The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas

by Lauren Willig

  Despite the pretty phrasing, the meaning was quite clear. “Her aunt didn’t adopt her, then?”

  “No. She only borrowed her a while.” Turnip had the feeling that Miss Austen didn’t think much of Arabella’s aunt. Neither did he.

  Turnip looked around at Miss Climpson’s dining hall, at the costumed girls and the platters of miniature mince pies. He hadn’t thought about that, either—about why a young lady of means would suddenly choose to abandon the social whirl to direct Nativity plays at a young ladies’ academy. With a sense of shame, he remembered teasing her about it.

  “Is that why—?”

  He had the feeling Miss Austen knew perfectly well what he meant, but she affected confusion. “Why?”

  “Why she chose to teach?”

  Miss Austen smiled blandly. “Miss Dempsey has a great commitment to the education of young minds.” She looked directly at Turnip. “And there is some hope that Miss Climpson will be kind enough to waive the usual school fees for Arabella’s younger sisters.”

  “Oh,” said Turnip. School fees. He supposed Sally had them, but paying them had never been in question. It wasn’t when one had thirty thousand pounds a year. “But not if she loses her position.”

  “No,” said Miss Austen gently, “not if she loses her position. Mince pie?”

  Turnip took the pie. It tasted a lot like penance and a very little like pie.

  ARABELLA TASTED FEAR. It rose like bile as the silver sword pressed against what she was fairly sure was an essential part of her neck.

  “Where is it?” her captor demanded.

  “Where is what?” Her voice came out as a mere thread of sound as she tried to speak without moving her throat.

  There would be no use in screaming. The door to the music room was closed and the din created by the assorted guests in the dining hall would drown out any fragment of sound that did manage to scrape through. Any help was too far away, well down the hall. The sword was at her throat. It would be an unequal contest. She was on her own.

  The hand holding her wrists twisted, hard. Arabella did her best not to flinch. Flinching would bring the blade closer to her throat. “You know what.”

  “No, I don’t, really.”

  She could feel the clammy moisture coating her brow and the droplets of sweat beginning to form beneath her arms. It was cold in the music room, cold and dark. The shrouded forms of instruments hulked against the sides of the room like the funeral monuments in the chantry of Farley Castle.

  What a wonderful sort of absurdity, if, after all that, Turnip Fitzhugh had been right. Arabella wondered where he was now. Mingling with the other guests? Scarfing down miniature mince pies? Sticking pins into a picture of her?

  Something that was half laugh, half sob caught in her throat. All those nights lurking outside the school, popping up outside the drawing room window, climbing up her trellis, and now, just when she had ordered him away, would be the moment she actually needed him.

  If there was some divinity that shaped man’s ends, it did have a truly malicious sense of humor.

  The sword pressed closer to her throat. Arabella could see her captor’s knuckles white against the hilt. There was a ring on one finger, set with a single, large stone that glimmered wetly in the dark, the lack of light leeching it of color. It looked black as a sinner’s soul. “What did you do with it?”

  “With what?”

  The sword was curiously curved, fitting around her throat like a collar. Arabella could have done without such adornments. “The list.”

  “List?” Arabella squinted down at her neck. It wasn’t a sword but a scimitar.

  “The list,” he repeated, pressing with his scimitar.

  Who in heaven’s name carried a scimitar? Turkish pashas, maybe, but Arabella doubted that she was being held at scimitar point by a Turkish pasha. There were no Turkish pashas in Bath, at least that she knew of. If there were, she imagined they’d have better things to do than run around ladies’ academies accosting junior instructresses.

  But there were wise men.

  Three of them, in fact. In addition to the usual load of gold, frankincense and myrrh, they also carried swords. Long, curvy, silver swords, fashioned out of several layers of stiffened paper.

  The panic that had held Arabella in its grip dropped away as the reality of the situation dawned upon her in all of its full absurdity. She was being held hostage with a paper sword.

  “I need the list,” he rasped, jabbing her in the jugular with the now palpably pasteboard scimitar. Now that she was looking, she could even see that it was bent a bit about the edges.

  So much for spies.

  Now that she no longer feared for her life, Arabella found herself growing angry. Someone—and she presumed it was the same someone who had ransacked her room—must have bribed an older brother or a cousin or some other variety of male relation to come in and give her a scare. Sally had warned her that new instructresses were fair game for pranks, but Arabella had always assumed it would be something along the lines of toads in the bed, not ripped mattresses and being held in a corridor with a paper sword and menaced with vague threats about missing papers.

  List, indeed. Pure nonsense. He might at least have come up with a better line. And a better sword.

  “Did you know that your sword is pasteboard?” Arabella asked conversationally.

  Her assailant went very still. “No, it’s not.”

  Arabella wriggled, trying to pull her wrists away. The paper sword bumped harmlessly against her chin. “Yes, it is.”

  “How would you know?” her captor demanded breathlessly, trying to keep his hold on her wrists.

  “I was the one who made it.”

  “Oh.”

  “You could say that,” said Arabella acerbically, and stomped down, hard, on his foot.

  He was wearing boots and she was wearing slippers, so the effect wasn’t all that she had hoped it would be, but he did make a very gratifying yelping noise. More important, he dropped her hands.

  Pins and needles tingled in her wrists as blood rushed back through her extremities.

  She barely had time to wring them out before something slammed into her back, sending her sprawling forward. As she fell heavily to her knees, her palms scraping painfully against the carpet, Arabella heard the rasp of the door being yanked open, followed by the resounding reverberation of the wood slamming heavily into its frame.

  Arabella stumbled clumsily to her feet, tripping on her own skirts.

  “Stop! Wait!”

  Wrenching open the door, she skidded out into the hallway.

  The corridor was empty.

  At least, it was mostly empty. There was something shiny lying on the ground not far from the music room door. Arabella didn’t need to stoop down to examine it to know what it was. One pasteboard scimitar with a hilt set with imitation jewels.

  A few yards farther along, a pile of fabric showed pale against the baseboards. Arabella lifted it with two fingers, holding it in front of her like three-day-old fish. One wise man’s robe.

  She opened her fingers, letting the fabric slither to the floor at her feet. Her assailant must have yanked it off while she was still trying to untangle her legs from her blasted skirt and then strolled blithely back into the throng of spectators in the dining hall.

  There was no way of determining whose robe it was; she had hemmed dozens of the blasted things, making some over from last year’s, sewing others from scratch. The school was positively littered with the garments. Anyone could have taken one. She couldn’t even identify her attacker by voice. Whoever it was had taken care to wrap cloth around his face, muffling his voice. The only thing she was fairly sure of was that her attacker had been male.

  Arabella paused in the foyer, beneath the battered piece of mistletoe she had passed what felt like a lifetime ago and looked across the entry-way into the dining hall. Miss Climpson’s students appeared to possess an inordinately large number of brothers, fathers, un
cles, and male cousins.

  Among them, she spotted Signor Marconi, who appeared to be even more than usually rumpled. He was in possession of both of his mustachios this time, but his hair was tousled and his cravat askew.

  Arabella’s eyes narrowed on the music master. For all the absurdity of the fake mustaches, he was younger than he tried to appear, not more than a few years older than she was, at a guess. He had participated in all the rehearsals, so he knew about the wise men’s robes and the paper scimitars.

  There had been no attacks on her room or her person until she had interrupted Signor Marconi in his midnight wanderings around the school.

  As she stared at the music master, something else clicked into place. The music room. The attack had taken place in the music room. It wasn’t exactly conclusive evidence, but it certainly militated in that direction. Either the music master thought she had seen something he wanted hidden or he was simply holding a grudge for the fact that she had caused the loss of his favorite set of mustachios.

  What a tempest in a teapot it had all turned out to be.

  When she told Turnip—

  Arabella came up short, feeling a bit as though she had run flat into a wall without seeing it coming. She wasn’t going to tell Turnip Fitzhugh about this or about anything.

  It was a surprisingly lonely feeling.

  She would find Jane. She would find Jane, and eat some disgusting mince pie, and plot the revenge she planned to take on Signor Marconi. Perhaps she might even confront Signor Marconi and make him squirm a bit. Arabella flexed her wrists. There were red marks in her skin that would undoubtedly darken to a lovely purple-yellow by morning. Or she could make him squirm a lot.

  Rubbing her sore wrists, Arabella set off into the dining hall in search of Jane. Being so diminutive, Jane was always a bother to spot in a crowd, although less so here than usual, with all the short schoolgirls lowering the general height ratio. Arabella finally located her standing near the refreshment table.

  Jane was talking to a tall man, a tall man with hair as gold as a wise man’s gift and a coat made of crimson cloth that would have looked absurd on anyone else. Arabella stared at them and wished herself back in that corridor with a paper scimitar against her throat. Or in her bed with the covers pulled up over her head.

  As she stood there, he looked up. His eyes briefly met hers.

  And he looked away.

  He looked away as though he had never seen her before and never cared to again. He turned and said something to Jane. Arabella couldn’t hear what it was, but it had to be a farewell of some sort, because he was bowing, and moving away, with a celerity that would have been unflattering under any circumstances and was even more so now, because she knew she had brought it on herself.

  Arabella wove her way through the crowd of parents and friends to Jane. By the time she reached her, there was no sign of a broad-shouldered blond man with poor taste in cravats.

  “Was that Mr. Fitzhugh with you?” asked Arabella without preamble.

  “Were you looking for him?” asked Jane innocently.

  “No,” Arabella snapped.

  Jane raised an eyebrow.

  “What I mean is”—Arabella tried not to follow him through the crowd with her eyes—“I was looking for you.”

  “How flattering,” said Jane, and Arabella let herself hope that would be the end of it, until, “I like your Mr. Fitzhugh.”

  “Good. You can have him.”

  “Arabella?”

  Arabella pressed her hands to her face. “I am sorry. It has been an exceedingly long evening.”

  She had meant to tell Jane about Signor Marconi and the attack of the anonymous wise man, but now that she was here, she didn’t know how to begin. It all sounded absurd. The only one sure to believe her was Turnip.

  The same Turnip whom she had just told to go away and never come back.

  Arabella looked up to find Jane looking at her speculatively. “You are still going to Girdings House for Christmas, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, with my Aunt Osborne.” At one point, the thought of spending Christmas with Aunt Osborne and her new husband had filled her with trepidation. Now Arabella found it hard to work up the necessary sense of dread. Being held at scimitar-point could do that to one. “Why?”

  “No reason.” Jane examined a plate of miniature mince pies. “No reason at all.”

  Chapter 19

  The Dowager Duchess of Dovedale had instructed her guests to arrive at Girdings House by noon on the day before Christmas, but not even the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale could control every axle on every wheel on every carriage in the kingdom.

  It was full dark by the time Arabella arrived. After seven long days on the road, Arabella felt nothing but numb, from the blue tips of her toes straight through the mud that had somehow got in her hair. Her emotions were as frozen as her fingers.

  The events at Miss Climpson’s seminary already seemed a world away. The idea that she might have kissed Turnip Fitzhugh or chased with him after a pudding through the grounds of Farley Castle was, quite frankly, ludicrous. She was back to her old life again, back to being that quiet Miss Dempsey who was invited to fill out a table, then shuffled off to the side of the room as quickly as possible.

  There was no one from the ducal family to greet Arabella and her maid when they arrived at Girdings House. Arabella hadn’t expected there would be. Poor relations seldom got the full ducal treatment. They were informed that the rest of the party were already out in the grounds, collecting holly and ivy with which to deck the halls. A footman, resplendent in the Dovedale livery of green and gold, showed them up a grand staircase decorated with battle scenes portraying the triumphs of long-dead Dovedales, then up a less grand staircase, and finally down a long hallway that grew considerably less imposing as it went on.

  He opened the door into a room that Arabella would have considered luxurious by everyday standards, but which was undoubtedly Spartan on the ducal scale of things. Her room had been allotted to her with a delicate understanding of her place in the great chain of being. No room in Girdings could possibly be called mean, but hers was off to the side, with a view of the kitchen garden and some rather workman-like outbuildings. There was water waiting and a fire in the grate, and that was all Arabella cared about.

  “A fine pickle this is,” snapped Rose, vigorously beating mud out of Arabella’s pelisse as the door closed behind the footman.

  “A pickle or a gherkin?” Arabella stripped her gloves off her frozen fingers and wandered to the one window to inspect the view.

  Rose bristled, obviously suspecting Arabella of having fun at her expense. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” she said repressively, “and no question about it. I should have known that coachman was no good. Here. This is as good as I can make it without a proper cleaning.”

  “Thank you,” said Arabella meekly, and let the maid help her back into her pelisse.

  Rose wrung out a cloth, applying it vigorously to Arabella’s face, much the same way she had when Arabella was twelve and had underestimated the adhesive properties of raspberry jam. Rose had been with Aunt Osborne for a very long time. She had never quite made up her mind as to whether she approved of Arabella. Family was family, but poor relations something slightly less.

  That, thought Arabella, was something she missed about Miss Climpson’s. It had been rather nice to have a place in the world that she had earned for herself, rather than being allotted it on perpetual sufferance.

  She had thought it didn’t make a difference, but it did.

  Rose narrowed her eyes at her, squinting at Arabella’s head with a critical air. “That’s the worst of the travel dust gone from your face, but there’s no telling what they’ll make of your hair.” She shrugged with the air of one abandoning a bad job. “Well, it’s dark and you’ll have your bonnet on and that’s the best one can hope for.”

  “Thank you, Rose.”

  Nothing like a few compliments to start o
ne’s evening off well.

  Despite the size of the grounds, Arabella had no difficulty finding the West Wood. More of the ubiquitous footmen, identical in their white wigs and pseudo-feudal livery, had directed her to the gardens, where flaming lines of torches had been set to guide the houseguests through the carefully clipped parterres of the formal gardens through to the artfully designed wilderness beyond.

  Through the smoke of the torches, Arabella could just make out the shapes of marble statues, freed from their winter burlap for the company’s delectation. A nymph stretched cold arms into the air above a dry fountain while topiary beasts roared from the sides of the path. She couldn’t tell whether they meant to protect her or to warn her away.

  There was a blaze of light at the end of the path, more torches, this time arranged in a semicircle, as though for a ritual sacrifice. Arabella hurried towards them. They might be planning to put a maiden on the block, but at least she would be warm while they did it. Her fingers were freezing inside her gloves and her legs had lost all feeling several days ago.

  A dog darted forward, nipping at her skirts, growling pleasurably as it attacked and killed her hem. There were more dogs underfoot in the clearing, tripping up yet more of the liveried footmen who were passing among the crowd with silver glasses full of a steaming liquid redolent of spices and spirits. A group of men milled just at the entrance to the clearing, quaffing spiced wine and kicking at the dogs, tricked out in fashionable multi-caped greatcoats, their curly-brimmed hats pulled down low over their eyes.

  Arabella recognized most of them, although she doubted they would recognize her. There was Lord Frederick Staines, blond and arrogant, in line for an earldom; Lord Henry Innes, younger son of a duke, thick as a post; the Honorable Martin Frobisher, reputed to be anything but; Sir Francis Medmenham, dark and dissolute, but possessed of substantial properties both in England and abroad; Lieutenant Darius Danforth, formerly of the Horse Guards, also son of an earl, although there were rumors that he had been disowned. It had been all the usual sorts of reasons: drink, cards, and, if Arabella remembered correctly, seducing a young lady of good family. The lady’s family were clearly influential enough to protect their own; the name had never come out, but the general outline of the story had spread. The girl was rumored to have been all of sixteen, just a year older than Lavinia.