A Holiday by Gaslight(34)
“Wasteful?” Emily echoed.
“Aye. Wasteful, I call it, to cut down a tree merely to dispose of it days later.”
“It’s tradition,” Walter said. “And like all traditions, often more trouble than it’s worth. Best to dispense with them all, I say.”
“What a humbug you are, Mr. Murray,” Emily said. “And to think I cast Mr. Sharpe as Mr. Scrooge and you as Mr. Marley. I daresay it could be the reverse.”
Ned exchanged a bewildered glance with Walter.
“What’s this about Scrooge and Marley?” Walter asked.
Emily leaned back in her chair, resting her arms on her voluminous green silk skirts. “It’s right there on your office door in Fleet Street. Sharpe and Murray. Just like anything out of Mr. Dickens.”
Walter cast a pointed look at Emily’s crutch. “And who are you in this little pantomime? Tiny Tim?”
“Foolishness,” Ned’s mother muttered. “Is it any wonder this country is going to rot and ruin with young people talking nothing but nonsense?”
“It’s Christmas, mother,” Ned said quietly.
She looked at him. “That’s no reason to dispense with one’s good sense. If one ever had it to begin with.”
Sophie, who was tying a red velvet ribbon onto one of the branches, visibly winced at the disapproval in his mother’s tone.
Ned’s own expression hardened into resolve. This had gone on long enough.
As soon as the opportunity presented itself, he invited his mother to accompany him upstairs on the pretext of selecting more ribbons and tinsel for the tree. He felt a bit guilty at just how readily she obliged him. She clearly wasn’t enjoying herself here in Derbyshire. Perhaps it had been a mistake to relay Sophie’s invitation to his parents. Perhaps they would have been happier spending the holiday in Cheapside.
“Where are these decorations, then?” she asked.
He opened the door to the drawing room and motioned for her to precede him. “There aren’t any.”
His mother pursed her lips but didn’t question him. She entered the drawing room and took a seat, waiting silently while he shut the doors.
Ned didn’t sit down. “Mother, is there anything you wish to tell me? Anything that’s happened to put you in such a poor temper?”
She held his gaze, as formidable now in her black silk taffeta and lace matron’s cap as she’d been in his youth, when she’d manned the counter in the draper’s shop. “You made no mention when she invited us here that Miss Appersett had already rejected you.”
Bloody blasted hell. He was going to strangle Walter Murray.
“Do you deny it?” his mother pressed.
He clasped his hands at his back. “It was a misunderstanding. Nothing worth mentioning. We’ve resolved to try again, as you see.”
“She’s making a plaything of you, Ned.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. Her words stung. “You don’t know her.”
“I know her kind. All the young ladies here are just the same. Dazzling you with their airs and graces. And all the while their eyes are fixed firmly on your bank balance.”
“I’ve never been dazzled yet.” It wasn’t entirely true. And Ned could tell that she knew it.
“She’s not good enough for you. None of them are. I was wrong to encourage you to aspire to such a match. You’d be better served with a sensible girl like Marianne Goodbody or Jane Randolph.”
Good Lord. Those were two names he hadn’t heard in an age. They were well-to-do tradesman’s daughters. Girls of his own class who’d been “finished.” Whatever that meant. “What is it exactly that you object to in Miss Appersett?” he asked.
“She’s inconstant,” his mother replied without missing a beat.
“Leaving that aside for the moment.”
“How can I? Am I to disregard a facet of her character?”
“I don’t ask you to disregard anything, merely to refrain from passing judgment on matters you don’t understand.”
His mother’s mouth tightened. “You think me hard. You always have. But I won’t apologize for how I raised you. I brought you up to be strong. To stand fast against whatever comes.”
“And every day I thank you for it.”
“Aye. You’ve never been ungrateful. But I know my own son. You’ve always had a wanting for softness, ever since you were a lad. I won’t begrudge you it now. Neither will I see you squander your future on a fine lady who’ll treat you no better than a dog once you’ve wed her.”
Ned went still. Her words sank into his flesh like poisonous barbs. “And that’s what you believe Miss Appersett will do if I marry her.” He searched his mother’s face. “Why?”
His mother’s expression was as unyielding as her posture. She sat straight and proud, her spine not even touching the back of the silk-upholstered chair. “Her parents are forcing the match. Did you know that?”
“Who said so?”
“Her sister, Miss Emily. Called her the Sacrificial Lamb. Made a joke of it to one of those young ladies from London. How they laughed, the pair of them. I was sitting near the fire. I expect they didn’t know I was there. Not that it would have stopped them. These society girls make malicious sport of everything when the gentlemen aren’t by.”