Read 'Twas the Night After Christmas for Free Online Page B

near. As your mother, she deserves at least a modicum of attention from you, yet you leave her to pine.”
    “My mother doesn’t know the meaning of the word pine .” He fought to ignore the image of his mother crying all alone. “And if she has sent you—”
    “She doesn’t know I’m here. She didn’t know I wrote that letter. Actually, she, too, says I should stay out of it.”
    Despite his determination to hold firm against his mother’s tactics, that shook him. “You should listen to her.”
    “I can’t.” The plaintive words tugged at something he’d buried for countless years. “I wouldn’t be doing my duty to her if I let her suffer pain, whether at the hands of a stranger or those of her own son.” She strode up behind him, her voice heavy with concern. “You can’t expect me to keep quiet when I should do right by her.”
    He whirled to fix the woman with a cold glance, but he couldn’t escape her logic. Her loyalty was to his mother, and should be, even though he had hired her. After all, what good was hiring a companion his mother couldn’t trust?
    Still, that didn’t mean he had to let her manipulate him. “Doing right by her doesn’t include lying to her family. You said she was dying.”
    “No, I said you should come before it was too late.” Shepushed her spectacles up. “I’m sorry if you interpreted the words as meaning she might die any moment—”
    “Right,” he said dryly. “How could I have made such a leap?”
    “But I meant them.” Concern furrowed her lightly freckled brow. “She needs you, and if you put off mending your relationship with her, you will eventually regret it.”
    Bloody hell, the woman was stubborn. “That isn’t for you to decide, madam.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he stared her down. “Whatever you expected to accomplish with this stunt hasn’t come to pass, so you should quit trying while you still have a post. I can easily dismiss you for your presumption.”
    “I’m aware of that.”
    Yet she held her chin firm and her shoulders squared. He’d been right to term her “indomitable” without even having met her. She was one determined woman.
    “But some things are worth risking all for,” she added.
    “My mother ? A woman who didn’t even care that her son was alive until two years ago, when my father died and she could no longer depend on his largesse?”
    That seemed to shake her. “You think that this is about money ?”
    “Of course! She married Father for money, and now that it’s all under my control, she suddenly ‘needs’ me desperately.”
    Her gaze locked with his. “If her feelings are as false as you think, why does she have a chest full of your school drawings and papers? Why does she read to me your childhood letters, pointing out your witty turns of phrase and clever observations?” She stepped nearer. “Why does she keep a miniature of you by her bed?”
    Her descriptions beat at the stone wall he’d built against his mother. But he couldn’t believe them. He wouldn’t believe them. He wouldn’t let Mother hurt him again.
    Clearly Mother had fashioned Mrs. Stuart as a weapon to get what she wanted. The young widow might not even know she was being used, but that didn’t change a damned thing.
    He moved close enough to intimidate. “She’s trying to enlist you as an ally in her scheme. And she knows it won’t work unless she can convince you that she is slighted and put upon.”
    Mrs. Stuart blinked. Obviously, it was the first time she’d considered the possibility that she was being taken in. “You’re wrong,” she whispered, though she didn’t seem quite so certain. “She’s not like that.”
    “You’ve known her for six months,” he ground out. “I’ve known her my entire life. Or at least the part of my life that she—”
    He broke off before he could reveal the mortifying truth—that his parents thought so little of him they’d cut him out of their lives. It was none of her