Regency Christmas Gifts (11 page)

In the privacy of his office, Thomas told his
only friend remaining on the Board what had precipitated this
decision. The man laughed until he had to loosen his neckcloth.
When he calmed down, he told Thomas precisely who to speak to at
Chancery Court and wished him well. “Bring her around here when
you’re next in London,” his friend said as he slapped his back and
gave him a shove toward the door. “If she is as pretty as you say,
the other board members won’t lob too many marlinspikes and shells
in your direction.”

The next matter was accomplished before lunch
and left him lighter in the pocket book, but he couldn’t help
smiling, even though it was raining again. Some Londoners walking
by him on the street seemed not to have recovered fully from
Twelfth Night.
What a sour bunch
, he thought, then had the
honesty to remind himself that he had looked even worse yesterday,
before his epiphany.

He planned only to stay a few minutes at
Trinity House to pick up the voucher for Beth, but he was collared
by a delegation of Elder Brothers who sat him down and made his
life complete.

He had to stare a minute and shake his head to
make sure he understood what they were proposing. “You want
me
to serve as headmaster for the navigational school?” he
asked.

They were patient; they were kind. Yes, that
was precisely what they wanted, and named a salary that made him
start to sweat. They sweetened it further with a furnished house
and servants right here in London. To his query about good schools
for a young girl, they just chuckled and assured him he need not
fear on that stead.

“
Of course, you will take your
students out on occasional cruises to the Baltic to test their
skills, but that is nothing,” the principal Elder Brother said.
“Yeah or nay, Master Jenkins?”

He slept the sleep of the reasonably virtuous
on the post chaise from London to Plymouth, despite the roll and
dip, or maybe because of it. He understood motion better than most
men. Mary Ann cavorted through his dreams and bothered him not a
whit.

He arrived a day later and had the post riders
drop him off at Beazer and Son. Rob Beazer stood at the lading
dock, and hurried over to tell him what a jewel Mrs. Poole was.
Thomas listened, nodded, and wondered just how long the old fellow
would hate him when he spirited Mary Ann away to London. The
telling could wait until he knew how the wind blew.

Fully clothed and not in the shift of his
dreams, Mary Ann sat at the tall desk. He smiled to see that she
had dropped one shoe and the other one was about to come off. She
was writing in a ledger and dabbing at her eyes with her apron. He
wondered if she had a cold.

“
Mary Ann.”

She looked up, her eyes huge in her face. She
got off the tall stool and didn’t bother with her shoes.

“
Did … did you get a ship?” she
asked, her voice barely audible, even though he stood close to her
now.

He nodded and she began to sob. He touched her
shoulder and she shook him off. “I’m so happy for you,” she
wailed.

“
I turned it down.”

She blew her nose on her apron, the only thing
handy, and stared at him.

“
I couldn’t go to sea and leave you
behind. I’m forty-three,” he added, and felt like a fool. “I
absolutely love you.”

“
I’m thirty-two and I don’t care how
old you are, Thomas Jenkins. I love you, too.”

That tall desk was no place to propose, so he
took her hand and towed her to a wooden crate with
dried
herring
stenciled on it in large letters. He sat her on it, and
himself beside her. He took three documents from his coat pocket,
and handed them to her one at a time.

The first was the voucher for Beth to enroll at
St. Clement’s School. She nodded her head. “She will make us
proud.”

Us?
he thought and felt delight cover
him like warm tropical rain, the kind found at about twenty-three
degrees and twenty-six minutes in the Tropic of Cancer.

Next he handed her the letter of appointment
from Trinity House. She read it, then read it again, her breath
coming in little gasps until he told her to breathe
deeply.

“
I’ll be at sea occasionally on
training cruises,” he explained. He pointed to one of the closing
paragraphs. “They already took me by our house. You’ll like
it.”

“
I will if you’re in it,” she told
him, which made years of war and disappointment and terror and
exhaustion fall right off him like discarded clothing.

He handed her the last document, which made her
smile and nod. “We probably can wait for three weeks and cry
banns,” she said, practical to the end. “I’ve heard that special
licenses are expensive.”

“
Twenty guineas plus a four-pound
stamp,” he told her. “I am now an expert.”

She gasped.

“
I am
not
waiting three
weeks. I told you I was forty-three!”

That must have satisfied her because she kissed
him. She wasn’t any better at it than he was, but they had a
lifetime to achieve perfection. What she did excel in was the way
she slid her hand inside his waistcoat.

“
Will you marry me tomorrow morning,
Mary Ann?” he asked. “In romantic January snuggle
weather?”

“
Will Beth be disappointed about St.
Clement’s?” he asked when she finished kissing him, getting better
already.

“
You’ll find something equally good
in London for her, my love,” she said. She was in a position to
look over his shoulder. “Oh, dear. Here is who will be
disappointed.”

He turned around to see Rob Beazer coming
toward them, passing a cudgel from one hand to the other. “Perhaps
you can find him another clerk,” Mary Ann whispered in his ear.
“Really soon.”

As a man who had also worked his way to success
from the bottom, Thomas knew that a man didn’t achieve the running
of a major business in a competitive town without considerable
shrewdness. He also knew that if he were running said corporation
and saw his new clerk sitting on a crate of dried herring cuddling
with a man, that a fulsome explanation might be in order. He stood
up, quite prepared for such an explanation.

Thomas began with no preamble, because he knew
Rob Beazer well. After all, a man doesn’t spend hours in such a
warehouse, going over bills of lading and inspecting cargo without
developing a friendship, which in this case was about to be
stretched to the limit. “Rob, I have bad news for you.”

“
You are marrying my new clerk and
stealing her away,” Rob said. At least he had quit tossing the
cudgel from hand to hand.

Might as well brazen it out. “Tomorrow morning.
I have a special license. I am, I ….”

Rob dropped the weapon. With barely suppressed
glee, he clapped his hands on Thomas’s arms. “I just won five
pounds,” he declared. “I wagered Meggie that you would not waste a
minute in stealing my clerk. She said Mary Ann would make you wait
for banns. Shake my hand, Master Jenkins.”

They shook hands. “How did you know?” Thomas
asked, not certain if he was more amused or more
relieved.

“
You never saw your face when you
brought this lovely lady here on Christmas Day. I watched you while
she and I talked and settled the matter.”

“
My face?”

“
In this business, I have learned to
read people. I know a liar when I see one, and I know a determined
man, too.” He glanced at Mary Ann. “I think now that I know what a
man looks like when he is in love.” He chuckled. “Never thought to
see it here among the herring and navy beans, though.”

“
You amaze me, Rob Beazer,” Thomas
said. “I thought that all I wanted on Christmas Day was to fulfill
an obligation to my sister after complaining about
boredom.”

Rob shook his head. “T’wasn’t what I saw!” He
gestured to Mary Ann, who joined them, holding out her hands to
both men. “How simple is man,” he told her as he grasped her hand.
“Mary Ann, I’m going to have to sack you.”

She kissed her employer’s cheek. “Bless you,”
she whispered.

“
I’ll find another clerk.” He put
her hand in Thomas’s. “Take good care of each other.”

He turned to Thomas. “As for
you ….”

It was no threat. “Bless you, Rob,” Thomas
echoed. “Saint Andrews tomorrow morning at eight of the clock, and
bring Meggie, of course.”

“
Thomas, we have until noon,
according to the license,” Mary Ann said, an efficient secretary to
the end, apparently.

“
I know, my love. Remember? I am
forty-three.”

I
t all started with a letter.
No reason it wouldn’t end with one.

Nothing much exciting ever happened in
Dumfries, Scottish market town in the old kingdom of Galloway. It
prospered because of its fishing fleet and English visitors, who
came to appreciate its handsome stone houses and tidy businesses,
located on the lovely River Nith.

This story begins in 1818 with two young
ladies, one the daughter of a local merchant who had become quite
comfortable through business dealings, cod, and herring. The
merchant may have been actually wealthy, but there is something in
the Presbyterian water of Scotland that calls bragging a
sin.

The other young lady is Sally Wilson, only
child of Dumfries’ minister of the Church of Scotland, retired now
from the pulpit. Such a man would never be wealthy, but he would be
respected. So was his daughter.

Ten years before the beginning of this story,
Margaret Patterson, daughter of the wealthy merchant, had informed
a young man that she would write to him, as he sailed across the
Atlantic to make his fortune in Canada. She had done it as a dare
from her equally silly friends.

She shouldn’t have teased John McPherson like
this. In John’s defense, he hadn’t thought that any gently reared
young lady would ever write to a man not her husband or fiancé.
Youngest son of the disreputable, unwelcome McPhersons, John was
dubious Margaret would reply. He only agreed to her forward scheme
because who doesn’t like to get letters?

Margaret confided in Sally Wilson that she had
no intention of writing to someone as lowly as John McPherson,
which horrified Sally, who did not approve of such casual cruelty.
To spare John further humiliation, she agreed to write in
Margaret’s place, using Margaret’s name.

Who understands the minds of young people? Not
anyone in Scotland, any more than anyone in England. Maybe things
are different in France or Italy, but this is not a story of those
people.

That’s enough to know as this Christmas tale
begins.

***

On a typical day, Sally Wilson found that from
the time she called the village school to order, to the time she
bade her little pupils good day, every minute overflowed with
arithmetic, penmanship, composition, and improving
works.

This day dragged because just before Sally went
outside to call her students in, Margaret Patterson dropped off the
latest letter from John McPherson.

“
I can’t stay,” Margaret said.
“Besides, you are about to call the class to order, and I have so
many details yet to work out for my wedding.” She waved a ringed
hand in Sally’s general vicinity. “Sally, you can’t imagine
everything I have to do!” she tittered behind her glove. “How could
you know? You don’t have a sweetheart.”

Another wave of the ringed hand, and she was
gone in the family carriage, probably to track down a pint each of
eye of newt and toe of frog for the groom’s cake, as Sally’s father
liked to tease.

Sally took the letter, admiring, as always,
John McPherson’s impeccable penmanship. For a man who came from a
rough family, he had somehow absorbed educational truths as well as
life lessons. She remembered him sitting by himself in his poor
clothes, seldom washed, in the vicarage school, the one that had
become the village school where she taught today. No one ever
wanted to sit near him because he reeked. Since her minister father
taught the school, he asked her to befriend the lonely
lad.

And so Sally had become friends enough with
Johnny to know that his mother was dead, leaving no one to see to
the washing, ironing. and mending that all the rackety McPherson
boys lacked. Sally understood why he smelled so vile, and in the
understanding, became a friend.

Had it been ten years since he left Scotland?
Sally swept out her classroom and banked the fire. She glanced at
the well-traveled letter on her desk, putting off the pleasure of
sharing John’s glimpse of a new world, and his own efforts
surviving in that land of snakes and Indians, and even prospering,
if the expensive paper was any indication.

As much as she enjoyed writing to John in
Margaret’s place, Sally felt a twinge of conscience at duping a
well-meaning friend. Ten years older and wiser now, she regretted
pretending she was Margaret in the letters she wrote to John. At
first, she tried to talk about John’s letters to Margaret, but her
friend just waved her hand and said she had no time for someone as
insignificant as John McPherson.