Page 56 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
She paused. “Did you ever get that sorted?”
“Yes. The exterminator wanted a ridiculous amount of money, so I got the barn cats instead.”
“What barn cats?”
I did a quick double-take. “You haven’t seen the three black cats roaming around from the stables?”
Her mouth formed a little ‘o.’ “Those are our cats? I was loving on them yesterday when I went to see the ponies.”
I tried not to sigh. Really, I did, but it just wasn’t possible to keep it inside.
“When did we get them?”
“Four months ago.”
Mum stilled. “Oh. Very sweet things. Are they really cheaper than an exterminator, though?”
I checked my watch for the time and pointed two fingers at her. “I’ll send you a link on their effectiveness. I have to change and drive into the village to see Joe.”
She blinked up at me. “Oh, all right then. What do you think Beth would like for Christmas?”
“Mum. Have to go. We’ll do this later,” I said, tossing my hand up in a wave goodbye before quickly taking my leave.
If I didn’t, she’d have me writing a list for the whole family.
Then again, if she did, maybe it’d givemesome ideas for what to buy everyone, because I was buggered if I knew.
CHAPTER TWELVE – SYLVIE
The worst part about Christmas, by far, was being single.
All right, so it wasn’t. There were many things one could criticise about the season in this day and age, but it wasn’t like I could change the barrage of adverts shoving their sales down my throat or the crazy commercialism that had taken it over, so what was the point?
Better to complain about things I could change while actively trying not to do anything about it.
Yes. That was a far better use of my time.
In my opinion, anyway. My mother would strongly disagree, but then she had a tendency to do that in general. She hadn’t agreed with my degree choice, she hadn’t agreed with me moving away, she hadn’t agreed with anything except the time I’d loosely mentioned that I was thinking about adopting a cat.
She had, however, disagreed when I’d decided it was a bad idea.
The only thing she’d ever voiced active support for was me purchasing my grandparents’ house, especially after Hazel had made it known she didn’t want her share and would rather have the money to invest in her here and now.
To her credit, she’d invested it very well thanks to advice from Julian’s dad, and it was paying off for her.
I was happy to have the house.
Despite what I’d said to my parents about my single life, I had long ago daydreamt about moving back to Castleton and raising my family in the house I’d basically grown up in. This house was full of many happy memories for me, and there was so much life left in it.
I hadn’t told my mother that.
If she agreed with two major life choices in one decade, I was afraid she’d spontaneously combust.
It wasn’t that we didn’t get along. We did—spectacularly well. She just wasn’t shy about sharing her opinion. To her credit, she was more than happy to admit when she’d been wrong about something, and she’d had to do an awful lot of that over the past ten years.
She’d even bought me chocolate every single time. You can imagine how confused I’d been to receive a two-kilo box of Celebrations chocolate from Amazon out of the blue one day until she’d come clean.
Man, that was a good day for chocolate.
