“Yes, I say. Why not do it ourselves? It might be fun. I’ve also decided the party is back on, but on a small scale so as not to tax the stores we have in the cellar and pantry. I’ve already spoken with Cook, and she says we can put on a Twelfth Night feast for eight without embarrassing ourselves.”
Jasper stared miserably, looking as if he would rather eat dirt.
“How wonderful,” Julia said, since the dowager countess seemed so pleased. “Is that eight in addition to us?”
“Then it must be seven,” Jasper reminded his mother.
“True, eleven would be most unseemly. But we could invite nine.”
“Let’s invite seven,” he insisted and speared a piece of bacon.
“Very well. Nine and the three of us,” she said overriding him. “Twelve for Twelfth Night.” His mother clapped her hands. “Doesn’t it make everything feel more festive?”
“Festive,” Jasper muttered.
“What has got into you, dear boy?”
“Nothing that gathering boughs of holly won’t cure,” Julia remarked, earning a withering look from the earl.
***
“SO, I AM TO BE TEMPTEDby you this entire week without relief?” Jasper demanded.
“Honestly, you’re behaving badly,” Julia said.
“That’s what I do,” he reminded her, as she snipped another piece of mistletoe and put it into the basket he carried. His mother, a few feet away, was humming to herself, handing sprigs of holly and long evergreen boughs to a footman.
“We’ve been out here for hours,” Jasper complained loud enough for the dowager countess to hear.
His mother stopped humming to laugh at him. “It’s only been thirty minutes, I believe.”
Julia heard him say something rude under his breath.
A thwarted rake was not a happy man. That was not her concern. It seemed the height of rudeness to abuse his mother’s hospitality by tupping her son in the guest room.
“Like I’m a trollop,” Julia muttered, viciously cutting another piece of holly and getting pricked by a barbed leaf, right through her glove.
“What did you say?” he asked, his tone interested. “It sounded as though you said you were like a trollop.”
His gaze was suddenly attentive, sliding from her eyes to her mouth.
“I said I like to gallop,” she responded, “upon a horse, naturally.”
“I think you’re lying. Tell me,” and then he dropped his voice, “why were you thinking about ladies of ill-repute?”
“Because you are a bad influence, and you’re only happy apparently when getting your way.” She stormed farther from his mother and the woman’s excellent hearing.
He stomped after her.
“I’m certainly not getting my way here. I’m throwing a party for people I don’t like and spending my days with a woman who teases me mercilessly.”
“I do not tease!” she protested. Then considered it from his perspective. “I merely changed my mind after using better judgment,” she added, her tone softer.
“Better judgment!Bah!No one ever enjoyed themselves using better judgment.”
“That’s ridiculous!” she fumed. “You’re forever acting the croaker and warning me about getting into disagreeable scrapes.”
“To do with purloining,” he clarified. “Better judgment in that case is a necessity.”
