The Mischief of the Mistletoe

by Lauren Willig

  Turnip sunk his chin into the depths of his cravat. “Nothing. Nothing a’tall. Carry on.”

  “There’s not much carrying to do. It’s really embarrassingly simple. Mystery solved, adventure over. And just in time for the end of the house party.”

  “Not quite over yet,” said Turnip hastily. “We still have one more day. And night.”

  A line from a Milton piece whispered through Arabella’s memory: What has night to do with sleep / Sleep hath better sweets to prove. The night beyond the balustrade seemed redolent with all sorts of dangerous prospects. Even the rustling of the wind in the shrubbery had a sensual sound to it, like clothes crumpling at a lover’s embrace.

  Arabella clasped her hands tightly together at her waist. “The sooner we get the list to the proper people, the better,” she said, in her most schoolmistress-ish voice. “I don’t like to think of it just sitting there.”

  Turnip nodded emphatically. “Good thinking. Let’s go get it.”

  Before they could suit action to words, a long shadow fell across the door to the balcony. “Fitzhugh?” called a bored voice. “Are you out here?”

  Turnip quickly stepped in front of Arabella, blocking her from view. “Just came out for a bit of air and all that.”

  “You’re going to get a great deal more of it,” said Darius Danforth, stepping into the fall of light from the ballroom door. He was modishly dressed in a tight-fitting dark blue coat, cut high at the waist and long in the back, his hair styled in the windswept style made fashionable by the Prince of Wales. He prowled out onto the balcony, an advertisement for all that was fashionable and dissolute. “The duchess wants us all out in the West Wood.”

  “What for?”

  Danforth shrugged, showing off the excellence of his tailoring. The material didn’t so much as ripple. “Some Epiphany Eve ritual involving guns, ciders, and a band of overexcited yokels.”

  “Think I’ll skip it this time, thanks all the same,” said Turnip amiably.

  His tone was casual enough, but Arabella could see the tension in the set of his shoulders. In fact, his shoulders were all she could see. They were very broad shoulders, seamlessly outlined by the set of a coat that clung to his form as though it had been painted on.

  There was really something to be said for London tailoring, thought Arabella inconsequentially.

  “Oh no,” said Danforth, leaning languidly against the doorjamb. “There will be no skip. The dowager has made it quite clear that every able-bodied man is to join in shooting away the evil spirits. No exceptions. And you know how the dowager gets when she’s thwarted.”

  “You mean she’ll shoot us,” said Turnip glumly.

  Danforth didn’t bother to deny or confirm. He simply looked at Turnip. “You can’t think I’d be freezing my balls off in the cold with a bunch of bloody farmers if it weren’t for the threat of imminent death?”

  Turnip made a sharp, alarmed motion at Danforth’s foul language.

  “Oh, I am sorry,” drawled Danforth, with an innocence that was anything but. “Do you have someone with you?”

  Turnip’s ears turned red around the edges.

  “If you have, best return her to the ballroom before the dowager does it for you, Fitzhugh,” Danforth advised in world-weary tones. “Shouldn’t want to find yourself leg-shackled.”

  Danforth turned and sauntered back through the doorway.

  Turnip’s fists opened and closed at his side. “That—that—”

  “Person?” suggested Arabella.

  A reluctant smile broke out on Turnip’s face. “Don’t know if I’d go that far. Toadstool is more like it.”

  So this was it, then, was it? The end of her one and only rendezvous on a balcony. Only she, thought Arabella wryly, would manage to spend a good fifteen minutes on a balcony, freezing her shoulders off in the January cold, without so much as a kiss.

  Arabella pasted a fake smile on her face. “You’d best be going, hadn’t you? You wouldn’t want the dowager to start shooting.”

  Despite the increasing bustle from the ballroom, Turnip made no move to go anywhere. He looked at her with concern, his brows drawing so close together they practically met in the middle. “Don’t do anything until I get back. Anything dangerous, that is.”

  “I’m not the one shooting at evil spirits,” Arabella pointed out. “Your mortality rate is likely to be higher than mine.”

  Turnip was not mollified. “Stay with the others. Don’t go wandering off by yourself. That bally list can rot where it is, for all I care, so long as you’re safe.” His eyes brightened as he was seized by a sudden inspiration. “Stay with Lady Henrietta. Deuced good chap, Lady Henrietta. Got me out of that pickle with that Black Tulip person last spring. She’ll see you right.”

  “Fitzhugh,” called Danforth. “The sooner you move, the sooner we all get this over with.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Arabella softly. “I’ll be fine.” With all the men outside, any threat was radically reduced. Her assailant, on both occasions, had quite definitely been male. “Only two more days to go.”

  Turnip was unconvinced. “All the more reason for the chap to get desperate.”

  Inside, someone accidentally fired his pistol. There were shrieks and the sound of clattering crystal.

  “My point, I think,” said Arabella. “You’d best be going.”

  Turnip still didn’t look convinced, but he nodded anyway. “You go in this door. I’ll take the other.” He indicated another door into the ballroom, farther down the balcony. “Wouldn’t want to give Danforth ammunition.”

  “I thought the dowager was planning to do just that,” said Arabella lightly, but Turnip didn’t smile. “Turnip?”

  Something was bothering him. He cocked his head to one side and shifted from one foot to another, opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, closed it again, narrowed his eyes in an expression of great concentration, shook his head, and finally gave up.

  “Oh, bother it,” he said, then grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her.

  Having made up his mind, there was nothing the least bit tentative about Turnip’s kiss. One minute Arabella was peaceably standing beside the balustrade; the next she was half bent over the balustrade, clinging to Turnip’s neck for dear life, while little specks of light exploded against the back of her eyelids like the royal fireworks during a particularly rousing performance of the Hallelujah chorus.

  Arabella gave a silent hallelujah of her own, wrapped her arms more firmly around his neck, and kissed him back. Through the open ballroom door, she could hear violins playing, singing out a high, sweet strain.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that all evening,” said Turnip with satisfaction, setting her back on her feet. He thought about it for a moment. “All week, actually.”

  “Oh,” said Arabella, which was about the most she could manage. Her knees didn’t seem to want to work properly anymore. She held on to Turnip’s shoulders for balance. She blinked up at him, searching for the scattered remains of her wits. “You waited until now?”

  Turnip grinned and butted his nose against hers. “Sorry. Bad timing.”

  “You could say that,” agreed Arabella, although the word “bad” no longer really had a place in her lexicon. That had been quite good, actually. More than good. Would spectacular be going too far?

  “Fitzhugh . . . ,” drawled Danforth.

  “I could learn to dislike that man,” said Arabella.

  “I already have.” Dropping one last kiss on the top of her head, Turnip released her and stepped back. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t do anything reckless.”

  “Mmmph,” said Arabella. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable response at the time.

  Arabella floated back into the ballroom on a wave of euphoria, sparing one last glance for the shadowy balcony behind her, with its broad stone balustrade and ornamental urns.

  So that’s what a balustrade is for, she thought, and experienced a very silly
urge to giggle.

  Inside, the ballroom looked more like a scene of an impromptu siege than a country dance. Red-faced squires were lovingly loading ancient fowling pieces, while the young bucks nonchalantly dangled expensive dueling pistols from gloved fingertips. The musicians were packing up their instruments, carting them away to make room for the London musicians who were to take their places for the following night’s far larger and grander ball. In the center of the room, where the dancing had been, Martin Frobisher and Percy Ponsonby were comparing the size of their pistols, Frobisher insisting that his was bigger. Freddy Staines, red-faced from windburn, was called in as referee.

  Arabella wondered if her face had the same telltale flush. Probably. But she couldn’t bring herself to care. She couldn’t seem to stop smiling. She smiled at the old gentlemen sifting powder into their muskets, at the musicians hauling away their stands, at the young daughters of the local gentry, with their unfashionably long curls and last seasons’ clothes, goggling at the magnificence of the London gentlemen in their tight breaches and extravagant cravats.

  One smiled back at her, shyly, and then quickly ducked her head. Arabella realized, with amusement, that they had marked her down as one of the London ladies, grand and full of her own consequence. Her heart was too full to mind.

  A few feet away, Lady Charlotte Lansdowne, the duchess’s granddaughter, was attempting to explain the martial preparations to the new duke, who was looking with a distinctly unenthusiastic eye at the firearms being paraded around what was, at least in theory, his ballroom.

  “It’s an old country tradition,” Lady Charlotte was saying, in that earnest way of hers. “On Epiphany Eve, the gentlemen gather round the biggest tree on the estate—or at least the most convenient big tree—to scare away the evil spirits.”

  The Duke of Dovedale, who was more a stranger in his own home than most of his guests, looked dubious at the prospect. “How does one go about doing that?”

  Lord Henry Innes clapped him on the shoulder in passing. “You shoot them, man. What else?”

  He was a big, bruising man, Lord Henry, with thick features and a pugilist’s physique. There was an air of barely suppressed physicality about him.

  It would have been ridiculously easy for him to haul her back into the bushes. But once there, Arabella couldn’t see him resorting to the refinement of a knife, or the subtlety of threats. Those large hands would have fit far too easily around her throat.

  Behind Lord Henry, Turnip jerked his head to the side like a bird having an epileptic fit.

  Arabella made an inquisitive face.

  Turnip mimed something. If they had been playing charades, Arabella would have guessed “squirrel.” Or maybe “chipmunk.” “Stealthy chipmunk”? Ah, right. Stealthy chipmunk appeared to be aimed at Lord Henry’s back. In other words, Turnip was going to shadow Lord Henry while they were outside.

  It was gallant and absurd and probably pointless. Arabella looked across at her very own Don Quixote, all pleased at his own cleverness, and felt such a rush of affection that it was a wonder that they couldn’t light the ballroom with it.

  “Arabella.” It took a few moments for the name to filter through to Arabella’s consciousness. She was too busy beaming at Turnip like an idiot. Or a woman in love. Which, when one thought about it, were probably much the same thing. “Arabella.”

  The name-caller sounded distinctly displeased at having to repeat himself.

  It was with the utmost reluctance that Arabella dragged her attention away from Turnip and forced herself to focus on Captain Musgrave, who was buzzing away, like a particularly large fly, somewhere in the vicinity of his left shoulder.

  She looked at him and felt . . . nothing. Not make-believe nothing, the sort of nothing one pretended to salve a wounded pride, but genuine nothing.

  “Yes?” she said.

  Captain Musgrave was still sulking over having been ignored. “Your aunt was looking for you,” he said.

  Musgrave looked at her gravely, waiting for an explanation, an apology. Once, Arabella might have felt duty-bound to provide one, to justify her dereliction. But the world had changed.

  “Where is my aunt?” she asked lightly.

  It wasn’t what he had been expecting. “Upstairs,” he said brusquely. “In her room.” In a belated attempt to recover the ground he had lost, he added, “She’ll be wanting to see you.”

  That was pure nonsense. The only things Aunt Osborne wanted to see after a party were her maid and a large glass of ratafia.

  “I’ll take you to her,” volunteered her new uncle.

  Arabella dodged his outstretched arm. “I’ll go to her by and by,” she hedged. “Excuse me.”

  Captain Musgrave moved to block her. “She wants to talk to you now. About your behavior. With Fitzhugh.”

  Arabella’s serene expression was beginning to crack around the edges. “My behavior,” she said dangerously, “is no longer my aunt’s concern. Or yours.”

  Musgrave’s mouth opened, but whatever he had been about to say was drowned out by an exuberant cry of “To the tree!” that seemed to rattle the very chandeliers on their chains.

  “To the tree! The Epiphany tree!” was taken up all around the room.

  The floor quivered with the pounding of masculine feet as the gentlemen grabbed up their guns and thudded for the doors, ready to repel an armada of trees.

  “Every able-bodied man to his post! No shirkers!” barked a ruddy-faced gentleman in a too tightly buttoned coat, the master of the local hunt if the stentorian quality of his voice was anything to go by. He gave Musgrave a shove that sent the younger man stumbling several feet forward. “No lagging, man! To the tree!”

  “The tree!” echoed the horde behind him, and Musgrave was swept up in the mob, pouring out through the double doors, past the offended statuary, down the marble hall, out the wide-flung doors and down the garden steps, where torches had been set out to light their way, and the men whooped and shot into the air for the sheer glee of it in the cold night air.

  With all the men gone, the gallery felt much larger. Large and empty and suddenly cold. Arabella wrapped her shawl more firmly about her shoulders, regretting that it was only a wispy thing of silk and fringe, designed for fashion rather than warmth. Some of the ladies remained, chattering in small groups, but the majority appeared to have retired for the night, ceding the remainder of the evening to the gentlemen and their pursuits.

  “—will have to be carried upstairs again,” one matron sighed to another. “Singing vulgar songs and still wearing his boots.”

  “It’s that cider,” said her companion, pronouncing the word with distaste. “I can’t think why the duchess allows it.”

  “It is Epiphany Eve,” said the first, apologetically. “It’s a tradition.”

  “It’s pagan, that’s what it is!” snapped the second, whom Arabella belatedly recognized as Mrs. Carruthers. “Nothing more than an excuse for the men to enjoy low drink and vulgar company. I can’t think what they see in it.”

  “Boys will be boys,” said the first, a little ruefully. “And they do like their cider.”

  “Disgraceful,” said Mrs. Carruthers.

  Rolling her eyes, Catherine assumed an expression of intense boredom, every particle of her body language pronouncing her entire indifference to the conversation, the ballroom, and everyone in it.

  Arabella ignored Turnip’s instruction to find Lady Henrietta. Lady Henrietta had retreated with Lady Charlotte into a curtained alcove, and Arabella could hear giggles and exclamations through the blue silk. They wouldn’t thank her for intruding.

  She would be perfectly safe in her own room, particularly now that all the men had been chivvied out of the house by the duchess. The only men who had been excused were the footmen, silent and statue-like in their white wigs and green and gold livery.

  Two were stationed at the foot of the stairs, like human gateposts. Arabella passed between them as she made her way up the silent st
airs. Funny how empty a house, even a grand mansion such as this, could feel with half the population removed from it. The duchess scorned the more economical practice of leaving candles on a table by the stairs for the guests to light their way upstairs; candles had been lit in sconces at intervals along the walls, creating patches of light and shadow that fell in striations along the stairs.

  If she was right, the list, this ridiculous list about which everyone was so concerned, was in the pocket of her gray school dress.

  It had been such a small detail, such a minimal moment in a hectic night, someone—she couldn’t even remember who now, whether it had been Miss Climpson or Lizzy or Sally—thrusting a piece of paper at her, something fallen out of the notebook. She had only remembered it when she reached for a pocket that wasn’t there and experienced the sudden, tactile memory of crumpling a piece of paper into another pocket on another night.

  It might not be the list. It might very well just be someone’s French exercises or a laundry list, like the sheaf of paper Jane’s foolish heroine discovered, but Arabella’s steps quickened nonetheless, until she was practically running along the last stretch of hallway.

  She let herself into her room, closing the door firmly behind her. Rose had left candles burning. Arabella’s nightdress was laid out across the foot of the bed and her tooth powder had been set out on the dressing table along with a basin and ewer. A proper lady’s maid would have waited up for her, but Rose had always been somewhat lackadaisical in her attentions, deeming Arabella too unimportant to complain.

  In this instance, Arabella was glad of it.

  The gray dress wasn’t in the wardrobe with her other gowns. Arabella tracked it down at the bottom of her trunk, along with two others of which Rose disapproved, tucked out of sight where Arabella wouldn’t be tempted to wear them.

  Lifting her school dress from the trunk, Arabella surveyed it critically. It did look nearly too dilapidated to wear, with an ink stain on the skirt and something sticky—mince?—on the bodice. The fabric was a mass of wrinkles, the skirt distended by a strange lump on one side.