.

  “In fact, Suzie and I are here to kidnap the two of you and take you back to Plymouth for Christmas Day. We decided to start tonight, didn’t we, Suzie?”

  “We did,” his sister said, “so there will be no disagreement. We have a pretty room for you and Beth, and my ’tween-stairs girl will have a fire lit.”

  “I daren’t protest,” Mary Ann said.

  “I wouldn’t,” Suzie told her.

  Two more houses and they were back at St. Luke’s. While Beth drank her hot chocolate and the grownups enjoyed wassail, Mary Ann smiled to see Thomas clink enough coins in the collection box to make the vicar gasp.

  “A naughty lad is Thomas, flaunting his alms before men.” Suzie stood beside her. “I must scold him. Do you know, my dear, he bullied me to leave Cardiff and certain ruin and housekeep for him in Plymouth?”

  “I’m not surprised,” Mary Ann said. “Ruin?”

  “I had the merest pittance from my husband and a house in need of repairs I could not afford,” she whispered back, her eyes on her brother, who was talking to the vicar now. “He made the repairs, sold my house for a profit, tucked the money into some sort of fund for me, and spirited me away. He’s that sort of brother.”

  He’s that sort of friend, she thought.

  She was too shy to walk beside Thomas Jenkins on the way home, busying herself with Beth, who didn’t need any attention. At the house, it was pointless to argue with either brother or sister. She bundled up their nightgowns into a bandbox the former inhabitant of her three little rooms had left behind and tucked the watercolors under her arm, along with their gifts for each other, wrapped in brown paper.