Regency Christmas Gifts (3 page)

“
Beth, sir,” said the child, and
followed her pronouncement with a curtsy of her own. “I like your
house.”

Who could resist that? He smiled back, noting
that she had a tooth missing. “I’m still getting used to living on
land,” a glance at her mother, “Beth.” Then, remembering his
manners, he added, “Let me take your cloaks. “We do have a maid
around here somewhere, except that she has scarpered
off.”

Beth grinned at that, which told Thomas that
she was a girl who herself liked to scarper on occasion.

Mrs. Poole was going to give him a hard time.
“That isn’t really necessary,” she told him, and held out a
package. “We won’t occupy much of your time. It’s this
package.”

He took it from her and recognized the ivory
hairbrush and comb set. Mrs. Poole came a little closer and he took
an appreciative sniff of a familiar fragrance. Was it
vanilla?

“
I am Mrs. Poole, but not this one,”
she said, pointing to the address. “We live at Carmoody Street and
not Dinwoody. I think the posting house clerks are overly busy this
time of year.”

By gadfreys, she had a pleasant voice. The
almost-burr to her Rs placed her almost in Scotland but not
quite.

“
I shouldn’t have opened it,” Beth
said, coming closer. “Mama wasn’t yet home from work and I hadn’t
ever opened a package before.” She hung her head. “I couldn’t
resist.”

She was honest little minx, not looking a great
deal like her mother, with hair auburn and curly and eyes so blue.
He had no doubt she would be a beauty some day, but her mother
already was.
Who are these people?

The missing maid came into the room first,
followed by Suzie, who gave him
such
a look. “Thomas, you’re
supposed to take their cloaks,” she said in that forthright, big
sister way.

“
I tried.”

“
We’re just returning a package,”
Mrs. Poole said. “We don’t wish to take up your time.”

“
Please do.” Suzie held out her
hands for their cloaks. “My brother was saying just this morning
how bored he is.”

Mrs. Poole surrendered her cloak and muffler to
his sister, even as he introduced them.

“
This is my sister, Mrs. Davis,” he
told his impromptu guests. “She was kind enough to leave Wales and
tend house for me. Suzie, this is Mrs. Poole and Beth.”

Once the tea tray was on the table in front of
the sofa and the cloaks in the maid’s hands, Suzie gestured for
them to sit down.

“
I truly don’t want to be a bother,”
Mrs. Poole said, even as she saw her cloak carried from the
room.

“
You’re no bother,” Thomas assured
her again. “Is there a carriage and driver that my all-purpose
handyman should see to?”

“
We walked from Haven,” Mrs. Poole
said as she accepted a cup of tea from his sister.

He glanced down at her shoes, which appeared to
be as sturdy as her cloak and hat. Still, dusk was nearly upon them
this December afternoon. “I trust you are not walking
home.”

“
Oh, no,” Beth said. “We could
afford to walk one way and ride the other. That is our plan. Thank
you.” She accepted a macaroon from Suzie.

There was no overlooking the blush that rose to
Mrs. Poole’s cheeks, making her even more attractive. With a pang,
he knew he was looking at poverty, the genteel sort, the quiet kind
that hid itself in hundreds, maybe thousands, of British
households, most recently where death had come to soldiers and
seamen.

Maybe his manners were atrocious, but he had to
know. “Mrs. Poole, do you have a … is your—”

“
He was a second lieutenant, Fifth
Northumberland Foot, and he died on the beach at Corunna,” she
said, her voice so soft. “They were the forlorn hope, holding back
the French so others could live, and waiting for the frigates to
arrive.”

“
I’m so sorry,” he said. “We came up
too slow because of contrary winds. I was there.”

Oh, he had been. In thirty years of stress and
war, the beach head at Corunna stood out, giving him nightmares for
years. In his dream, the fleet moved with dream-like slowness, and
he was the only one who appeared interested in the proper use of
sail. More than one night, he had wakened himself, calling “Listen
to me!” over and over. Now he just muttered it and went back to
sleep, thanks to the distance of seven years.

He had to share what he knew with Mrs. Poole.
Something in her eyes told him that she wanted to know even the
tiniest scrap about a good man gone. “We watched that rearguard,
Mrs. Poole. You have ample reason to be proud of your late
husband.”

“
Thank you for telling me, sir,” she
said. “Bart was always a brave man.”

It was simply said, but told him worlds about
this woman he had only just met and probably would never see again.
Funny how such a thought could make him uneasy.
Never see her
again? Impossible
.

She was a lady of great presence, probably
earned in the fiery furnace of war, the kind of war that comes
flapping home to roost among widows and children. “It could have
been worse, I suppose. His body was recovered and he is buried here
in Plymouth.” She gave her daughter a look of great affection.
“Beth was born a month later. I was here in Plymouth, and what with
one thing and another, we never left.”

He thought about the probable pension for a
second lieutenant—a rating little higher than that of an
earthworm—and suspected there was no money for her to return
north.

He discovered she was also a practical woman.
“We are taking up entirely too much of your time, Mr. Jenkins.” She
stopped then, and he could tell she had a question. From the way
she shook her head first, as though trying to stop herself, he
found himself diverted for the first time in months.

“
It can’t be any more rude than my
question, Mrs. Poole,” he broke in, encouraging her. “Can
it?”

“
Well, no,” she agreed, then blushed
again. “But your question wasn’t rude. Beth and I … we were
wondering … what does S.M. stand for? It’s here on the return
address.” She pointed to the little scrap. “And you just said you
were … were there at Corunna.”

“
S.M. Did I write that?” he asked.
“Old habits die hard. Mrs. Poole and Beth, it stands for Sailing
Master, nothing more. I’m retired now, but I evidently have to
remind myself.”

She gave him a sympathetic look, as if his face
had betrayed him, or if she simply understood that he did not want
to be retired.

“
You miss the ocean,” she said and
it was a statement.

“
Beyond everything.”

They were both silent, missing people and
places, apparently. Thank the Almighty that his sister had some
social skills, at least—those skills he had never learned because
he was always at sea.

“
Tom, you try me,” Suzie said, then
directed her attention to the widow. “Mrs. Poole, I am his older
sister and I can talk to him like that.”

Both women laughed, which relieved Thomas,
grateful his clumsy reminder of a difficult time had not chased
away Mrs. Poole’s sense of humor.

“
Seriously, my dear, do have a
macaroon or two, before Beth and I devour them all. And would you
like tea?”

She would, and took a macaroon while Susan
poured and Beth asked, “Mr. Jenkins, what does a sailing master
do?”

“
Most nearly everything,” he told
her, then sat back and noted her skepticism. This was not a child
easily bamboozled. “It’s true. Come here.”

With no hesitation, she sat beside him, her
mother moving over a little. Thomas glanced at Mrs. Poole, pleased
to see her savoring her macaroon. A slight nod of his head to Suzie
made his sister slide the plate of macaroons closer to the
widow.

“
I was the frigate’s senior warrant
officer, which means I had a specialty. My job involved everything
related to a ship’s trim and sailing.”

“
Trim?”

“
How it sits in the water and
sails,” he said. “I was the one, my mate and I, who decided where
every keg, box, and ballast must be placed in the hold. Tedious
work, but everything must balance. Do you follow me?”

“
Oh, yes,” the child replied with
admirable aplomb. “Mama tells me I am quite bright.”

Thomas threw back his head and laughed. “And
none too shy about it, either, eh?”

A glance at Beth’s mother told him she was
enjoying the conversation hugely. “Perhaps I have read my daughter
that chapter in St. Matthew too many times about the inadvisability
of hiding’s one candle under a bushel,” she joked, which made him
laugh some more.

“
If it didn’t balance, your ship
might sink in a storm,” Beth said, with some dignity.

“
Aye to that, Miss Poole,” he said.
“For the sake of simplification, I also set the navigational
course, made sure the sails were also in proper trim, and the
rigging true. I taught young boys not terribly older than you.
You … you are ….”

“… 
seven.”

“
Five years older than you, how to
navigate. Many of them hated it, but—”

“
I would never hate it,” she
interrupted, her eyes intense. “Mama, he probably knows more
about … about … planes and angles ….”

“
Geometry,” he filled in, fascinated
by this little girl.

“… 
than the vicar knows,” she
finished. “I go to a church school that the vicar runs.” She opened
her mouth, glanced at her mother, and closed it again. “But I am
not to complain.” That wasn’t enough. “Mr. Pettigrew does not
precisely shine in math.”

Thomas wanted to laugh and then laugh some
more, delighted by the company he was keeping that had just dropped
in unannounced. He used considerable discipline to limit himself to
a smile at Mrs. Poole, who to his further amusement had pressed her
lips tight together to keep from laughter, too.

“
Beth, you would have been welcome
in my quarterdeck lessons,” he told her. “What else? I also
keep—kept—the ship’s official log.” He waved his hand. “I was all
the time signing documents and doing boring stuff.”

“
You kept the log?”

Mrs. Poole’s interest equaled her daughter’s,
to his further delight. She put down her cup and given him her full
attention. “I had thought the captain did that.”

“
A ship’s captain keeps a personal
log. Mine is—was—the official log. At the end of each voyage, I
took it to the Navy Board as the full and official record of all
that happened during a single cruise.”

“
Mama could do that,” Beth supplied.
“She likes to write and draw and she doesn’t mind tedious
things.”

“
Then I should turn her loose in my
bookroom to balance accounts and keep records,” he told
Beth.

“
She would never disappoint you,”
the child replied.

Mother and daughter looked at each other, and
Thomas saw a comradeship that touched his heart. From the few
things she had said, it was evident to him that it was Life versus
Mrs. Poole and Beth, with no buffer. They were all they
had.

“
And now we truly must conclude this
delightful visit,” Mrs. Poole said, with what Thomas hoped was real
regret.

“
We’ve been charmed,” Suzie said.
“Let me put those macaroons in a parcel for you to take along.” She
rose and left the room even as Mrs. Poole opened her mouth,
probably to object.

“
So we leave you the brush and comb
to rewrap and send to another Mrs. Poole,” the widow said. “I hope
it was not to have been delivered in timely fashion.”

“
Oh no,” he assured her.
“
That
Mrs. Poole is an old dear who sold me this house and
most of its contents. Suzie found the set in the back of a drawer.
We thought she might want it.”

She paused and took a deep breath, and he
witnessed the regrettable look of a woman forced to pawn her
dignity. Her shoulders drooped and her eyes wouldn’t meet his as
she said in a small voice, “I must trouble you for that five pence
I paid to claim the package.”

He felt his heart break a little. Five pence
was such a small sum, but he had already deduced that there was
little between survival and ruin for Mrs. Poole and her daughter.
Her head went up then and she squared her shoulders, a sight he
knew he would never forget. He doubted that Beth’s father, holding
off the French Army at Corunna, was any more gallant than his
wife.

Don’t cry, you idiot
, he told himself,
as he reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a shilling.
“It’s the smallest coin I have.” He saw her open her mouth to
object and he overrode it with his senior-warrant officer voice.
“The other seven pence will be recompense for your efforts in
returning this parcel to me, and I will not have an argument, Mrs.
Poole.”

She took the coin, and her expression told him
she knew exactly what he was doing. “You are so peremptory! You
must have been a trial to the midshipmen and subordinates,
Mister … no …
Master
Jenkins.”