Make Her Wish Come True Collection. Ann Lethbridge
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‘I think I know how the wind blows, Amanda.’
‘What do you mean?’ she whispered back, feeling surprisingly conspiratorial for St Luke’s, where nothing ever happened except boring sermons.
‘If I am not mistaken, those are the very people who ate in Mandy’s Rose yesterday evening.’
She looked at him, a frown on her face, then felt herself grow too warm, not so much because he was standing close, which was giving her stomach a funny feeling, but because she understood. ‘Oh, my,’ she whispered. ‘They are looking you over. Poor, poor Ben.’ She leaned closer until her lips almost touched his ear. ‘Should I just assure them that you’ll be gone after Christmas?’
By the Almighty, she wanted to kiss that ear. An ear? Did people do that? It was probably bad enough that she was breathing in it, because he started to blush. A girl had to breathe, so she backed away.
He surprised her. ‘Amanda, whether you know it or not, you have an entire village looking after your welfare. I’m not certain I would ever measure up. It’s a good thing I’ll be here only three weeks.’
‘Nineteen days now,’ she whispered and couldn’t help tears that welled in her eyes. Thank the Lord the cloakroom was dark.
‘Your coat?’ he asked.
Silent, she handed it over, wishing she had never heard of choir practice, or Venable, or the Royal Navy. Why hadn’t she been born the daughter of an Indian chief in Canada?
The humour of her situation saved her, because it surfaced and she started to breathe normally again. Three weeks, Royal Navy, her stupid half-brother, sailing masters and blue tattoos: beyond a smile or two over her silliness and a resolve to be smarter, she’d have forgotten the whole matter in a month or two.
‘Choir practice awaits,’ she told him, indicating the chapel. ‘We’re singing our choirmaster’s own version of “O Come All Ye Faithful”, and he does need another low tenor. But not necessarily in the worst way.’
There. That was the right touch. The sailing master chuckled and she knew he had no idea what she had wanted to do in that cloakroom.
Feeling brave, she introduced Benneit Muir to most of the people who had already met him yesterday at Mandy’s Rose. She was casual, she was friendly. It only remained to introduce him to Mr Cooper, the solicitor, when the practice was over.
As it turned out, that wasn’t even necessary. As men will, they had been chatting with each other while the choirmaster laboured with his sopranos on their descant, ‘O come let us adore him’, and the men had nothing to do. Out of the corner of her eye, she had watched Ben hand over that mysterious folded sheet of paper to the solicitor, who stood directly behind him in the bass section.
They walked home with other singers going in the same direction. Again, Ben was quick to take her arm firmly. She knew better than to lean against his arm this time. Something told her that was a gesture best reserved for someone hanging around longer than nineteen more days.
Nineteen days! The thought made her turn solemn and then grumpy, but not until she was upstairs and in her room. She pressed her face into her pillow and resolved to be sensible and sober and mind her manners. After he left, the room across the hall would get dusty and that would be the end of lodgers. Mandy knew she would never suggest the matter again to her aunt.
Good Lord, I wish you weren’t just across the hall, Ben thought.
Sleep did not come, but the idea of counting sheep just struck him as silly. He had slept through hurricanes and humid tropical nights. Once a battle was over and he had done all he could, he had no difficulty in closing his eyes and not waking until he was needed. The way things were shaping up tonight in this charming room, he was going to still be awake at two bells into the morning watch.
He lay on his side, staring at the door, wishing Amanda would open it. He knew she wouldn’t, not in a million years, but a man could hope. He lay there in utter misery, wondering how pleasant it would be to do nothing more than share a pillow with her. All the man-and-woman thing aside, how pleasant to chat with her in a dark room, talk over a day, plan for the next one. He felt his heart crack around the edges as he remembered the fun of bouncing into his parents’ room and snuggling between them. He wondered now if he had ever disturbed them and that made him chuckle.
Thank the Lord she had no inkling how badly he wanted to kiss her in that cloakroom. But, no, he had reminded her that he was only there for three weeks. She had murmured something after he said that, so soft he couldn’t be sure, into his bad ear. He pounded his pillow into shape and forced himself to consider the matter.
You just want a woman and any woman will do, he told himself. Yes, Amanda is charming, but you know better. She is far too intelligent to care about a seafarer. Where are your manners, Benneit Muir?
He thought of his near escape from the sister of the ship’s carpenter several years ago. True, Polly hadn’t possessed a fraction of Amanda’s charm, which made bidding goodbye an easy matter, when he returned to Plymouth. He had paced the midnight deck off the coast of France a few times, scolding himself, until that was the end of it. This would be no different.
He put on his usual good show over breakfast, even though he couldn’t overlook the smudges under Amanda’s eyes, as though she hadn’t slept much, either. Ben, your imagination borders on the absurd, he told himself as he ate eggs and sausage that might as well have been floor sweepings, for all he cared.
Amanda only made it worse by handing him his cloak and hat, and two sandwiches twisted in coated paper.
‘I think you need more than one sandwich on a tray,’ she said at the door. ‘I put in biscuits, too. Have a good day, Ben.’
He took the sweet gift, bowed to her and left Mandy’s Rose. By the time he reached Walthan Manor, he was in complete control of himself and feeling faintly foolish.
To his surprise, Thomas was ready for him, a frown on his face, but awake, none the less. Ben thought about a cutting remark, but discarded the notion. No sense in being petty and cruel to a weak creature, not when he himself had exhibited his own stupidity. Ben explained charting a course, and explained it again until a tiny light went on somewhere in the back of Thomas Walthan’s brain.
Together, they worked through two course chartings. By the second attempt, Thomas nearly succeeded. A little praise was in order.
‘Tom, I think you could understand this, with sufficient application,’ he said.
The midshipman gave Ben a wary look, perhaps wondering if the sailing master was serious. Ben felt a pang at Tom’s expression and an urge to examine his own motives in teaching. Was he trying to flog his own disappointments, show off, or was he trying to teach? The matter bore consideration; maybe now was the time.
Sitting there with Tom Walthan, inept midshipman, Ben took a good, inward look at himself in the library of Walthan Manor, of all places, and didn’t like what he saw. He was proud and probably seemed insufferable to a confused lad. He had a question for the midshipman, a lad from a titled, wealthy family.
‘Tell me something, Thomas, and I speak with total candour. Do you like the Royal Navy? Answer me with equal candour, please.’
Tom’s expression wavered from disbelief to doubt, to a thoughtful demeanour that Ben suspected mirrored his own.
‘I…I am not so certain that I do,’ Tom said finally. He blushed, hesitated and had the temerity to ask the sailing master his own question. ‘Do you, sir?’
Tom’s unexpected courage impressed Ben. He thought a long moment and nodded. ‘I do, lad. The navy was a stepping stone