"Meridee, go to your room!"
She stood up, clutching her little niece. "Edmund Ripley, I am twenty-five and not three. I will not go to my room. Yes, I was holding the sailing master"s hand. You would, too, if you heard his stories of life on the blockade and the terrors of a French bombardment."
Her chin trembled, and her eyes filled with tears, impressing Able beyond all belief by so much prevarication and emotion. No wonder her father had made her read The Book of Martyrs years earlier as punishment for fibs. She appeared not to have learned a thing.
"I doubt I would be holding his hand," the vicar said, but his anger seemed to dissipate. He stopped pointing the chicken leg and merely looked at it, as though wondering where it came from. Able glanced away, wondering if anyone had ever perished of suppressed mirth.
Brother-in-law and sister-in-law glared at each other. "I vow, if your sister did not need your help so much, I would send you packing, too, Meridee," the vicar threatened, but with diminishing fervor. He rounded on Able, who gazed back. "As for you . . ."
Praise G.o.d, but Gerald and James tumbled into the room, their practice cards in hand. "I got them all correct, Master Able," Gerald was shouting. He did a creditable imitation of a sailor"s hornpipe, while James, ever the conspirator, beamed at his elder brother.
"He did, Papa," James said. "We quizzed each other, just as Master Able taught us. Let us show you. Sit down, please, dear Papa."
Dear Papa sat, his eyes on his sons now. With a flourish worthy of a magician, James held up the first card, which happened to be five plus two.
"Seven!" Gerald declared in round tones.
Another card, another correct response. Ever the observer, Able watched the vicar"s face soften as his son, who was admittedly not as quick a thinker as his little brother, sailed in triumph through five more cards. When he hesitated on the first of the subtraction cards, Able spoke up quietly, so as not to disturb the boy"s concentration.
"Think of the jackstraws in your mind, Gerald. Picture them on a piece of paper, and you"ll have it," Able instructed.
"Eight," the boy replied, his voice confident.
Meridee applauded, and Gerald took a bow. "What are we going to learn this afternoon?" he asked Able.
"The world of triangles," Able told him. "Almost my favorite place. That is, provided I"m here to teach you."
"You"ll be here," the vicar said.
Able had to give the man points for changing his tack and finding a new course. Mr. Ripley leveled an avuncular stare at his sister-in-law, even as he gently plucked his little daughter from Meridee"s arms. "There will be no more hand-holding, no matter how heartrending a tale you hear, Miss Bonfort. Do I make myself amply clear?"
She curtsied, looking not one bit chastened. The vicar appeared inclined to overlook her unrepentant state.
"And you, sir," he said to Able. "Remember your station in life."
"Aye, sir. I am reminded of it often," Able said.
The chicken leg held at his side now, out of reach of his daughter"s grasp, the vicar left the cla.s.sroom. Gerald turned to Able. "May we start on triangles now?" he asked.
"I haven"t eaten yet, and your aunt"s stomach is growling," Able said. "Did you leave us any profiteroles?"
Both boys nodded, their eyes serious, because this subject was, after all, dessert. Able looked at their eagerness, their youth, their well-fed faces, their clean and brushed clothing and wisely did not contrast it with his own childhood. Perhaps some things were meant to be put away and not remembered. He would have to ask Meridee about that, once he told her of his own education in the workhouse. Perhaps he could even tuck away all those bad memories, once she knew.
"Here is what I think you should do," Meridee told her nephews. "Go outside and walk around in the cold air. See what you can find that might interest Master Able. I"ll send him out to join you as soon as he finishes luncheon."
"Well done, Miss B," he said as they walked down the hall to the breakfast room. He leaned toward her, but not too close this time. "How much trouble are you in?"
"None, I think," she said after a moment"s consideration. For the smallest second, he envied her a quiet brain that required reflection before response. "Truth be told-"
"So you do tell the truth now and then?"
She had the good grace and sufficient conscience to flash him a look that held a measure of repentance in it. "I only tell lies to get myself out of trouble, and maybe you, too, as I"m the one who took your hand." She cleared her throat for dramatic effect. "As I started to say before I was so rudely interrupted, truth be told, my brother-in-law and sister have worried about Gerald"s mental acuity."
"No need for them to worry," he said. "He simply needs a different approach to whatever has been tried before. I have noticed that some people need to see and touch what they are learning. Jackstraws are one thing, and I will find other methods for Gerald."
She turned to face him. "You realize you should be teaching children full time, and not just temporarily."
He couldn"t help it that his hands went to her shoulders. By the mark, she was soft to touch. "You also realize I am in the Royal Navy," he said. "We are not at war at this moment, but I wouldn"t wager peace to last too far into 1803. I have a job to do."
"I know," she said, sounding oddly deflated. She seemed to perk up almost too fast to suit her mood. "Right now, I need a profiterole."
"It"s dessert," he teased, relieved to be on what felt like solid ground.
Even though it was only lukewarm now, luncheon with Meridee was an unalloyed pleasure. She ate with relish, which he enjoyed. Eyeing her st.u.r.dy frame, he reckoned she never missed a meal. She was by no means plump, merely healthy and well-fed, as a woman ought to be. And shapely.
Not for the first time, he wondered what his mother had looked like toward the end of her likely short, bleak life. He had no idea how old she was when she died, but he had seen drabs and street woman in other ports and countries and knew she was probably not beyond her teen years. Life on the street was a great and harsh leveler. Come to think of it, so was his life in the fleet.
For the first time, he wondered what it would be like to teach children, just children. A man of logical if overcrowded mind, Able extended that thought to include his own children, well aware they would likely never be born, considering his dangerous profession and the realization that once war resumed, it would probably last a long time.
"What in the world are you thinking, Able?" Meridee asked as she pa.s.sed him another sandwich, the kind with the edges trimmed and the bread soft and free of weevils.
"Do you truly want to know?" he asked as he took the proffered sandwich. "I am not a small-talking man. Think carefully before you answer me, Meridee."
It could have gone in any direction. I have not known you for twenty-four hours, he thought in humility, as he watched her expressive face. He wanted to lean closer to see those minuscule freckles again, but he refrained because he was already balancing on thin ice in the Ripley household.
"I need to know what you are thinking, Able Six," she said finally. "If war comes today or tomorrow or in six months, something tells me I will regret the remainder of my entire life if I do not know."
He sat back, almost at a loss, except that he was never at a loss. Might as well confess. "I am thinking how much I would like to teach children; more specifically, my children, who will likely never be born, because I have not a thing to recommend me and I serve a dangerous profession."
He didn"t know what she would do. This woman was a variable in the complicated scheme of his life that he had never encountered before. He smiled suddenly, thinking of Newton"s Third Law of Motion. He turned slightly to face her and held up his hand. To his eternal relief and delight, she pressed her hand against his. He pressed back, and she pressed again. He twined his fingers in hers.
"According to Newton"s Third Law of Motion-I"ll simplify it-for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. We just proved it," he whispered, not even wanting the delicate watercolor pictures on the walls to hear him speak his odd heart to this lady. "That"s how arches stand up. I also think it"s how a . . . a vessel could fly to the moon, if such a thing were possible, and it is."
He looked for skepticism and saw none, which made his shoulders relax as they had last night in bed. He knew he could tell her anything.
"You are always going to be thinking faster and farther than anyone," she whispered back. She tucked their twined hands in her lap, which gave him a pleasant jolt even Newton couldn"t explain.
"But you won"t yield an inch. It"s an equal reaction," he said. "We would remain in equilibrium."
"People? Us?"
"Why not?" He took a deep breath, in too far to back out, not that he wanted to. "I can"t even imagine more wildly divergent spheres of society than you and I inhabit, but by the eternal, I don"t care."
"What would Sir Isaac Newton say to that?" she asked, her eyes bright with the merriment he was already finding himself unable to function without.
He touched her forehead lightly with his, just a light touch. "By the eternal, I don"t care."
Chapter Eight.
By unspoken, mutual consent, Able and Meridee declared a strange sort of truce. Able knew truce was the wrong word, but he couldn"t actually think of a better one, even as he scoured those cosmic pages in his ordinarily tidy brain. They were not at war with each other-quite the contrary.
It was the first time in his life that his brain could not think of the right word to describe what sort of person Meridee Bonfort was to him. He tried something new; he decided not to worry about it.
He realized what it was a few days later, when Gerald and James were busy forming and reforming triangles with their jackstraws. He watched the boys and recalled the Peace of Amiens, which was printed and given to every ship in the Fleet. He had imagined the Peace as a pulling away-a chance to regroup and rebuild their forces, but also to breathe, to think about what lay ahead.
This personal Peace he had discovered with Meridee Bonfort was no different. He knew he must slow down, and maybe that was the point of this peace of theirs. He wanted nothing more than to kiss and cuddle her, and he suspected she wanted the same-Newton"s third law and all that it implied-but this was neither the time nor the place. For the time being, he must remain a man working for his ten shillings a month, room and board, who would disappear from everyone"s life when Christmas came. It chafed him, but he was discovering hitherto unknown wells of patience.
Able decided Meridee was a bit of a tyrant, which made him remember Captain Hallowell"s remark about his needing a keeper. One morning, when she was certain no one was watching, she pressed her hand against his chest, backed him up against the wall in the breakfast room, and ordered him to walk outside every afternoon with his pupils.
He obeyed her dutifully, although he did admit to her that the country was not entirely to his liking. "I was raised in a city," he protested, "breathing great lungfuls of sooty air. It didn"t stunt my growth. Are you aware how loud winter birds scream early in the morning? I didn"t think so. I rest my case."
"You are hopeless," she replied with some spirit. "I suppose you prefer the ocean. I"ve seen you standing on tiptoe at the schoolroom window facing south, as if thinking water will magically appear."
"Guilty as charged. You can keep your countryside," he said generously.
"Well and good, Master Six, but I want you to walk outside, breathe the country air, and not think," she insisted, which made him smile.
"I don"t have any choice in that," he replied, because he didn"t.
"Try, Able, try," she urged and melted his heart with the compa.s.sion in her voice.
He tried and discovered it was possible to enjoy crunching through leaves as the season advanced, and then even piling them up into mounds, turning around, and throwing himself onto the noisy pile to his students" delight, his mind blissfully free. That worked until James found a worn-out rubber ball that looked as if a dog had gnawed it. James tossed it to Gerald, who tossed it to Able.
Able bounced it against a tree, then bounced it harder, stepping back as the increased force meant increased resistance. He moved farther and farther back, then sat his charges down and explained Newton"s Third Law of Motion and how someday man could use such principles to take a vehicle to the moon.
When he told Meridee what he had done, she shook her head. "You are incorrigible," she scolded.
"Aye, incorrigible," he replied, which meant he had to say the word over and over because she liked the Scottish way he twirled his r"s around. Then they were both laughing as quietly as they could, sitting there on the top of the stairs that led to his attic room.
They had learned to wait until everyone slept before adjourning to the stairs for conversation and the simple pleasure of sitting shoulder to shoulder. She laughed when he told her about Gerald"s confusing angles with angels, which meant the boys got silly and talked about the properties of scalene angels and isosceles angels.
"You turned it into a lesson, of course," she said, and he heard the pride in her voice. Whether it was for her nephews or for him, he wasn"t certain.
"Aye, miss," he said and nudged her, which meant she could nudge him back. "Stay here." He got up and went to his room. When he sat down again, he had a handful of drawings, which he put in her lap.
"Once we got back to the cla.s.sroom, after that improving walk in the country, we made Christmas angles. The jackstraw cylinders were on the table, so that was our model for angel bodies. Gerald favored scalene triangles for wings, and James preferred isosceles."
She held the drawings close to her face because the light was poor on the stairs. She pointed to the third drawing. "Yours?"
"Aye. I like a double pair of equilateral triangles, then a single one as a halo," he said.
"Are they having as much fun as you are?" she asked, placing his drawing on top.
"I hope so. Gerald pulls a long face when the afternoons are over." He leaned back and rested his elbows on the tread above them. "I work on their memorizations in the morning-we"re up to multiplication now-and the afternoon is for fun."
"Geometry is fun?" she asked.
"For me," he said with a shrug, and then a smile. "And for the boys."
Meridee sat silent for a long moment. Able had come to recognize those quiet moments as preludes before personal questions. Ask me anything, he thought. The pleasure of lowering his guard was fast becoming an addiction, as long as the person asking had striking blue eyes and those tantalizing tiny freckles. He started to nudge her again, but instead of a nudge, it turned into a gentle lean, which he found he preferred anyway, especially when that third law of Newton"s meant she leaned gently, too, and held him up.
"What?"
"When did you realize that not everyone learns the way you do?" she asked.
"That"s a good way to put it," he said, temporizing because it wasn"t a pleasant experience.
"Now you"re stalling," she said, which made him wonder how well she knew him. It was a novel experience. "I was going to ask when you discovered you were a prodigy, but I don"t want to swell your head."
"It"s a curse, not a blessing," he a.s.sured her.
"What can I say to that?" she asked, then folded her hands in her lap and waited.
"I was six," he began finally, his voice subdued. "There were thirty of us foundlings in one small cla.s.sroom, every age jumbled together. I suppose the only concession to our age was that we young ones were set up front so we could see better. You really want to know?"
"I do," she said firmly. "Master Six, I have never met anyone like you before, and I doubt I will ever meet anyone like you again, no matter how long I live."
He felt precisely the same way. She deserved an answer. "The instructor wrote on a big board-at least, it looked big to a six-year-old-words and more words. After a few days of observing what he said when he pointed to certain words, it started to make perfect sense."
"You just watched?"
"Aye. It"s what I do best," he a.s.sured her.
"I saw how fast your eyes moved over the books in my brother-in-law"s study," she said. "Up and down one bookcase and then the other two, all in about three seconds."
It was his turn for a question. "Why in the world were you even looking at my eyes?"
She blushed then. "Master Six, you are a remarkably handsome man. What was I supposed to do?"
He threw back his head and laughed, which meant she had to put her hand over his mouth and say, "Shh!", which meant he couldn"t help kissing that hand, which meant her hand came away quickly and she blushed even more furiously.
"Well, you are," she said again, with a charming dignity that went to his heart. "Answer my questions, please."
The laughing ended as he remembered what his brain would never let him forget. "A big boy, maybe ten or so, was sitting behind me. The master called on him to read the sentence, "In my father"s house are many mansions." I didn"t know at the time it was from St. John, but I knew what it said." When he stirred restlessly, Meridee took his hand in hers.
"He couldn"t read it-I mean, how can an ordinary person learn if he fears the switch? The master struck him with a switch and kept striking him. Like a fool, I leaped up and read it, so the master would stop hitting the boy behind me. Oh merciful heaven, the master stared at me, then started beating me. I never was sure why. I . . . I had a.s.sumed all children my age learned the way I did, but I was the only one foolish enough to leap up. What did I know then about how others learned? I was six!"
"You never did that again?" she asked.
He couldn"t look at her, because her voice betrayed more emotions than he wanted to add to his own at the moment. "I did a few more times. Then the other children started avoiding me, and I got tired of being beaten."