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current position as secretary to an ungrateful employer, Mary
Ann dreaded Christmas Eve, when she would dot her last i for
Lady Naismith and close the door on her miniscule income.
    Walking slowly past Christmas carolers, she
stopped for a moment in appreciation and tugged her muffler
tighter. They sang of a baby’s birth, shepherds minding their own
business on a Judean hillside, and angels with something miraculous
to tell the world.
    She decided that on Christmas Eve—rather than
stay at home and dread what was about to happen to them—she would
take Beth and tag along with carolers. They could sing and take
away the fear for a few hours.
    Christmas Day would bring revelry as Haven’s
citizens partied and prepared to welcome a new year—1816—fresh with
promise and absent war for the first time since the French
revolution began. Perhaps if it wasn’t too cold, she and Beth could
walk through one or two neighborhoods and watch the people inside.
Mary Ann was past those days of wishing she were among the
company.
    As much as she enjoyed being home before Beth,
she took a moment to sit on one of the benches for old people and
think through the pleasure of Saturday’s visit to Thomas Jenkins
and his sister in Plymouth. She tried to imagine the sheer delight
of sharing her burdens with another adult. Such a novelty was hard
to conjure up, because the experience had never been hers. She had
gone from daughter in a modest household to bride, with a brief
five days in Portsmouth to love her new husband and wave goodbye to
him from the dock as the transport pulled away for Portugal and
war.
    She never saw Bart Poole alive again. From the
time he waved goodbye and blew her kisses, she had worked and
contrived and struggled to make ends meet by herself. She tried to
imagine what it would be like to sit at home, safe and protected by
a husband who submitted his body to toil, as Shakespeare put it, so
she could welcome him home and ease both their lives. If hard times
came, they would share them.
    Now what? She had no money to allow her to look
for a new position at leisure, no cushion from disaster. She closed
her eyes against what she knew was coming. Boxing Day would be
followed by a typical working day, only she would have no work.
There would be nothing to do but knock on the vicar’s door, pour
out her troubles, and steel herself for entry into the Plymouth
workhouse, she and Beth, who both deserved better.
    Better instead to think about Thomas Jenkins,
and remember the real pleasure of listening to the lilting voice
that marked him as a son of Wales. She admired his confidence,
earned in a hard school, no doubt. She liked the ease with which he
teased his sister and their casual relationship. His attention to
her darling daughter’s love of numbers warmed her maternal
heart.
    Funny that she should even remember the way he
smelled, a combination of good honest soap and bay rum, a man’s
odor, something she realized she missed. She even liked the casual
way he was dressed, in ordinary trousers and without a neckcloth.
More than likely he had not expected visitors when Beth knocked on
his door.
    Those were externals. She had no explanation
for the way she felt in his presence—a combination of relief,
because he seemed to be so in control of things, and the barely
remembered pleasure of being in the same room with a man she
instinctively liked.
    She knew Thomas Jenkins was just an ordinary
fellow, retired and not much liking it. He obviously wasn’t worried
about his next meal or eviction, or any of those terrors that kept
her awake at night. She could have envied and hated him, but all
she wanted was to see him again.
    That was it, plain and simple. She wanted to
drift into Thomas Jenkins’s generous orbit once more, even though
the odds of that happening were less than remote. She had returned
his package, he had paid her for the postage, and each had resumed
his and her own spheres. End of story.
    Beth liked her to