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

Mandy changed clothes, her eye on the clock. The simple riband she usually wore to pull back her hair would have to do. She looked down at her shoes that peeped from under her ankle-length dress, grateful she had blacked them two days ago, when she was desperate to keep busy so she would not think about kissing the sailing master. It hadn’t worked, but at least her two pairs of shoes shone.

Her aunt attached the knitted lace collar with a simple gold bar pin. She indicated that Mandy should turn around so she did, revolving slowly.

‘I believe you will do, my love,’ her aunt said. ‘Hold your head up. Use my woollen shawl. Heaven knows it only goes to church on Sundays. This will be an outing.’ She settled Mandy’s winter hat square on her head.

‘I don’t even remember when you grew up,’ Aunt Sal said. ‘Could it be only yesterday?’

‘I grew up quite a few years ago, Aunt,’ Mandy teased. ‘You know very well that I will be twenty-seven soon.’ She fingered the fringe on her aunt’s shawl. ‘With the money—let’s think about a little holiday at Brighton this summer. We can close the Rose for a week and visit the seashore.’ She recognised Aunt Sal’s worry frown. ‘We’ll be frugal. We have never had a holiday. We are long overdue.’

Mandy took a deep breath and started for Walthan Manor. The morning mist had broken up enough for weak sunshine to lighten the normally gloomy December. Soon she would have to hunt the wild holly and ask the butcher prettily for some of the ivy on his house. She had finished the stockings she had knitted for Aunt Sal, useful stockings. She had wrapped them in silvery paper the vicar’s wife had found in the back of a drawer.

Mandy wished she had something for the sailing master. If she hurried, she could knit him stockings, too, because stockings weren’t a brazen gift. Maybe he would think of her upon occasion. She knew she would never forget him.

Her courage nearly failed her at the long row of trees, with Walthan Manor at the far end. The leaves were gone now and no one had raked them into piles for burning yet, which suited her. She left the drive and walked through the leaves, enjoying the rustle and remembering leafy piles in the vicar’s yard. He had never minded when she stomped through the church leaves, because Mandy’s Rose had only three windows and two storeys in a row of buildings. There were no leaves to run through, so he had shared all of God’s leaves at St Luke’s with one of his young parishioners.

I could never leave Venable, she told herself, her heart full. There would never be a reason to, which suited her. Why she sighed just then puzzled her. Maybe Brighton this summer would be the perfect antidote for the sudden melancholy that flapped around her like vultures around the knacker’s yard.

The dry crackle kept her company all the way to the gravel half-moon driveway that fronted the manor. She had never been so close before and she sighed with the loveliness of the grey stone and white-framed windows. Certainly there must be grander estates in Devonshire, 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