A Holiday by Gaslight(20)

Ned appeared unmoved by her tale. “Progress is all well and good. But just what did your father expect you to do for a husband?”

“My parents expected both my sister and me to marry well. That’s why they brought us to London.”

“One of you with a dowry and the other without.”

She glanced at him as they walked, wondering what he was implying. “You make it sound as though a great injustice had been perpetrated against me.”

“Hasn’t there?”

“Not in the least. The plain fact is, I didn’t wish to marry when I was nineteen, nor when I was twenty, nor one-and-twenty. My dowry meant nothing to me and everything to my father. Why shouldn’t he have it if it would make him happy?”

“Did he ask you for it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Before he took it and used it on Appersett House, did he ask you if he could have it?”

Sophie didn’t answer. Of course Papa hadn’t asked her permission. Why would he? “Must we speak of such things?”

“Not if you object.”

“I don’t object. But I don’t see how it will help us get to know each other any better. All it does is make me feel bad about myself.”

Ned frowned. “Forgive me. That wasn’t my intention.”

She shrugged a shoulder. It wasn’t a very ladylike gesture, but it was eloquent enough of her opinion on the matter. She didn’t wish to discuss her dowry anymore. Nor did she wish to discuss the dratted gaslight.

“What would you like to talk about?” he asked.

She raised her head to look at the trees. The branches were frosted with snow. It sparkled like sugar in the morning sunlight. “It’s beautiful when it’s new, isn’t it? So clean and white and perfect.”

“It’s certainly cleaner than it is in London.”

“Does the snow get very dirty there? I imagine it must with all of the activity in the streets.”

“Excessively so. Have you never seen it?”

She shook her head. “We’ve spent every winter here since I was born.”

“Would you like to spend Christmas in London?” he asked. “To live there all the year round?”

Her stomach gave a nervous quiver. “I suppose it would be all right.” They walked in silence for several steps. “Did you enjoy holidays in London when you were a boy?”

“I worked through most of them.” Ned’s mouth hitched into a fleeting smile at her expression. “You look appalled.”

“Oh no,” she stammered. “I just…I didn’t realize…”

“All of my family worked. The shop was closed on Christmas Day, but there was always someone who needed something. My parents rarely turned people away. They were forever obliging their customers. It’s a central tenet of their business.”

“What sort of work did you do for them?”

“During the holidays? Deliveries, mostly. On Christmas Eve I used to take people their parcels. Last-minute Christmas gifts, most of them. Up one city street and down another, through the sleet and snow. It would get so I couldn’t feel my hands.”

“That’s dreadful.”

“It wasn’t, actually. People were grateful for their parcels. They tipped rather generously. And then later, when my deliveries were finished and I returned to our apartments above the shop, my mother would give me a hot cup of tea and a biscuit. It was my reward for a job well done.”

Sophie refrained from saying that a biscuit seemed a poor reward for a child forced to traipse through the sleet and snow on Christmas Eve. A child who was frozen through. Who couldn’t even feel his hands. “Are you very close to your parents?”

“As much as they’ll permit.”

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. Don’t they wish to be close with you?”

“My parents taught me the habits of hard work and economy. They also taught me self-denial, which I felt most keenly when they made me put by half my earnings each week. It was a hard lesson, but a good one. Because of them, I was able to save enough to make my first investment. It was a merchant ship sailing to the West Indies. Murray and I each put all our savings into its cargo. Had the ship been lost at sea, we’d have been ruined. Instead, it arrived safely back in port, making us very rich indeed.” He looked at her briefly. “You might say that everything I have I owe to my parents. But they’re not warm people, for all that. They’re not given to an excess of emotion.”

She cast him a sidelong glance. His expression was as solemn as ever, but his black hair was rumpled, a section near the front standing half on end. It was oddly endearing. On every other occasion she’d been with him, his hair had been combed into meticulous order. There had never been a strand out of place. She decided she preferred it this way. He looked far less intimidating. As if he’d just risen from his bed in the morning.

The thought brought another flush of heat to her face. She swiftly looked away from him, pretending to be absorbed in admiring the snow-covered landscape. “Do you consider yourself to be a warm person?”

“Compared to my parents?”

“Compared to anyone.”

Ned didn’t answer right away. When he did, he spoke with a greater than usual degree of care. “I’m not a man given to great expressions of emotion. It’s not how I was raised. It’s not how I’ve lived my life. But I do feel things deeply. I may not always show it, but I do.”