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“Jonathan Tatford, she is your grandmother!” Lady Sutthers gasped, looking about as horrified as she sounded with her round eyes wide open, staring at her youngest son as though he had just cursed the very ground their grandmother walked on.
“I am sorry, Mama, but I will not do it,” Jonathan said, shaking his head. “It goes against everything I believe in and I think that if Papa were still here, he would think twice before dropping everything for her too.”
The two of them continued to argue for several minutes but Gabriel barely heard them as he battled with his own thoughts on the matter, wondering whether he could possibly drop everything and go to the countryside to meet the woman who had birthed his father all those years ago, making his father and himself the next Earls of Sutthers.
In fact, it was the only thing Gabriel had to be thankful of her for and yet he did not feel it enough to forget all that had happened before this day, all they had been forced to endure without her.
“Mama, Jonathan is right,” Gabriel spoke up, finally deciding. “I shall not accept this invitation either.”
“What has gotten into you both?” she exclaimed, looking doubly as horrified as she had before. “I did not raise either of you to be like this.”
Gabriel struggled not to flinch openly at her words. He could feel her scathing gaze on him as though she were piercing his flesh with a knife and yet he could not bring himself to change his mind.
He lowered his gaze, looking instead at his hands, silently hoping that she would bring herself to understand in time. Before either he or his brother could try to change her mind, their mother jumped up from her seat with another swishing of skirts and proclaimed, “If the two of you will not accompany me, then I shall go alone.”
“Are you certain that is wise after all cousin Barnaby has warned us of?” Jonathan insisted and it forced Gabriel to enter the conversation once again.
“Jonathan is correct,” he said, turning his hopeful gaze back upon his mother. In that moment, standing there with her hands knotted into tight fists at her sides, her brown eyes almost black blazing with anger, she looked much like her old self again.
“I will go and the two of you will not attempt to stop me or I shall drag you both there by your ears,” their mother announced, glaring at them both as if she wished to scold them like they were her young boys once more and not grown men with minds of their own who could do as they pleased.
“As for your cousin, he may be right to be concerned, but I shall not let this opportunity pass me by. If your grandmother will hold out an olive branch, then I shall do my best to do the same to her.”
Before either of them could offer any kind of protest, their mother turned on her heel and stormed from the room. She did not stop until she reached the doorway and then she turned back just to say, “Do not fret. I shall be back before Christmas.”
All the Tatford brothers could do was look at each other, both silently wondering whether perhaps they ought to have told their mother about their dip in the frozen lake after all.
Chapter 15
There was a small Christmas tree in almost every room of Julia’s house, but her favourite by far was the one in the main parlour where all the family gathered on Christmas day to exchange gifts. It was always the largest and most finely decorated, mainly because she spent so much time making sure that it was so, choosing to decorate it herself with their family’s ornaments rather than letting the servants decorate it with whatever her mother had chosen for all the other trees that year.
And it was there that Chelsea found her just putting on the final finishing touches right before they were due to leave with the rest of Chelsea’s family to visit the Royal Academy and the art exhibition that was being put on by one of her favourite artists.
Julia barely noticed her entering the parlour with her hat and her gloves and her coat still on her person, ready to walk right back out the door as soon as she had gotten her friend. Her humming of Christmas carols and the tinkling of the bells she was hanging upon the tree were just enough to distract her from almost everything else.
“Julia? Are you not ready yet?” Chelsea exclaimed and her friend’s voice broke the spell that decorating the Christmas tree always cast upon her. Whipping around with a set of decorative bells still in hand, she clutched her free hand to her chest and tried desperately to catch her breath.
“Good heavens, Chelsea, you frightened me half to death!” she gasped in return, the bells jingling in her hand as she dropped them to her side. “I am dressed and ready to go. I just have a couple more things to hang, and then I shall be entirely ready.”
Before Chelsea could protest that perhaps she could finish her decorating when they returned from the Academy, Julia turned back to the tree and continued in her work, humming once more because the carols were quite stuck in her head. They did not have entirely the same hypnotic spell upon her as they had when she had been alone and she was able to hear Chelsea sigh deeply before her footsteps started to approach.
“Let me help you,” Chelsea insisted, and the sound of jingling ornaments sounded behind Julia a moment before her friend appeared at her side.
“Are you worried that I will make you late and that your precious hermit artist will be long gone before we arrive?” Julia jested, leaning over to nudge her friend in the ribs with her elbow.
“No! Of course not,” Chelsea protested, scowling at her before she hung the ornament she was holding on the tree in a spot that Julia wasn’t quite happy with. She would not say anything now, only move it later when Chelsea was not looking or even later that night when they returned from the exhibition.
“But I do not like the idea of having to put up with my mother’s whining while we wait for you.”
“I would not wish to put anyone through that,” Julia conceded, and the two of them laughed as they continued to hang the last few decorations. Finally, Julia was able to step back and admire the work, reminding herself once more that she could go over it again once they returned home for the night.
“Can we go now?” Chelsea asked, looking as though she was quite pleased with her own work and even more excited about the fact that they were soon to be on their way. “My mother had just sent for the carriage when I left to come and fetch you.”
Seeing that her best friend clearly had a bee in her bonnet and would not calm down until they were on their way, Julia moved to the side of the fireplace and pulled the bell cord that would alert the servants downstairs.
The moment that her maid appeared in the doorway, she requested her coat, gloves, and hat and watched Chelsea exhaled deeply with relief.
“You know, if you had told me earlier that you were finishing the tree, I would have come over to help you,” Chelsea said as the maid brought her things and helped her into them. Julia simply smiled at her friend and quickly pinned on her hat.
