A Country Christmas (Timeless Regency Collection Book 5)

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “People? Us?”

  “Why not?” He took a deep breath, in too far to back out, not that he wanted to. “I can’t even imagine more wildly divergent spheres of society than you and I inhabit, but by the eternal, I don’t care.”

  “What would Sir Isaac Newton say to that?” she asked, her eyes bright with the merriment he was already finding himself unable to function without.

  He touched her forehead lightly with his, just a light touch. “By the eternal, I don’t care.”

  Chapter Eight

  By unspoken, mutual consent, Able and Meridee declared a strange sort of truce. Able knew truce was the wrong word, but he couldn’t actually think of a better one, even as he scoured those cosmic pages in his ordinarily tidy brain. They were not at war with each other—quite the contrary.

  It was the first time in his life that his brain could not think of the right word to describe what sort of person Meridee Bonfort was to him. He tried something new; he decided not to worry about it.

  He realized what it was a few days later, when Gerald and James were busy forming and reforming triangles with their jackstraws. He watched the boys and recalled the Peace of Amiens, which was printed and given to every ship in the Fleet. He had imagined the Peace as a pulling away—a chance to regroup and rebuild their forces, but also to breathe, to think about what lay ahead.

  This personal Peace he had discovered with Meridee Bonfort was no different. He knew he must slow down, and maybe that was the point of this peace of theirs. He wanted nothing more than to kiss and cuddle her, and he suspected she wanted the same—Newton’s third law and all that it implied—but this was neither the time nor the place. For the time being, he must remain a man working for his ten shillings a month, room and board, who would disappear from everyone’s life when Christmas came. It chafed him, but he was discovering hitherto unknown wells of patience.

  Able decided Meridee was a bit of a tyrant, which made him remember Captain Hallowell’s remark about his needing a keeper. One morning, when she was certain no one was watching, she pressed her hand against his chest, backed him up against the wall in the breakfast room, and ordered him to walk outside every afternoon with his pupils.

  He obeyed her dutifully, although he did admit to her that the country was not entirely to his liking. “I was raised in a city,” he protested, “breathing great lungfuls of sooty air. It didn’t stunt my growth. Are you aware how loud winter birds scream early in the morning? I didn’t think so. I rest my case.”

  “You are hopeless,” she replied with some spirit. “I suppose you prefer the ocean. I’ve seen you standing on tiptoe at the schoolroom window facing south, as if thinking water will magically appear.”

  “Guilty as charged. You can keep your countryside,” he said generously.

  “Well and good, Master Six, but I want you to walk outside, breathe the country air, and not think,” she insisted, which made him smile.

  “I don’t have any choice in that,” he replied, because he didn’t.

  “Try, Able, try,” she urged and melted his heart with the compassion in her voice.

  He tried and discovered it was possible to enjoy crunching through leaves as the season advanced, and then even piling them up into mounds, turning around, and throwing himself onto the noisy pile to his students’ delight, his mind blissfully free. That worked until James found a worn-out rubber ball that looked as if a dog had gnawed it. James tossed it to Gerald, who tossed it to Able.

  Able bounced it against a tree, then bounced it harder, stepping back as the increased force meant increased resistance. He moved farther and farther back, then sat his charges down and explained Newton’s Third Law of Motion and how someday man could use such principles to take a vehicle to the moon.

  When he told Meridee what he had done, she shook her head. “You are incorrigible,” she scolded.

  “Aye, incorrigible,” he replied, which meant he had to say the word over and over because she liked the Scottish way he twirled his r’s around. Then they were both laughing as quietly as they could, sitting there on the top of the stairs that led to his attic room.

  They had learned to wait until everyone slept before adjourning to the stairs for conversation and the simple pleasure of sitting shoulder to shoulder. She laughed when he told her about Gerald’s confusing angles with angels, which meant the boys got silly and talked about the properties of scalene angels and isosceles angels.

  “You turned it into a lesson, of course,” she said, and he heard the pride in her voice. Whether it was for her nephews or for him, he wasn’t certain.

  “Aye, miss,” he said and nudged her, which meant she could nudge him back. “Stay here.” He got up and went to his room. When he sat down again, he had a handful of drawings, which he put in her lap.

  “Once we got back to the classroom, after that improving walk in the country, we made Christmas angles. The jackstraw cylinders were on the table, so that was our model for angel bodies. Gerald favored scalene triangles for wings, and James preferred isosceles.”

  She held the drawings close to her face because the light was poor on the stairs. She pointed to the third drawing. “Yours?”

  “Aye. I like a double pair of equilateral triangles, then a single one as a halo,” he said.

  “Are they having as much fun as you are?” she asked, placing his drawing on top.

  “I hope so. Gerald pulls a long face when the afternoons are over.” He leaned back and rested his elbows on the tread above them. “I work on their memorizations in the morning—we’re up to multiplication now—and the afternoon is for fun.”

  “Geometry is fun?” she asked.

  “For me,” he said with a shrug, and then a smile. “And for the boys.”

  Meridee sat silent for a long moment. Able had come to recognize those quiet moments as preludes before personal questions. Ask me anything, he thought. The pleasure of lowering his guard was fast becoming an addiction, as long as the person asking had striking blue eyes and those tantalizing tiny freckles. He started to nudge her again, but instead of a nudge, it turned into a gentle lean, which he found he preferred anyway, especially when that third law of Newton’s meant she leaned gently, too, and held him up.

  “What?”

  “When did you realize that not everyone learns the way you do?” she asked.

  “That’s a good way to put it,” he said, temporizing because it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

  “Now you’re stalling,” she said, which made him wonder how well she knew him. It was a novel experience. “I was going to ask when you discovered you were a prodigy, but I don’t want to swell your head.”

  “It’s a curse, not a blessing,” he assured her.

  “What can I say to that?” she asked, then folded her hands in her lap and waited.

  “I was six,” he began finally, his voice subdued. “There were thirty of us foundlings in one small classroom, every age jumbled together. I suppose the only concession to our age was that we young ones were set up front so we could see better. You really want to know?”

  “I do,” she said firmly. “Master Six, I have never met anyone like you before, and I doubt I will ever meet anyone like you again, no matter how long I live.”

  He felt precisely the same way. She deserved an answer. “The instructor wrote on a big board—at least, it looked big to a six-year-old—words and more words. After a few days of observing what he said when he pointed to certain words, it started to make perfect sense.”

  “You just watched?”

  “Aye. It’s what I do best,” he assured her.

  “I saw how fast your eyes moved over the books in my brother-in-law’s study,” she said. “Up and down one bookcase and then the other two, all in about three seconds.”

  It was his turn for a question. “Why in the world were you even looking at my eyes?”

  She blushed then. “Master Six, you are a remarkably handsome man. What was I supposed to do?”

/>   He threw back his head and laughed, which meant she had to put her hand over his mouth and say, “Shh!”, which meant he couldn’t help kissing that hand, which meant her hand came away quickly and she blushed even more furiously.

  “Well, you are,” she said again, with a charming dignity that went to his heart. “Answer my questions, please.”

  The laughing ended as he remembered what his brain would never let him forget. “A big boy, maybe ten or so, was sitting behind me. The master called on him to read the sentence, ‘In my father’s house are many mansions.’ I didn’t know at the time it was from St. John, but I knew what it said.” When he stirred restlessly, Meridee took his hand in hers.

  “He couldn’t read it—I mean, how can an ordinary person learn if he fears the switch? The master struck him with a switch and kept striking him. Like a fool, I leaped up and read it, so the master would stop hitting the boy behind me. Oh merciful heaven, the master stared at me, then started beating me. I never was sure why. I . . . I had assumed all children my age learned the way I did, but I was the only one foolish enough to leap up. What did I know then about how others learned? I was six!”

  “You never did that again?” she asked.

  He couldn’t look at her, because her voice betrayed more emotions than he wanted to add to his own at the moment. “I did a few more times. Then the other children started avoiding me, and I got tired of being beaten.”

  “But why would he beat you?”

  “You’ve never been in a workhouse?” he said. “Count your blessings.”

  Chapter Nine

  He asked it so calmly. Meridee dabbed at her eyes and looked him square in his. “I begin to understand what you mean by a curse,” she said.

  She thought he might deflect her comment, but he nodded. “It’s a curse not to be like everyone else. I learned to keep my mouth closed. The teacher ignored me after that and put me in the back of the room, where I couldn’t see over the taller pupils.”

  “In your case, it didn’t make any difference where you sat,” she said.

  “Not at all. Since I could read, all I had to do was find books somewhere, anywhere.”

  “No, I’ve never been in a workhouse,” she said. “You’re saying they didn’t want the challenge of a child out of the ordinary.”

  “I am. The workhouses take what the cities and towns disgorge and turn little ones who are not at fault for their birth into dumb animals. I sat in the back of that classroom for three years,” he said, still holding her hand as if he sought reassurance like the child he was then. “There was a row of old books behind me. I took one at the beginning of each classroom purgatory and read it five or six times. The teacher couldn’t see me. I got sly and clever and started stealing books to read overnight.”

  “Bravo, Master Six,” she whispered.

  He startled her by taking her hand to his lips and kissing it. “When do I become just Able again, Miss Bonfort?”

  “Right now, Able,” she assured him, wondering how the top of the stairs in December could suddenly feel so warm.

  She was grateful down to her still-cold toes that Able chose not to question her. She was having a difficult enough time trying to figure out this tumult of emotions that had showered over her ever since the man’s recent arrival. Meridee had learned after her mother died that some hopeful doors of escape from the spinster life had been quietly closed to her.

  The most glaring failure was a lack of dowry. A respectable man had the prospect of some compensation upon marriage into a genteel family. Genteel though her parents may have been, Papa was not a man prudent with finances. Three modest dowries for the oldest daughters had seen them married well enough, but that was all. The short end of that financial stick had seen her two undowered sisters marrying down a bit. Mama’s passing had closed even that door for Meridee, the youngest, who suddenly had no home.

  She couldn’t fault Amanda for gently insisting that she come to live in the little country rectory, and her oldest sister did need her services. At the time, incarceration in the country after life in Exeter seemed ample payment for a roof over her head, and she knew she was biddable. She had been happy to furnish childcare for her fertile sister until this strange man arrived to teach her nephews for ten shillings a month. But Able needn’t know all that. He was even poorer than she was.

  Her toes were not getting warmer, even though her face and neck still felt on fire. “Able, I’m going to bed before my feet freeze,” she said frankly, then couldn’t help another question because she didn’t want to leave his side. “Why in the world couldn’t your teacher just have taught, instead of bullying children into additional fear they didn’t deserve?”

  “We were beaten and starved for questioning anything. Apparently, some people, when given a little power, use it most unwisely to wound others,” he said promptly, which suggested to Meridee that he had given the matter considerable thought. Of course he had, she chided herself. What does this kind genius do but think?

  Cold toes aside, Meridee couldn’t leave. “I’ve seen how good you are with my nephews. Even Gerald seems to be learning. Did you know you had this teaching skill?”

  “Not really,” he said with a deprecating laugh. She felt his shoulders shake in more silent laughter. “Imagine what I am capable of.”

  “Able, you astound me,” she said as she stood up. “You need to be a teacher of young children.”

  He rose, too. “Tell that to the Royal Navy. A man can’t quit the service in times of war.”

  “But we’re at peace,” she protested.

  “And the Admiralty grudges me half-pay as a reminder that I am still a sailing master.”

  “Maybe some things need to change,” she told him, even as she knew this amazing, intelligent man would be gone at the end of December, when her brother-in-law had no more need of his services.

  “Let me know if you see a solution to my current dilemma,” he said, and then he kissed her.

  It wasn’t her first kiss. Pretty women do find occasional opportunity, and hers had been the brother of the man who married her just-older sister: one quick peck on the cheek, and then another on the lips before he laughed and darted away.

  This was different. She was being kissed by a man who probably had some experience, and there they were, balanced on the staircase. His hand went to her throat to steady her. He leaned her against the banister for balance and kissed her several times—each kiss more successful, because Meridee, though not a prodigy, was a quick learner.

  This can go nowhere, she reminded herself when he released her neck and stepped up to the next tread.

  “I think that was more fun than is legally allowed in the country,” he whispered, then kissed her forehead. “Good night, good woman.”

  She didn’t sleep at all, but spent the night wrapped in a blanket in her window seat, staring out at the undulation of the Devonshire moors. Able was right about mornings in the country: the winter birds did scream rather too loud. About the time she heard the maid of all work tapping on the door to start a modest fire in her grate, she knew her comfortable, quiet, unchallenging life in the country was never going to feel anything but stultifying ever again. When Master Able Six returned to Plymouth and war inevitably began again—she did not doubt his comments on that eventuality—she would spend her increasingly void life wondering whatever became of the man who went back to sea.

  Tears came finally when she knew she was doomed to scour every account of battles at sea from now on and wonder if he even still lived. She would wither and die with each piece of vague news until she truly became a dried out woman with no hope. Such a personally disastrous course had come about because she had fallen in love with the most unacceptable human being on the planet, a man so low in birth and fortune that her sister and brother-in-law would never for one second entertain him as a suitable match.

  If there was a more discouraged and saddened woman anywhere in the world, Meridee Bonfort had no idea who it could b
e. And if a woman ever needed to hide such knowledge, she knew precisely who that was, too. The idea of pasting a smiling face on her countenance until the end of December seemed impossible; she could not consider that same face for a lifetime. Not yet, anyway—misery needed to be added upon gently, a stroke at a time, to become bearable.

  She pasted on that pleasant face and started another day. She nodded to Able in the breakfast room and teased her nephews about making more Christmas angles, which meant she had to explain that to her brother-in-law. She found pleasure in the way his face lit up when Gerald raced away and returned with his Christmas angel with scalene wings.

  “You, sir, are a remarkable teacher,” Mr. Ripley said to Able over a cup of tea.

  “I enjoy it,” was the master’s simple reply. “Didn’t know I would, but I do.”

  Soon enough, he led his little charges down the hall to the classroom, and another day began. Meridee knew better than to look in the mirror, because that pasted on face had started to slip the moment Able left the room with her nephews. She wiped jam off her littlest niece’s hands and lifted her from her chair, holding her close to enjoy the pleasure of a little one. The knowledge she was unlikely to have little ones of her own had never troubled her overmuch before, but it did now.

  Still, to everyone except her, this was just another day. She took her other little niece by the hand and started down the hall to the nursery, where they would play and she could stew in peace and quiet.

  She had been agitated before by small aggravations, the kind that came with daily living. This was different. She set her little charges down on the floor and sat with them. She emptied a box of blocks and starting stacking them for the girls to knock down.

  Ordinarily, the fun of watching her nieces could jolly her out of any black mood. Not today—not when she knew that her life would only go downhill to the eventual sterile grave if she did not exert herself to at least try. But where to begin? She had no idea.