“And in the drawing room and the main hall. Everywhere in full public view.”
He plucked the mistletoe from the shelf above her head and tucked it back into the pocket of his waistcoat. “Then I’d better keep this on hand. Just in case.”
The next day the tree arrived. Some men from the estate drove it up to the front of the house in a long wooden cart. The tall, handsome fir had wide, full branches of deep green. It was so big that part of it dragged on the ground behind the cart, leaving a deep furrow through the snow.
The servants wrestled it into the house and installed it in the main hall where the ceiling was high enough to accommodate its great size. The newly-mended tree skirt was draped round its bottom and then—fortified by cups of tea and glasses of mulled wine—Ned and the other guests were invited to help trim it.
“I expect a woodland creature to crawl out of it,” Walter said under his breath. “It’s mad to have it in the house.”
“Haven’t you ever had a Christmas tree, Mr. Murray?” Emily asked. She was established nearby on a straight-backed wooden chair, her injured ankle propped on a tufted footstool. A small wooden crutch leaned at her side. She’d been using it to hobble about.
“Never one of such majestic proportions.”
“It has to be big.” Sophie walked by carrying a crate of tinsel ornaments. “Anything less would be dwarfed by the size of the hall.”
She was wearing an afternoon gown of claret-colored silk with embossed velvet ribbons and fine muslin undersleeves graced with delicate cuffs. The same delectable dress she’d worn to visit Ned in Fleet Street.
He lifted the crate from her arms. “Where would you like it?”
Sophie looked at him and quickly looked away. “Just there, by the tree skirt.”
Ned wasn’t offended by her response. She’d had just such a reaction at dinner last evening, and then again at breakfast when he sat beside her and their arms had brushed. She was flustered by him. As skittish as a schoolgirl. And he knew why.
It was that kiss.
That brief, all-consuming kiss.
It had been chaste. Respectful. And sweet as anything. All clinging lips and mingled breath. The memory of it had been tormenting him since the moment he’d drawn back from her mouth. He’d spent half the night thinking of it. And the other half dreaming of when he might kiss her again.
“It was Prince Albert who started the tradition,” Mrs. Lanyon said. “When he came from Germany to marry the Queen. They always have Christmas trees in Germany.”
“We didn’t get our first tree until many years after,” Ned’s father said, twining wire around a tree candle. “Seemed a foolish idea. But it did look fine when it was all decked out.”
Lady Appersett smiled as she drifted through the hall. “I think it’s a lovely tradition. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Sharpe?”
Ned’s mother paused in the act of unknotting a ribbon. Her expression was reserved to the point of coldness. “Lovely it is, my lady. And wasteful.”
“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.