Free Elizabeth Mansfield by The Bartered Bride

about to nibble at a cucumber sandwich she’d taken from the tea tray when his bellow made her shudder in alarm. “Good heavens, Robbie, you startled me!” she gasped, her hands fluttering up in alarm. She frowned at him disapprovingly and then looked down at the sandwich which his abrupt entrance had caused to fall from her fingers to her lap. “Whatever possessed you to burst in on me like that? You made me drop my—”
    “Whatever
possessed
me, ma’am?” her son exploded. “
These
are what possessed me!
One hundred and seventy-four unpaid bills
!”
    “Oh, those.” She shrugged, picked up her sandwich and took a dainty bite. “I don’t see why you should raise a dust over them. Just send them over to Mr. Jennings. He’ll take care of them.”
    Kittridge stared at his mother in disbelief. She was not in the least discomposed by his fury, but calmly finished her little sandwich and brushed the crumbs from her lap. She was a small-boned, delicate creature, looking at this moment—with her head tilted up at him, one graceful hand draped over the arm of the chair, and one tiny, slippered foot resting on a stool—like an exquisite porcelain figurine. Her hair was so white it seemed powdered; her complexion, once so luminous that her beaux made toasts to it, was now sadly wrinkled but still translucent; her waist was still as shapely as when she was a girl; and her graceful, slim-fingered hands fluttered like birds when she spoke. It was disconcerting to Kittridge to have to scold so fragile-looking a creature, but what else was he to do? “Damnation, ma’am,” he raged, “what is Mr. Jennings supposed to ‘take care of them’
with
? His own pocket money?”
    The birdlike hands fluttered to her breast. “What do you mean, my dearest?” she asked, blinking up at him in bewildered innocence. “Mr. Jennings
always
takes care of the bills.”
    “Are you trying to pretend, Mama, that you don’t know that my father left us penniless?”
    Her pale blue eyes widened. “Well, I knew he was profligate, of course, and that he’d run himself into Dun territory, but
penniless
—?”
    “Yes, penniless! What do you think ‘Dun territory’
means
?”
    “I know very well what it means. But your father never asked me to stint on the household expenses. Never!”
    “Household expenses, ma’am? Is that what you call these? These are nothing but bills for gowns and bonnets and nonsense like reupholstering chairs! Nothing but
fripperies
!”
    Her ladyship’s elegant eyebrows rose in agitated disbelief. “Are you saying I shouldn’t have purchased any new gowns?”
    “That’s
exactly
what I’m saying!” her son snapped. “And it’s not only gowns we’re speaking of. How can you have bought yourself something as expensive and unnecessary as a new barouche when there were three carriages in the stables already and you
knew
Papa’s finances were all to pieces? Do you realize that there are bills here, all accumulated since his death, adding up to
three thousand pounds
? I can only suppose that you’ve forgotten how to
add
! I cannot otherwise explain how you could indulge yourself in such knickknackery as imported laces and French champagne and silver tea services, Mama, when we can hardly afford to pay for
tea
!”
    “Not pay for tea? Really, Robbie, aren’t you being a bit ridicu—?”
    “Goodness, Robbie,” came a voice from the doorway, “why all this shouting? I could hear you all the way down the hall.” And in strolled his sister Eunice, Lady Yarrow, followed by her two little girls and their governess.
    “Uncle Robert, Uncle Robert!” clarioned Della, the eldest of the two children, running to embracehim. “See the portrait I’ve made of you!”
    Kittridge, bottling up his temper, knelt down and scooped the five-year-old girl up in his arms. “Della, you minx,” he said affectionately, looking at the drawing the child held up to his face, “do you really think that long-shanks looks like