Timeless Regency Collection: A Country Christmas Part 10

"Does your brain ever hurt, Master Six?"

He turned around, almost surprised but not quite. He waited for Miss Bonfort to reach him. He knew he could feign ignorance and joke about the matter, but she seemed to understand him. How, he knew not.

"At times," he admitted. "Then I go to sleep."

She nodded and held out a book. He took it. "The Lives of the Martyrs," he read. "In case I get bored before two bells in the forenoon watch?"

"In case. Good night, sir."

He smiled as he opened the door on a room that was warm and tidy. Tired, he kicked off his shoes, stripped, and crawled into a firm enough bed but with no lumps. The pillow smelled of lavender, so he thought of great fields of the aromatic herb he had seen in southern France in more peaceful times.

Stomach full, heart in tune, Master Six settled into as much somnolence as his mind ever allowed him. He closed his eyes and noticed something remarkable. For the first time he could ever remember, he felt his shoulders relax and slope downward. He thought a moment, wanting to end a good day in a perfect way.

"'Chapter One: Common Notions,'" he murmured as cares slid from those lowered shoulders. "'Number one: Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another.'" He thought through two, three, and four, his mind on Miss Meridee Bonfort, who seemed to be figuring out his great secret. "'Number five: The whole is greater than the part.' Is that so, Miss Bonfort?" he asked out loud. "Euclid thinks so. Shall we find out?"

Chapter Six.

By two bells in the forenoon watch, Able Six was ready for his pupils. He stood looking out the window upon a winter's scene of rolling land and trees still shedding their summer's ballast. He stood on tiptoe, but no, there was no ocean in sight, which caused him some disappointment.

The room rejoiced in the morning sun, so he had no fault with the lighting. The chairs looked hard, though. The table contained two neat stacks of thick paper he had requested, as well as single sheets, scissors, and pencils, plus a ruler.

He looked up at a timid knock on the door and opened it to find his pupils standing there, each with a cylinder tube of jackstraws in hand. He glanced at the mantelpiece clock.

"Excellent, men," he said. "Two bells in the forenoon watch. And you brought along your jackstraws."

He thought about the hard chairs, then sat down on the floor cross-legged, instead. Gerald and James looked at each other, grinned, and sat down, too. Able opened one cylinder and poured out the jackstraws, setting them up, and releasing them. They played quietly through three rounds.

Instead of setting them up again and letting the jackstraws fall a fourth time, Able counted out ten and arranged them in rows, which took up a good portion of the floor. By now, the boys were lying on their stomachs, watching with interest.

"Gerald, take five away from the ten, and let's see what we have," he directed.

Gerald promptly did as he was asked, going through an entire row of numbers that got larger and smaller, then larger again as he added, subtracted, and moved around the jackstraws with increasing ease, according to Able's instructions. James watched and took his turn, with none of Gerald's hesitation.

Since it was just as simple to make practice cards sitting on the floor, the boys spent the morning each making a set of addition cards and then subtraction. By the time Miss Bonfort, a baby on her hip, called them to luncheon, the cards were done. Able smiled inside to see their reluctance to leave the floor and troop down the hall.

"After luncheon, spend some time doing what you wish," he called after them and was rewarded with a snappy salute from James.

"You're a wonder, Master Six," Miss Bonfort said.

"Numbers are fun," he said with a shrug as he got up from the floor with a groan.

"Feeling our age, are we?" she teased.

"I am but twenty-six," he replied. "I blame a cutla.s.s jab to my hip that nearly did me in at Camperdown."

"You could use a chair, as nature intended," she reminded him, her eyes lively.

And that was the precise moment when Able Six, a strange man with the lowest background imaginable, decided to pursue Miss Bonfort, even though he didn't yet have permission to use her first name, and he was sc.r.a.ping by on half pay. She was bright, and he thought she was on to him. Better to find out now. He couldn't say things were moving too fast, because his entire life and mind moved too fast. Why waste a minute more?

He indicated Fox's Book of Martyrs lying on the unused table. "I can give this back to Mr. Ripley now," he said. "Better return it while I can still walk unaided down the hall, despite war injuries that would elicit sympathy from a more tenderhearted female."

She laughed out loud at that bit of hyperbole and did as he thought she might. She picked up the book and turned to the table of contents. "How does Chapter Five begin?" she asked, innocently enough.

Able rubbed his hands together, because this was a game he relished. "You picked a good one, Miss Bonfort." He closed his eyes and saw the words on some cosmic sheet of paper. "'When the reformed religion began to diffuse the Gospel light throughout Europe, Pope Innocent III entertained great fear for the Romish Church.' Am I close?"

She laughed again, shut the book, and lightly tapped him on the head with it. "You are right on, and you know it, smart man!"

They laughed together, but she wasn't done with him. She opened the book again. "The heading on Chapter Twenty-Two," she prompted.

"Oh, give me a hard one, Miss Bonfort," he said. "'The Beginnings of American Foreign Missions.'"

She didn't laugh this time. She just observed his face quietly, as though wondering how a human could pack so much inside his brain.

"When did you figure me out?" he asked.

"I watched your eyes when you were looking at my brother-in-law's bookshelf," she told him, setting the book down. "I've never seen eyes move so fast." She indicated the book. "And you read this monstrously dry tome that I had to read for punishment years ago when I prevaricated."

"That's punishment, indeed," he teased. "I read it this morning when I woke up early."

"It took you . . ."

"About twenty minutes," he said. "It was dry, after all."

She shook her head in amazement, then transferred the baby she was carrying to her other hip. "I don't know what to say, Master Able."

"Start by calling me Able, without master in front of it," he asked, hopeful.

"If you will call me Meridee," she replied, then rolled her eyes. "What a name! I am the sixth of six daughters, and my parents must have run out of ideas."

"I rather like it. It's not as silly as Durable."

"You have me there."

He just looked at her then, imagining a life with this lovely woman beside him. The little girl who rested so quietly against her only fueled his imagination further. He strongly suspected that love and thoughts of marriage and children didn't come so fast to most men, but he already knew he wasn't like most men. "I have not one single thing to recommend me," he said quietly. "Nothing beyond a strange talent, which, frankly, is more of a curse than a blessing."

Meridee Bonfort merely shrugged and directed her attention to the baby in her arms. Deep inside him, he was touched at her sudden shyness. He knew he was moving too fast; she knew it, too, but she didn't run from the room or turn cold. He knew she was bright; he also knew she was breathtakingly, superbly normal.

"Captain Hallowell, my captain on the Swiftsure, told me once-I thought in jest-that I would need a keeper," he said, coming not one step closer to this charming woman. "We laughed about it, but I believe he was serious."

She set the baby on the floor between them, and the little one began to pat her knees and rock a bit. Able stooped a moment and wound a curl around his finger, watching it bounce.

"Captain Hallowell knew, too?" she asked.

"Couldn't be helped. I was a loblolly boy at that earlier time, dumping urinals and carrying food to patients for the s.h.i.+p surgeon, a man with no imagination whatsoever."

"That must have chafed you," she murmured, not taking her eyes from his while sitting down.

"No, actually," he said as he sat down across from her. "He never suspected, so I was free to observe to my heart's content and squirrel away his surgical textbooks for nightly reading."

Meridee sighed. "I think I know where this is going."

"I am certain you do," he replied. "At the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, I was serving on the HMS Captain, with Commodore Horatio Nelson commanding that arm of battle. It was a b.l.o.o.d.y run, and the surgeon died." He paused, wondering if she would believe what followed.

She was quick. She turned pale, her eyes relentlessly on his. "You took over."

"Aye. The pharmacist mate seemed paralyzed when Surgeon Bowie died. I had watched any number of amputations. I knew what to do." He shrugged. "Should I have stood by, idle?"

To his gratification, Meridee leaned across the table and patted his cheek. She blushed and drew her hand away quickly, probably chagrined at her spontaneity, but he silently blessed her for it. She tried to cover her impulse by reaching down to pat the baby on the floor.

"Did they all live?" she asked.

"Most. Some, no one could have saved." He closed his eyes for a second.

"Open your eyes," Meridee said. "They're moving too fast."

He did as she said, relieved to be stopped before he saw the whole scene again on that cosmic sheet of cursed paper that was his mind.

"And so you met Captain Hallowell then?" she prompted.

She held his hand now, lightly in her grasp, as though knowing intuitively that a tighter grip would frighten him. Some sense told him it was up to him to tighten the grip, and he did.

"Aye. He commanded the Captain, Nelson's flags.h.i.+p, and came to the sick bay." That was close enough, if not entirely accurate.

"Beg pardon, Miss Bonfort, but there is luncheon getting cold in the breakfast room. Miss Bonfort!"

They both swiveled around and let go of each other's hands at the same instant. The housekeeper stood in the doorway, her eyes as wide as saucers.

"Luncheon can wait, Mrs. Ledbetter," Meridee said calmly. "Save something for us, please."

"Are we in trouble?" he said, after the housekeeper glared at him, turned on her heel, and stomped away.

"Most likely," Meridee told him, her voice steady. "Mrs. Ledbetter is an estimable woman, but she will tattle to my sister and . . ."

". . . and I'll be gone by nightfall."

"No!" Meridee exclaimed, and slapped the table. "I intend to win this round. My sister needs me right now, and your retention will be the condition of my remaining." She leaned forward, her lovely blue eyes so intense. "You do need a keeper, Able Six. Please continue your narrative." She laughed. "I need to hear it, but I am hungry and I believe Cook made profiteroles."

Meridee picked up the little girl from the floor and set her in her lap. She laughed when the baby slapped the table in perfect imitation. "I am setting a poor example," she teased.

Able told Meridee about the gift of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica from Captain Hallowell a month after the battle. "It was in English, of course, but with the Latin text in the back."

"You read it in English in fifteen minutes?" Meridee teased.

"Took me an hour. It's a dense read. And then I-"

"You read it in Latin the next afternoon, before . . . before one of those dog or cat watches."

He threw back his head and laughed. "You are a sorry excuse for a seaman! It's a dog watch, and no, it took me three days."

"Slow top," she teased again.

"Captain Hallowell pulled a string or two and had me transferred to the Swiftsure, his next command, where I served as sailing master second without having any experience." He chuckled at the memory. "Captain Hallowell took a beating from the Admiralty for such an impulsive act, but they left him alone when matters proved successful."

"You observed the sailing master," she said, a statement of fact.

"I did. Reuben Maxwell was the best. I learned from him and regret to this day his death during the Battle of the Nile."

He had nothing more to say so he was silent, enjoying the view of a lovely woman with troubled eyes. He had laid himself bare for the first time in his life, even beyond what Captain Hallowell knew. A yea or nay from Meridee Bonfort would allow him to hope or send him packing.

He heard her stomach growl, which made him smile and broke the tension, if that's what it was. "Should we adjourn to the breakfast room before you start to gnaw on that small girl in your lap?" he asked.

"In a minute." She waved off the suggestion in a way that endeared her to him enormously. "I want to know more about you, but you are probably loathe to keep explaining yourself."

"Au contraire. I have never told this much to anyone before. My gift or curse-call it what you will-is something I try not to mention. Ask away."

"When did you discover this about yourself, or . . . or did someone discover it for you?"

He sighed and started to close his eyes, but kept them open. "Miss Meridee Bonfort, no one in a workhouse cares too much about children who are numbered."

"Then you figured it out by yourself," she persisted.

He looked up at a knock on the frame of the open door. His face like thunder, the vicar stood there, a napkin tucked under his chin. "Meridee, I will speak to you immediately."

Able stood up. "Sir, I . . ."

Mr. Ripley had a chicken leg in his hand, which he pointed at the sailing master. The result made the effervescent and obviously unrepentant Meridee Bonfort put her hand to her mouth. "You will leave this house at once."

"No, he will not."

Chapter Seven.

I have a champion, Able thought, curious more than fearful how this would play out, mainly because he suspected Meridee was just beginning to plumb the depths of her own involvement. From the look of astonishment on the vicar's face, he had never heard his little sister-in-law defy him.