The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas

by Lauren Willig

  “What if they don’t? What if they think you know something?”

  “What? The recipe for the perfect pudding?” Arabella sat down heavily on a blue silk upholstered chair.

  It would be easier to stay annoyed with him if he didn’t seem so genuinely concerned for her safety. Even if he was being absurd. She felt, suddenly, very tired. She had been on edge all day, the knowledge that she would see Turnip fizzing through her veins, distracting her from her work, making her hands tremble as she pinned hems and put up scenery. She had spent hours rehearsing and revising hypothetical conversations. In some of them, he had been apologetic and she had been gracious; in others, he had been noble and she had been humble. All of her imaginary conversations had one thing in common: In none of them had anyone said anything about spies.

  She knew it was foolish, but Arabella felt distinctly let down. So much for her brief career as a romantic heroine. She had been upstaged by a notebook full of amateur French exercises.

  Two worried lines indented the skin between Turnip’s brows, and there were lines on either side of his lips that had no place on his goodhumored face. He leaned over her, planting a hand on either arm of the chair, his fingers digging into the pale blue silk upholstery, and Arabella tried not to think of how those fingers had felt in her hair two nights before, or how much like an embrace it seemed.

  His mind, at least, was not on dalliance. “It isn’t funny,” he said, leaning so far forward that she could smell the cloves on his breath and see the tiny gold hairs in his skin. “You could be in danger.”

  Arabella looked down and away, staring at the gray fabric of her skirt. There were lines in the twill if one looked closely enough. It was an ugly fabric, heavy and serviceable. Not the sort of thing a Turnip Fitzhugh would ever encounter, but highly appropriate for what she was: a schoolmistress.

  “The only thing I am in danger of is losing my position.”

  As she said it, she knew it was true. Miss Climpson might be an indulgent, one might even say an absentminded, employer, but she could not possibly condone her instructresses cavorting in darkened rooms with the older brothers of students. It set a bad tone, especially in an institution where one of the students had already been caught in similar behavior. A schoolmistress at an academy for young ladies had to be like Caesar’s wife, above reproach.

  Arabella might, just might, manage to pass their current tête-à-tête off as a consultation between a teacher and a concerned brother—it was a drawing room, after all, and there were candles lit—but their interlude in her bedroom the other night was completely indefensible, by any standard. She ought to have sent him packing the moment she saw him sitting there on her desk. No, more than that. She should have slammed the window when she saw him lurking outside the drawing room.

  But she hadn’t. She hadn’t because she had wanted to see him, because she had been happy to see him, because she had been prepared to ignore all the potential ramifications in exchange for the immediate pleasure of his company, for that ridiculous, face-splitting grin and the absurd and unpredictable things he said and the way he looked at her, really looked at her, not as an adjunct or an addendum or another girl against the ballroom wall, but as if he saw her, Arabella.

  And for that, she had been willing to play blind and deaf and dumb to potential disgrace and the failure of all her plans.

  Lord, what fools these mortals be.

  Arabella shoved her chair abruptly back, retreating towards the fireplace. “This is folly,” she said to the mirror over the mantel. “We can’t go on doing this.”

  Turnip followed along behind her. “Doing what?”

  He was so close that their noses nearly collided when she turned. Arabella took a few prudent steps back. “Meeting. Together. Alone. People will start to talk.”

  Turnip’s face cleared. “Is that all?”

  “All?” It seemed like rather a lot to her.

  He looked at her earnestly, his blue eyes searching her face. “I don’t mind if they do talk. Do you?”

  Arabella frowned at him. Didn’t he realize what that meant? That if they were caught together, there would be expectations, consequences?

  Then realization hit. No one would expect him to make good for a schoolteacher, a woman of no money and undistinguished family. A woman whose aunt had titillated the ton by running off with a man half her age. Bad blood, they would all say. She would be used goods.

  And Turnip could go back to kissing Penelope Deveraux on balconies off ballrooms.

  “Yes!” Arabella’s fingernails cut into her palms. “I do mind.”

  Turnip blinked at her. He looked . . . hurt? “Oh.”

  Arabella pushed away from the mantelpiece, her ugly skirts heavy against her legs. She thought of Margaret and the little sisters she had left. She thought of Aunt Osborne and all the years of being quiet and good. “It’s all right for you to play at spy-catching,” she said, all in a rush. “It doesn’t matter where you go or who you’re seen with. You’ll always have a home to go back to. You don’t have to worry about what people think or getting your own living. I don’t have that luxury.”

  “Arabella?”

  She nearly weakened at the sound of her name on his lips. Whatever else one said about Turnip Fitzhugh, he had a beautiful voice, rich and deep. It turned her name into a thing of beauty, a jewel in a velvet case. He followed her, looking so confused that it made Arabella’s chest ache. She didn’t like herself very much right then. But she knew she was right.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Arabella gave a wild laugh. “I didn’t expect you would.”

  Turnip looked at her expectantly.

  “I am a woman and I am poor.” Saying it out loud was harder than she had thought it would be. The words came out raw and harsh, like freshly hewn granite. “Two things entirely out of your experience.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  He meant it, too. He really had no idea. Arabella looked at him, at the richly embroidered brocade of his waistcoat, the gold fobs jangling from his watch chain, the boots from Hoby, the coat from Weston, the large cameo embedded in the folds of his cravat.

  The waistcoat alone probably cost something akin to her father’s annual income, an income expected to house, feed and clothe four people. Five, if Arabella found herself forced to leave Miss Climpson’s.

  “I am an employee at your sister’s school. I don’t have the liberties you have. If we go on like this, I’ll only end by getting sacked.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “It doesn’t matter what you mean or didn’t mean. And it wasn’t entirely your fault.” One didn’t blame a puppy for chasing after sticks. The fault was with the person throwing the sticks. “I should have known better.”

  Turnip followed along after her. “I never wanted to make trouble for you. What can I do? How can I help you?”

  Arabella moved sharply out of the way of his outstretched hand. “You can help me by staying away.”

  Turnip stood rooted in front of the mantelpiece, staring at her with a puzzled little frown between his eyes. “You don’t really mean that. Do you?”

  No, she wanted to say.

  “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

  Turnip looked as though she had slapped him. He stared at her, hurt, uncomprehending.

  Arabella folded her arms protectively across her chest. “My life was perfectly rational until you came into it. There was no nonsense about puddings and spies. I didn’t go lurking around in the dark with strange men or . . . or . . .” She looked away. “Well, you know. The rest of it.”

  He was still staring at her, as though seeing her for the first time. She didn’t want him to look at her like that. She had much preferred the way he had looked at her before. But that had been the very thing she had been complaining about, so how could she complain if he didn’t? She made no sense, even to herself.

  “Beg pardon,” he said stiffly. “Swept away by c
ircumstances and all that. Shouldn’t have forced myself on you.”

  He hadn’t, and they both knew it. That just made it worse. He might have kissed her first, but she had been an enthusiastic participant in everything that had followed. And she knew, with humiliating certainty, that if he had made any sort of gesture, showed any inclination in that direction, she would have done so again.

  Fortunate for her that he hadn’t.

  “Under the circumstances,” said Arabella, in a voice she hardly recognized as her own, “I think it best our acquaintance be at an end.”

  “If that is what you want.”

  “It isn’t a question of want.” She sounded so priggish that it hurt to listen to herself. “It’s a question of conventions. And circumstances.”

  “Can’t argue with circumstances, can one?” He smiled a lopsided smile without any humor in it.

  It hurt to look at it.

  Arabella’s mouth ached with the need to say something, to protest, to argue, to soften the blow, but she couldn’t seem to force any words past the large lump that seemed to have formed at the back of her throat.

  Instead, she just nodded, a surprisingly tentative motion of her chin.

  “I’ll leave first.” Mr. Fitzhugh—he was Mr. Fitzhugh now, she reminded herself, not Turnip anymore, never Turnip. Mr. Fitzhugh looked at her for a moment, all the light gone from his eyes. She had never seen him like that before. She hadn’t imagined he could look so . . . blank. So remote. “Wouldn’t want to cause you further bother.”

  “I—”

  But it was too late. The click of his boots against the floor drowned out her feeble attempt at articulation. For a moment, he checked in the doorway, and Arabella thought he might say something else.

  The door swung shut, and he was gone.

  Arabella waited five minutes before following after him. Staggering their departures had been a surprisingly sensible suggestion on his part.

  Why should she be surprised? Arabella leaned an elbow against the mantel, rubbing her face with her hand. So far, of the two of them, it was a toss-up as to who had shown the least sense. It was very easy, she thought, to criticize the actions of others, to upbraid them for folly, and very different when one found oneself in unpredictable circumstances, behaving in ways one would never have imagined of oneself.

  Well, she had quite effectively put an end to all that.

  The second hand on the mantel clock jerked stiffly up towards the center. One more minute and she could go. She tried to wipe away the image of Mr. Fitzhugh’s face, hurt and confused, his hand extended to her, palm up.

  She would introduce Lavinia to Miss Climpson, she told herself brightly, pushing open the drawing-room door. This would be an excellent time to broach the topic of waiving Lavinia and Olivia’s school fees, while the headmistress was still flushed with Christmas feeling and lightly spiked punch. She would introduce Lavinia and laugh over the performance with Jane and forget that there was such a person as Turnip Fitzhugh in the world.

  Arabella paused as she passed the door of the music room. Unlike the other doors on the hall, it was open.

  She was about to turn, to close it, when someone jumped out from behind the door. She had only a confused impression of the edge of a white robe, like the innumerable white robes she had sewn for the shepherds and the angels and the wise men, before someone grabbed her from behind, hard enough to knock the air out of her.

  Arabella staggered, gasping for breath. She tried to push away, but her assailant was too strong for her. Pinning her arms behind her back, he dragged her backwards into the dark of the music room, her heels skidding against the polished wood of the floor as she struggled for some sort of purchase.

  Silver flashed in front of her as something narrow and hard was applied to her throat.

  “Where is it?” a muffled voice rasped. “What did you do with it?”

  Chapter 18

  Turnip blundered down the hallway. He felt the way he had, some years ago, when he had taken a tumble out of his tree house and landed on his head. The fingers the doctor had held up in front of Turnip’s eyes had blurred and twisted just as the ranks of doorframes to either side of him were doing now.

  What had he done?

  One minute, she was clinging to his neck, the next she was acting as though he were a Mongol horde who had just personally ravished her village. All he had tried to do was express a concern for her safety, and what had she done? Ripped at him like a whole flock full of harpies.

  Why was it suddenly best that their acquaintance be at an end? And all that about her reputation and being a woman and poor and his just not understanding. She was right about one thing: He didn’t understand.

  Well, fine. He might take a while to get the message, but let no one say that he didn’t get it eventually. If she wanted him gone, he would go. If she had any intruders that needed dealing with, she could jolly well deal with them herself.

  Not that he wouldn’t help her if she came running to him. Turnip contemplated the highly pleasing image of Arabella, in disarray, her hair all down around her back, flinging her arms around his neck, murmuring that she had been wrong, all wrong, and needed him desperately.

  Needed him desperately? The image disappeared with a pop. Arabella was about as likely to say that as he was . . . well, as he was to take tea with Bonaparte. And her voice had come out at least an octave too high. She would more likely say something sarcastic and try to deal with it all herself.

  “Mr. Fitzhugh,” someone said warmly, and Turnip made a manly effort not to jump out of his own skin.

  “How nice to see you again,” said the woman who had come with them to Farley Castle.

  Miss Anselm? No. Arden? Not that either.

  “Nice to see you again too, Miss, er . . .”

  Arabella’s friend tilted her head up at him. She afforded him a long, speculative glance that made Turnip feel a bit like a butterfly on a botanist’s table. Turnip tugged at his cravat. “Austen. Miss Dempsey and I were neighbors in our youth.”

  Turnip felt like the worst kind of a heel. He had only spent several hours in an open carriage with her, after all. “Didn’t mean—that is to say—”

  “It’s quite all right,” said Miss Austen. She smiled up at him, her eyes bright with amusement. “I had the advantage of you and used it shamelessly. You appeared to be in a bit of a brown study.”

  Or just the study, the one down the hall. “Oh, no, nothing like that,” said Turnip too jovially. “Just musing about the Nativity. Bethlehem. All that sort of thing.”

  Miss Austen raised her brows, but forbore to comment. “Will you be celebrating the Christmas season in Bath, Mr. Fitzhugh?”

  “Me? No. Just here to fetch m’sister, Sally, and then I’m off to Girdings House.”

  “Girdings House?” Miss Austen seemed rather struck by the news. Turnip supposed it made sense, one of the great houses of England, and all that.

  “Yes, in Norfolk.”

  Miss Austen regarded him thoughtfully, but all she said was “That is the principal seat of the Duke of Dovedale, is it not?”

  “Never actually met Dovedale—he’s been away for dogs’ years—but the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale is hosting a big thingummy.”

  “A house party?” Miss Austen provided for him.

  Turnip nodded energetically. “Yes, that’s the word.”

  One of the other chaps had referred to it as a “private showing.” It was the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale’s last-ditch attempt to shift her granddaughter before the new year. Lady Charlotte had been on the market for three years now, with no significant success. Sweet-natured soul, Lady Charlotte, but not the sort who showed to good advantage in a crowd. Quiet.

  If he had ever thought about her, that was how he would have described Arabella two months ago, just another of those girls on the edge of the ballroom. Quiet, shy, unremarkable.

  Just went to show what he knew.

  It took him a moment to realize t
hat Miss Austen was looking at him as though expecting him to say something and that her lips were no longer moving.

  Turnip blinked at her. “Sorry. Pardon. What was that?”

  “What will you do there?” Miss Austen repeated patiently.

  “Oh, you know. The usual sorts of things.” Drinking and dicing with the chaps, dancing and party games with the ladies. “Christmas things.”

  “We used to have splendid Christmases back in Steventon,” said Miss Austen. “My family and the Dempseys.”

  “Steventon?”

  “It is a small town in Hertfordshire. Mr. Dempsey’s parish was not far away.”

  “Mr. Dempsey is a vicar?”

  He hadn’t known that.

  He hadn’t thought to ask. He had just assumed that Arabella was like everyone else. And by everyone else, he meant everyone else at Almack’s Assembly Rooms, the comfortable scion of landed interests.

  Turnip could see Arabella as a vicar’s daughter, taking soup to the poor and organizing the local sewing circle. She had that sort of look to her. Sensible. Capable. But one didn’t generally find vicars’ daughters at balls in London. It had something to do with matters of finance. Vicars seldom amassed enough in the way of worldly goods to keep a debutante in gloves and fans.

  “Mr. Dempsey used to be a vicar.” Miss Austen looked briefly away. “Unfortunately, for some time now, his poor health has kept him from following his calling.”

  If vicars tended not to be too plush in the pocket, what happened to vicars without a vicarage?

  I am a woman and I am poor, Arabella had said.

  It occurred to him, belatedly, that the address at which he had fetched her for their excursion to Farley Castle had not been a fashionable one.

  “How did Miss Dempsey come to be in London?” Turnip asked tentatively, not wanting to pry, but needing to know all the same.

  “Her aunt took her in as a companion after her mother died,” said Miss Austen, seeming to see nothing wrong with the question. “But her aunt is recently remarried, so we have the great pleasure of having Arabella returned to us.”