The Unlikely Master Genius

by Carla Kelly

  “Aye,” he said simply.

  Chapter Six

  On the day Able Six was supposed to arrive from Portsmouth, Meridee insisted on taking the gig to Plymouth, accompanied by eight-year-old Gerald, her nephew who had drawn the long straw. James had gone away to sulk, muttering something about the unfairness of life.

  “I’ll miss you, Aunt Meri,” Gerald had told her while they waited in the tea room next to the less genteel Davy Jones Inn, where the mail coach stopped. “May I call him Uncle Able in a few weeks?”

  “He’ll be delighted, I am certain,” Meri assured the little boy. “You and James will be his only nephews that he knows of. Would you like another cinnamon bun?”

  Of course he would. While Gerald ate with relish, Meridee Bonfort considered the events that had taken her to this point in her previously placid life.

  She was no fool. When her father ran out of income, which meant no dowry for her, she accepted the fact and went to live with her dear Amanda Ripley, older sister and vicar’s wife. She resigned herself to spinsterhood because she wasn’t a woman to waste time mourning what would never be.

  Then Sailing Master Durable Six had moved into her orbit and everything changed. She had never met anyone like him, and soon knew there were no men like him, at least not since Sir Isaac Newton. By the world’s standards, he had nothing to recommend him beyond a brain so exceptional that there were no words to describe it. He was illegitimate, poor, and down on his luck because France, Spain, and England declared a shaky peace and his ship was superfluous. He came to teach her nephews until after Christmas, when the boys’ father had more free time again. That was it; that was all.

  The irony that a man of some ambition might prefer war to peace wasn’t lost on her. The lover in her demanded that she help him. The realist in her knew perfectly well that if he did not succeed in Portsmouth, he would have to return to sea when the treaty ended, as he assured her it would. By going to Portsmouth first and pleading his case before an amazing group of seafarers, she had done all she could. It lay with Able Six to finish the matter, and return home employed. And so she waited. With some trepidation, to be sure, but also hope.

  He did not disappoint. When they heard the coachman blowing on his yard of tin, she leaped to her feet and stood under the tearoom’s sheltering eave, because rain still thundered down.

  She scanned the coach roof for Able Six, dismayed to not see him sitting there as he had sat on the outbound trip, to save a few pennies. She started breathing again when the door opened, and Able was the first man out. He paused to hand down two ladies who looked perfectly capable of leaving a mail coach unassisted, but were obviously charmed by the curly-haired man in black who had good manners.

  He handily caught his duffel that the coachman threw down, and hurried the few yards to the tearoom, where he set it down and grabbed her in a close embrace.

  “We’re in, Meri,” he whispered in her ear. “I’ve a contract in my pocket and the key to our house.”

  She hugged him back then kissed him soundly, not caring for a minute that one of her brother-in-law’s parishioners stood in the tearoom doorway. Meridee knew the woman would tell her friends that Miss Bonfort, a most respectable spinster, had slid socially and didn’t care who saw her kissing a remarkably handsome man, who, if rumor had it, was an unemployed bastard.

  “Master Six, you’re getting wet,” Gerald announced. “Step inside, both of you.”

  “Master Ripley, you are wiser than we are,” Able said.

  He was hungry for more than cinnamon buns, so Meridee ordered a meat and cheese sandwich to accompany them, plus tea.

  “When I didn’t see you, I was afraid,” she said, after the servant left with the order.

  “No fears. I spent a night with your Uncle Aloysius. How useful of you to have an uncle who heads the victualing department in Portsmouth. He insisted on paying for an inside seat for my return trip.” He touched her cheek. “Said he didn’t want me to ruin a good wedding by contracting pneumonia. By the way, he insists on walking you down the aisle.”

  “What a dear man,” she replied.

  “There’s more to it.” He took his wallet from inside his uniform coat and opened it. “Look here. He gave me—us—fifty pounds.”

  “How kind, but why?”

  “He thought you might ask. He called it many back payments for being a niece who should have had a dowry like her sisters. Hey now, no tears. He thought you might do that too.” He gave her his handkerchief. He lowered his voice. “Frankly, I’m grateful you didn’t have a dowry, or I’d not have stood a chance.”

  “Give yourself credit, Able,” she whispered, her lips close to his ear. “You’re still the handsomest man I ever gawked over.”

  He gave a totally phony sigh. “Miss Bonfort, you are an easy mark, if a man’s looks paralyze you from wiser decisions.”

  “You have winkled out my sordid secret,” she teased back. “Show me your contract.”

  He spread it out on the table. “A house, a cook, a maid,” she said. She looked closer. “You will be teaching mathematics and everything left over from the usual courses? Isn’t that odd?”

  “I’m odd,” he admitted. “The headmaster is giving me a free hand to teach the calculus, if I decide a student is up to it, or … or … swimming, or natural science, or how wind blows a ship around. There will probably even be a contest in how to stack blocks like ballast on a floating platform and see which sinks the fastest. Whatever the moment calls for.” He shook his head. “I never expected this.”

  He seemed almost puzzled by such carte blanche, which made her bless someone’s amazing wisdom in understanding this dear man’s astounding mind. “I will never be able to keep up with you,” she said.

  “Believe me, I do not want this … odd affliction, for so it seems, at times. All I ask is that you love me.”

  She smiled at his simple mandate. “I already do.”

  “Then I’ll give you this.” He took a sheet of paper folded and sealed from that same pocket. “This is your contract, if you’re willing. It’s your decision, not mine.”

  A question in her eyes, she opened the paper and read of her own appointment as house mother to four of the youngest students at St. Brendan’s, if she should wish it.

  She read of Headmaster Thaddeus Croker’s interest in seeing to the nurture of lads of age six and seven, who had never known the delights of a mother to care for them, and who seemed a bit more adrift than the other students.

  If you wish to help them, make them part of your own little family, yours and Master Six’s, she read silently. She blushed at the paragraph stating this would not begin until some few weeks after their wedding, so she and the master could settle into marriage without children underfoot. Master Six so stipulated, and I agree, she read.

  “Twelve pounds?” she asked in amazement. “A pound a month for doing what I would happily do for free? I like little boys.”

  “And a big one of twenty-six?” he joked.

  “Even better,” she said, too shy to look at him.

  “Good answer, Miss Bonfort. I thought you might feel that way about the boys, but I did not mention it to Headmaster Croker,” Able said. “This income will be yours entirely.”

  “Ours,” she said firmly.

  “Yours,” he repeated, equally firm. “Every woman needs her own money.”

  “This one doesn’t,” she told him, her shyness gone. “My salary will go into our common pot. I know enough about little boys to suspect I will earn every penny.”

  “No doubt,” he told her. “Equal partners in everything?”

  “Everything,” she repeated. “I insist. I will promise to obey you in our wedding vows, but I warn you, Master Six, I have my opinions.”

  Gerald spoke up, surprising Meridee, who had forgotten his presence. “She has decided opinions.”

  “I’m shocked,” Able said with a straight face.

  “I thought I should tell you,” Gerald sa
id seriously, then grinned. “But sir, she’s a game goer. Of all my aunts, and I have many, she’s the most fun.”

  “That’s what I thought, Gerald.”

  With an arch glance at her that nearly rendered Meridee incapable of one more second of rectitude, Able reached in his pocket and took out a coin. “Take this to the ostler next door and have him bring ’round your aunt’s gig.”

  After Gerald darted off, Able took a glance around then kissed her hand. “I could have bought a slave woman in Marrakesh, had I wanted someone to obey me. I could have bought two. Not interested.”

  “We’re venturing into something new,” she said finally. “Marriage, most certainly, but this school too, this unusual, strange, unheard-of school.” She had to say it. “I hope you have no regrets with either.”

  “Not one.”

  Chapter Seven

  They were married on Christmas Eve, 1802. Able had already suggested they forgo a ring, even though they had a cushion now in Uncle Aloysius’s gift, and the twenty pounds Amanda gave her, whispering that Mama had pledged it to her youngest daughter, if she ever married.

  “Someday there will be a ring, my love, but I feel the need for caution,” Able told her. “Suppose I discover in Portsmouth that you have a predilection for faro and lose it all in a gaming hell? Pompey has many.”

  “Knothead,” she said, but nodded in agreement. She was frugal in her ways too.

  The issue resolved itself after she went to the room she now shared with two nieces who had arrived with their parents, ready to celebrate Aunt Meridee’s wedding to a seafaring man. She had tucked the little ones into the trundle bed when she heard a familiar two taps followed by one tap.

  She couldn’t help the flutter in her stomach, thinking how little sleep she planned to get the following night.

  “My, but that night cap is fetching,” Able said when she opened the door and glared at him. “If looks could slay ….”

  He pulled her into the corridor. “My heart is racing,” he teased. “I’ve never seen a lovelier nightgown.”

  “I’ll wager you have,” she teased back.

  “Hold out your hand,” he ordered.

  She stared at the gold ring he set in her palm. She admired the delicate tracery, wondering how her man had come by such magnificence. “Where in the world—”

  “Captain and Mrs. Hallowell sent it over from the inn in Pomfrey,” he said. “They just arrived. Here is the note.”

  She handed back the exquisite ring and took the note. “ ‘To Master Six,’ she read out loud. ‘I have carried around this bauble for years. If you don’t think me presumptuous, put it on your wife’s finger. Years ago, I took it off a dead Barbary pirate. I trust she is not squeamish. Sincerely, Benjamin Hallowell.’ ”

  “Are you squeamish?” Able asked. “If you’re not, hold out your finger.”

  Meridee, you already know this is no ordinary marriage, she told herself. Do you need more proof? She held out her hand.

  Able slipped the ring on her finger. He laughed as it spun around. “I’ll wrap thread around it until a jeweler can size it.”

  Meridee tipped her finger down into his palm, where the ring dropped, kissed him, then went back into her room. She stood by the door until she heard him walk away.

  Too restless to sleep, she took the pillow from her bed, grabbed up a blanket and made herself comfortable in the window seat. She looked around her room, her refuge for the last six years since her mother’s death, after being told by her sisters, but kindly, that there could be no husband because she had no marriage portion. Papa’s money was gone.

  Six years had been sufficient time to master the hard lesson, as she observed the spinsters in her brother-in-law’s parish. Some had withered and others had prospered. Clear-headed, Meridee chose to emulate the unmarried ladies who took restoratives to sick neighbors, tended other people’s gardens, and sewed clothing for the parish poor, all the while grateful she had a place to live.

  Then came Able, walking to Pomfrey from Plymouth to take up a temporary position as tutor to her nephews. Meridee couldn’t discern the moment when she decided no other man in the world would do for her. Since she had never expected a husband, the notion must have crept up on her like a gray cat dimly seen through fog, suddenly there.

  She blushed to think of seeing Captain Hallowell tomorrow, since she had blacked the man’s eye barely two weeks ago, driven beyond rational thought when he told her there was no way he could keep Master Six from seagoing duty, once the Treaty ended. She had lashed out because it was obvious to her that her man with the prodigious brain could prove far more valuable by educating others with skills that would make them useful immediately in the fleet.

  Meridee saw St. Brendan’s for the miracle it was. The general hardness of life assured her such opportunities were providential enough to fall under the label of God’s work. She thanked the Almighty and watched the moon glide across a familiar landscape she was soon to leave behind. In the vicarage of Pomfrey, she had learned patience, and how to wait upon the Lord.

  Meridee rested her chin on her up-drawn knees, thinking of earlier tonight, when four of her five sisters—Abigail lived in Canada—had crowded in this room, locked the door against children, and given their youngest sister marital advice. None of them told her what she really wanted to know, and she was too shy to ask.

  Amanda, who knew her best, had come the closest. As the sisters left the room, Amanda lingered behind. She touched Meridee’s cheek and whispered, “I suspect Master Six will know precisely what you need. Trust him.”

  Meridee knew good advice when she heard it. Now was the time to act. When all was silent in the household, she padded on bare feet up the stairs. Careful to avoid the squeaky boards, she went silently up to the chamber closest to the eaves. She knew he wasn’t asleep.

  “I wondered when you’d come knocking,” he said and tugged her inside. “Cold feet?”

  She looked down at her toes. In a fit of methodical preparation, she had already packed her bedroom slippers. “Not this kind,” she said, “at least not in the length of time I am going to spend in here, Able.”

  He picked her up and sat with her on his bed. “Now your toes are off the bare wood. What can I do for you?”

  “Answer one question,” she said, grateful the room was dark, because her face flamed.

  “Fire at will, Miss Bonfort,” he said. “Before you begin, let me state I will be gentle tomorrow night.”

  “I already know that,” she told him, which meant he held her closer and muttered something about barely deserving such trust.

  “Then what, madam?”

  “A simple question.” She took a deep breath. “Am I going to enjoy this, too? I dearly love to have fun.”

  “I do not doubt for a second divided into one hundred equal parts that you will enjoy anything more,” he said. “I cannot claim more prowess than any man, I suppose, but I know what I’m doing.” He stood up with her in his arms and walked to the door, which she reached over and opened. He deposited her in the hall. “Go to bed, Mrs. Five and a Half.”

  Who could not sleep well after that?

  If the success of a wedding can be gauged by the number in attendance, then the marriage of Miss Meridee Bonfort, spinster, to Sailing Master Durable Six, Royal Navy, was the event of the year in Pomfrey, Devon.

  Dressed sensibly in dark-green wool, with Amanda Ripley’s borrowed knitted collar, a brand-new winter bonnet, and the lace handkerchief her departed mother had carried, plus a sixpence in her shoe and blue garters, Meridee Bonfort became Mrs. Durable Six.

  A gaggle of nieces had preceded her down the aisle, tossing Christmas ivy at random. She clung to the arm of Uncle Aloysius Bonfort, suffering in a tighter neck cloth than she suspected he usually tied, but beaming down on her. To her amusement, he strutted as he took his time getting her down the aisle, savoring the moment. She happily let him. It was a short aisle in a small church, and Able didn’t appear inclin
ed to leave it without her.

  Meridee looked around the congregation, delighted to notice what close attention the women were paying to her almost-husband. She had no doubts that the stories of his supremely inappropriate birth and upbringing had circulated industriously. So, apparently, had the news of his undeniable good looks. From the top of his curly black hair, meandering down past a handsomely straight nose and high cheekbones, to lips that thankfully just skirted on being Scottish, Master Six was a wonder to behold, and Meridee knew it.

  Why stop there? The man of acutely low parentage carried himself impeccably, with wide shoulders sloping toward a narrow waist and down long legs. Meridee Bonfort thought him a masterpiece. She had never been to Greece, of course, but Papa had possessed a book with a series of splendid paintings of Greek statues, some with fig leaves, some without. She had caught her older sisters giggling over it one afternoon when they knew Papa was gone. They slammed the book shut and wouldn’t let her look. She had waited until they were gone to get her own glimpse of masculine perfection. Whether Able Six fit that mold, a few hours from now would serve to enlighten her. She did not think he would disappoint.

  She nearly gasped to see an amazing red waistcoat of Oriental design, instead of his usual plain vest. There was even a lacy frill at his throat, provided, Able had told her in a note sent ’round that morning, by none other than Captain Sir Belvedere St. Anthony. Meridee dared any groom to appear more splendid.

  She could barely bring herself to look at Captain Hallowell, who had consented to serve as his former sailing master’s best man. When she did, she saw a smile aimed specifically at her, his black eye scarcely noticeable now. And Lord, he winked at her.

  Uncle Aloysius handed her off to Able, and then it was time to pay serious attention to her brother-in-law, as he married them.