The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas

by Lauren Willig

  It made a very satisfying crinkling sound as Arabella slowly rose to her feet, lifting the dress up as she went.

  A slow tingle of excitement began to spread from Arabella’s fingers to her palms, making the skin on her back prickle, catching at the breath in her throat. It was still there, whatever it was that she had put into her pocket on that ridiculous, hurly-burly whirlwind of a night. That didn’t mean that it was what she thought it might be, Arabella told herself as she draped the dress over the back of a chair, groping for the pocket. Paper crackled beneath her fingers.

  A single sheet, just as Lord Pinchingdale had said, written front and back.

  Placing the paper flat on her dressing table, Arabella smoothed out the worst of the wrinkles. It was closely written, in a small, neat hand. The first line read “Boisvallon, Abbeville, 150 L.,” followed by, on the next line, “La Rose, Pas de Calais, 400 L.,” and so on down the line. It looked a bit like a laundry list, but a laundry list like none Arabella had ever seen. The pattern repeated, straight down the page. Name, place, number. It took Arabella a moment to figure out what the number signified, not a pound sign, but an L.

  Louis. Louis d’or, the old French currency. No wonder it looked like an account; it was one. Some foolish soul in the War Office had taken it upon himself to write up a rendering of the amounts being paid to foreign agents, and had, ever so helpfully, included their stations. There had to be at least a hundred names on the list, closely written, front and back, some proper names, others, like La Prime-Rose and Le Mouron, both flowers, quite obviously pseudonyms. Arabella recognized some of the place names, but not all; from the look of the list, it seemed like the Royalist web had a strand in every village in France.

  No wonder someone wanted this so badly. Publish the list and the entire English network from the coast to Paris would be in tatters.

  It was rather alarming to think that the fate of the French monarchy might well have rested on Rose’s reluctance to press Arabella’s gray gown. Whoever had searched her room, not once but twice, had never thought to check the side pocket of a discarded dress.

  Which meant, reasoned Arabella, that whoever it was must have seen her take possession of the notebook, but hadn’t seen her put the loose page in her pocket. That ruled out Signor Marconi, Sally, Lizzy, Agnes, Miss Climpson, and Turnip.

  Who else knew she had the notebook? And how? It had to have been someone outside the drawing room, someone who had seen her walk away with the notebook, but without witnessing the actual events inside the room.

  There was a scraping noise behind her as someone opened the door to the room, the wood of the door pushing against the nap of the Ax-minster carpet. Of course, Rose would choose now to help her undress. Arabella slapped a book down over the dangerous bit of paper.

  “It’s all right, Rose,” she said, keeping a hand on top of the book as she straightened. “I don’t need—”

  She broke off at the unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked.

  “Rose isn’t here,” said Catherine Carruthers and leveled her pistol at Arabella’s head.

  Chapter 27

  Crack.

  The report of a gun echoed somewhere to Turnip’s right.

  “Not yet, you idiot!” someone shouted, flown on champagne and brandy cakes. “Wait until you see the green of their leaves!”

  The duchess’s male guests jostled into the forest clearing in a whooping, staggering, gleeful mass. The acrid smell of gun smoke warred with the sickly sweet scents of pomade, cologne, and hot-house fruits. A vast bonfire sent sparks flaring into the sky, turning the faces of the laughing, shouting men into something out of primitive history. They might have been their own ancestors, charging forward to cut down a Roman brigade, rather than a few tree spirits.

  Free of feminine oversight, wigs had been discarded, cravats loosened, waistcoasts unbuttoned. Some had liberated champagne from the feast and were chugging directly out of the bottle; others refreshed themselves from flasks. A safe distance from the bonfire, the servants had set out a table, the delicate Irish linen covering the raw boards in stark contrast to the rough pottery casks that had been lined up in two rows on top of the table.

  “Cider!” someone shouted, and everyone made a dash for the table, eager to get to the famed Norfolk cider that had been known to lay grown men low.

  “Shall we get on?” said the Duke of Dovedale.

  Turnip couldn’t have agreed more. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner he could get back to Arabella. She had to like him at least a little bit to kiss him back like that. She wasn’t a Penelope, to cast her kisses on the wind like bread unto the waters. Penelope. Turnip shook his head to himself, eliciting several funny looks from the people around him. How could she have thought he was carrying a torch for Penelope? He wasn’t holding even a very small candle.

  Still, if she was jealous, that had to mean something. Rather encouraging, really. Turnip drew in a deep breath. Once they had finished with this ridiculous list, he could put his courage to the sticking point, corner Arabella on a balcony—he’d rather liked that balcony—and make a declaration she couldn’t mistake.

  It didn’t matter that she didn’t have a dowry. He had income enough for two—well, for ten, really, if one totted up the numbers and all that, but he didn’t want ten, he just wanted Arabella. He could send her younger sisters to school and find her father a nicer spa and give that cranky sister a season and hire half a dozen paid companions to make demmed sure that Arabella never had to fetch another vinaigrette for Lady Osborne ever again.

  Turnip circled warily around the tree. “I say, are we meant to shoot at the tree or away from it?”

  For all that it was meant to be stuffed full of evil spirits, it still looked like a tree to him.

  “At it, I should think,” opined Lord Freddy Staines, shining the already shiny stock of his pistol. It was as elaborately designed as a lady’s dresser set, polished to a fine sheen and chased with delicate curlicues of sterling silver. “How else are we to kill the evil spirits?”

  Good point, that. Turnip nodded intelligently.

  The Duke of Dovedale bared his teeth in an unconvincing imitation of a smile. “I’d say shooting at the tree would be a jolly dangerous idea.”

  “Why?” demanded Lord Henry Innes, joining the group, a jug of cider in one hand, pistol in the other. “It ain’t going to shoot back.”

  Turnip eyed Innes thoughtfully. If Innes were here, he couldn’t be in the house. Which meant, in a rather roundabout way, that now would be an excellent time to dispose of that list. From the size of that jug, Innes should be occupied for a good long while. He wasn’t going to be dragging anyone off behind bushes anytime soon.

  Sir Francis Medmenham delicately reached out and turned Innes’s pistol away from the tree. “Ricochet,” he said succinctly. “I, for one, have no desire to breathe my last because of a bullet bouncing off a tree.”

  Turnip didn’t wait to hear the rest of the argument.

  “Just going for refreshments, don’t you know,” he said to no one in particular, and began to back away, past the bonfire, past the table with the cider jugs, past another table set out with a variety of hearty foods to sustain the tree-hunters on their midnight quest. No namby-pamby lady foods such as were served at the ball, but good, hearty meat pastries, cold meats, the smelliest of cheeses, and hefty loaves of fresh-baked bread. There was also, set out to one side, a neat pyramid of Christmas puddings, each adorned with its own sprig of mistletoe.

  Hmm. Struck by inspiration, Turnip snatched up a pudding in passing before bolting back towards the house. It was, he decided, practically a sign. Anyone could bring flowers, but nothing said I love you like a slightly squished Christmas pudding.

  It made Turnip feel warm inside just thinking about it. It was a pudding that had brought them together, after all. Amazing, the way the rest of one’s life could hinge on one little ball of suet and dried fruit.

  Turnip looked down at the
muslin-wrapped ball in his hand and grinned. He was sure they could find excellent use for that mistletoe trimming, too.

  The gallery was all but deserted when he entered, save for the silent army of servants sweeping up the last of the feast, scrubbing squished lobster patties off the gleaming parquet floor, setting the room to rights for tomorrow’s festivities. Turnip was about to look elsewhere when one of the long silk curtains shading the ornamental alcoves rustled and Lady Henrietta Dorrington wiggled her way out, still speaking to someone in the alcove behind her.

  Phew. Turnip let out the breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. Deuced clever of Lady Hen to hide Arabella away in an alcove, he thought, as he strode towards her across the deserted dance floor. Not that he would tell her, of course. She was the gloating sort, Lady Hen.

  He raised his hand in greeting as he approached. There was no need to stand on ceremony with Lady Henrietta; he had known her since she was a chubby-cheeked toddler trying to make her brother’s friends play dolls. He had managed a bally good falsetto, if he did say so himself.

  “Hullo,” Lady Henrietta said cheerfully, holding the curtain for someone behind her. “Aren’t you supposed to be tree hunting?”

  “Spirit hunting,” Turnip corrected her, craning his neck to try to see around her. “Is Miss Dempsey in there?”

  “No,” said Lady Charlotte Lansdowne apologetically, shoving the curtain aside. “Just me.”

  Lady Henrietta looked pointedly at Turnip’s hands. “Why are you holding a pudding?”

  Turnip clutched his love offering protectively to his chest. “I like pudding.”

  “So do I,” said Lady Henrietta, “but I don’t go around embracing it.”

  Refusing to let himself be drawn, Turnip fixed Lady Henrietta with anxious eyes. “Thought Miss Dempsey was supposed to be with you.”

  Lady Henrietta looked at Lady Charlotte, who shook her head. Lady Henrietta turned back to Turnip. “I haven’t see her since the Fairy Queen.”

  “You haven’t?” Turnip had heard of blood running cold, but it was the first time his had actually done it. “Do you know where she went?”

  “If I haven’t seen her,” said Lady Henrietta with exaggerated patience, “how could I know where she is?”

  If she wasn’t with Lady Henrietta, where was she? Turnip didn’t have a good feeling about this.

  “Thanks all the same,” mumbled Turnip, bolting for the doors. “Shan’t keep you.”

  “What is it?” Lady Henrietta called after him. “Is something wrong?”

  But Turnip was already gone.

  There were only a handful of middle-aged matrons playing whist in the card room, none of whom were Arabella. The footman by the garden doors hadn’t seen a girl in a peach silk dress. Neither had the ones napping by the front door, who snapped guiltily to attention as Turnip dashed up to them.

  Good Gad, had someone whisked her out through a window? Down a trellis?

  The footmen at the foot of the stairs looked exactly like the ten footmen he had already spoken to. But there was one crucial distinction. These footmen remembered Arabella, and they remembered her going upstairs, not fifteen minutes before.

  “Alone?” Turnip asked, bouncing from one foot to the other in his agitation. “There wasn’t a chap with a knife, or a gun, or a paper scimitar, or anything like that?”

  The footman’s impassive mask never altered. “I am sure I couldn’t say, sir.”

  “Her room,” he demanded, mangling the pudding in his strangle-hold. “Where’s her room?”

  If the footman deemed it an improper question, he was too well trained to show it. His gaze never deviated from the correct two inches above Turnip’s left shoulder. “Two flights up, fourth door to the left, sir.”

  “Two up, four left,” muttered Turnip. “Two up, four left.”

  How long had it been now? Fifteen minutes? Twenty?

  Turnip took the stairs two steps at a time.

  “YOU AREN’T GOING TO SCREAM, are you?” said Catherine. “That would be too tedious for words.”

  “Catherine?” Arabella stared at her former student, trying to reconcile the conflict between the curls, the frills, the flounces, and the very businesslike pistol in Catherine’s hand. It didn’t even have silver chasing or mother-of-pearl inlay. It was simply what it was: a highly efficient instrument of death.

  And it was pointed straight at Arabella.

  “Don’t try anything silly,” Catherine instructed, her bracelet glinting in the candlelight as she aimed the gun at Arabella’s chest. “I can use this. And I will.”

  Arabella didn’t doubt it.

  “If this is about your history mark,” she said mildly, “wouldn’t it have been simpler to have seen me about it before the end of term?”

  “There’s no use pretending you don’t have it. I know you do.”

  “Have what?” Arabella said, as calmly as she could manage.

  “The list.” Catherine’s voice was clipped and hard. There was a steeliness to her that belied the seeming frivolity of her clothes, the childlike sweetness of her still-round cheeks. There was petulance there too: adult purpose married to adolescent single-mindedness. It was a combination that made Arabella very, very afraid. “I need that list.”

  Lifting her hand from the book, Arabella very slowly turned the rest of the way around, conscious of the pistol following her every movement.

  “Catherine,” she began briskly.

  “Just because someone invited you to this party doesn’t mean you have any right to address me so familiarly.” Catherine’s nose lifted in an uncanny imitation of her mother’s. “From now on, you will address me as Mrs. Danforth.”

  Danforth. Danforth? Whatever Arabella had expected, it hadn’t been that. “As in . . . Lieutenant Darius Danforth?”

  As she said it, she could picture him. Danforth, who was friends with Catherine’s cousin. Danforth, who had been disowned for dishonoring a young lady of good family. Danforth, who had spearheaded that game of blind man’s buff.

  “The very one,” said Catherine smugly.

  A host of disregarded images came belatedly and painfully into focus: Danforth passing close by Catherine, stopping to murmur something into her ear; Danforth and Catherine, exchanging glances across the drawing room; Danforth and Catherine, in collusion.

  Arabella licked her dry lips. “Not Lady Grimmlesby-Thorpe?”

  Catherine tossed her head. “You didn’t think I was going to marry that old sot? No. Darius and I were married by special license in November.” She preened. “He does have important connections, you know. Darius is the son of an earl.”

  The disowned son of an earl, but Arabella deemed it wiser not to point that out while Catherine was holding a pistol.

  It had been in November that Catherine had been expelled from Miss Climpson’s. “That was when you ran away from the school.”

  “I didn’t run away,” Catherine corrected her. “I eloped.”

  “Of course,” Arabella said quickly. Rule Number One: Don’t make the woman with the pistol angry. “My felicitations.”

  Diving for the pistol wasn’t really an option. Arabella wouldn’t be surprised to find that Catherine really was as good a shot as she claimed.

  There was a rather heavy perfume atomizer on the dressing table. If she could reach behind and grab it, she could throw it at Catherine, duck, and run. Of course, that presumed that she managed to reach it without Catherine noticing, and, once she had it in hand, that she threw true, neither of which seemed highly likely.

  “Thank you,” Catherine took her congratulations as her due. “But as you can see, this is hardly a social call. You have caused me a great deal of bother since you arrived at Miss Climpson’s.”

  Arabella had caused her a great deal of bother?

  “I’m so sorry,” Arabella said. “Was that your pudding?”

  “Whose did you think it was? The Prince of Wales’s? You had no business reading it, no busi
ness at all.”

  “You left it on the windowsill,” Arabella said slowly, “so Lieutenant Danforth could pick it up.”

  “Those pedants at Miss Climpson’s persisted in watching me to make sure I didn’t see Darius. But they didn’t think anything of a Christmas pudding left on a windowsill.”

  “Or a notebook?”

  “Clever, wasn’t it?” Catherine smirked.

  Arabella was still putting all the pieces together. “That night at Miss Climpson’s Christmas performance. You were one of the wise men.”

  “I gave Darius my robe and my sword while Sally and those other angels were still preening themselves onstage. It was easy enough. The robe was too short on him, but you didn’t look very closely, did you?”

  “One doesn’t when one is being dragged backwards in a dark corridor.” One by one, the pieces were beginning to fall into place. “You were the one who searched my room.”

  “Twice. Really, you might think of investing in some new walking dresses. That green one is disgraceful.” Catherine shuddered in distaste. If one had to paw through someone else’s belongings looking for treasonous documents, they might, in Catherine’s view, at least be fashionable ones.

  Catherine’s snobbery might have been all that had kept her from discovering the paper the first few times; she would never have considered touching Arabella’s gray school dress, any more than Rose had. It was an amusing irony that Arabella would be sure to savor at her leisure. If she survived to do it.

  “Whose idea was the game of blind man’s buff?”

  “I came up with the idea, of course”—Catherine was leaving no doubts as to the evil mastermind in this partnership—“but I had to leave it to Darius to execute. Being a gentleman, he didn’t have the nerve to do it properly.”

  Gentleman? Arabella bit her tongue on the acerbic comment that rose to her lips.