It was a pleasant room in the daylight, used occasionally for the purpose of receiving family members, but generally ceded to the older girls for use as a sort of lounge, where they wrote letters, muddled their way through lessons, and sprawled before the hearth engaging in imagined affairs of the heart. By night, the bright blue and white paper darkened to a decidedly ominous gray, the ornamental lozenges like staring eyes and open mouths in the gloom.
Squaring her shoulders, Arabella marched smartly forward. “Catherine?”
Her footfalls sounded unnaturally loud against the floorboards. She could see her own reflection in the pier glass over the mantel, distorted and blurred. There was no one else there. There was only the movement of the starched white curtains, which snicked and whispered in the breeze from the open window, snapping back and forth in the December wind.
Arabella came to a halt in the center of the room, flustered and irritated. In the empty room, the curtains flicked out at her. It felt like a taunt.
Oh, Lord. The window. The open window. Catherine. Of course, thought Arabella, disgusted at her own stupidity. Why rappel four flights down from an upper window when one could climb in comfort out of one on the first floor? It was only heroines in novels who went for the grand and impractical gesture.
“Blast, blast, blast,” Arabella muttered to herself, making for the window.
Catherine couldn’t have gotten far. The light had been signaling not five minutes ago.
Arabella stumbled backwards, clutching at the curtain for balance, as the menacing form of a man leaned forward through the window. He filled the entire aperture of the window, blotting out the feeble light of the moon.
He was huge; he was threatening; he was . . . “Mr. Fitzhugh?” Arabella squeaked.
She hadn’t realized her voice was capable of hitting that register. In real life, she was an alto.
In real life, pinks of the ton didn’t pop out of windows at her at strange hours of the night.
Mr. Fitzhugh didn’t look like a pink of the ton now. His brightly patterned waistcoat and exuberant cravat had been replaced by a tight-fitting garment in a coarse, dark material, worn over a pair of equally dark pantaloons. Only his boots remained the same, but even those had been matted with soot to destroy their glossy finish. He had pulled a knit cap down over his bright hair, but bits stuck out at the sides, lending him a mildly maniacal look. If Arabella had encountered him in a dark alley, she would have gone running in the opposite direction.
One thing hadn’t changed, though. His smile was as exuberant as ever. He appeared completely unconcerned by the fact that she had caught him lurking outside the window of a young ladies’ seminary on the cusp of midnight garbed in garments that could, with extreme charity, at best be termed bizarre.
“Lovely night, ain’t it?” he said cheerfully, for all the world as if they had run across each other in the Pump Room over steaming mugs of mineral water. He slapped his arms across his chest for warmth. “Stars seem brighter here, dontcha know.”
Arabella rather doubted that Mr. Fitzhugh was lurking in Miss Climpson’s shrubbery for the purpose of stargazing.
“What are you doing lurking under a window dressed like . . . like . . .”
“Like it?” Rising to his full height, Mr. Fitzhugh executed a half-turn.
“No!” Arabella peered left, then right. “You haven’t seen anyone come this way, have you?”
“Through this window, d’you mean?” asked Mr. Fitzhugh, as though it were a perfectly logical question. “Not recently. I should have noticed if they had.”
“You haven’t seen a girl? Possibly with a man? She might have come this way.”
“A girl?” Mr. Fitzhugh appeared genuinely puzzled by the concept.
“An adolescent person of the female persuasion,” Arabella clarified.
Mr. Fitzhugh considered. “No. None of those. Did see some one of those lurking about through the curtains, but that was inside, not out. If she’d come through here, I would have known.”
Arabella frowned at Mr. Fitzhugh. The coast still seemed to be clear, but they couldn’t count on that to last. “You can’t be here.”
“Don’t like to beat a dead chicken and whatnot, but I should think that I jolly well am.” Mr. Fitzhugh contemplated the ground at his feet, with its cracking pavement and the winter remains of flower bushes, now slightly squished. Looking up, he beamed at Arabella. “Yes. Definitely still here.”
There was something ridiculously infectious about Mr. Fitzhugh’s smile. Yes, like the plague, Arabella told herself sternly, and forced her lips to stop grinning back. “What I meant was that you shouldn’t be here. Someone will see you.”
“They haven’t so far.” Mr. Fitzhugh clasped his hands behind his back, doing his best to assume a modest expression. “I’ve been out here for four days. Er, nights.”
“Nights. Plural. Four?” Arabella wrapped her arms around her chest. “You’ve been sitting here in the garden. For four nights.”
Mr. Fitzhugh twirled a bit of his watch chain around his finger. “Well, five, really, if you count tonight, but since tonight is still tonight, it didn’t seem the done thing to add it to the tally. Night not accomplished yet and all that, don’t you know.”
Didn’t he realize it was December? And cold? She was cold just standing at the window. He was lucky it wasn’t snowing.
“Haven’t been here all night,” said Mr. Fitzhugh virtuously. “M’groom spells me. Splendid sort, Gerkin. Always good in a pickle.”
Arabella’s brain balked at the vision of frozen servants bobbing in brine. “Let’s start again. What are you doing in the garden? And don’t say ‘talking to you.’ ”
“I got to worrying about you,” Mr. Fitzhugh said confidingly, leaning his elbows on the windowsill. “I didn’t like the looks of that pudding. If there’s something rum going on, I want to know what. Couldn’t just leave you here to face it alone.”
“Oh,” said Arabella. “Oh.”
She had meant to say something clever and stinging, but Mr. Fitzhugh’s response was so entirely unexpected that the words faltered on her lips. He had been concerned about her? All this time when she had been convinced he had been off gadding and gallivanting, he had been huddling in the dirt beneath the drawing-room window, waiting to protect her.
It was ridiculous, of course, and utterly mad, but it was still rather . . . sweet.
“Thank you,” she said, although the words seemed entirely inadequate to express the sheer magnificent idiocy of his actions. “You really shouldn’t have.”
“Not in the slightest,” said Mr. Fitzhugh airily, although the nonchalant sentiment was slightly marred by the chattering of his teeth. Reaching under his sweater, he extracted a silver flask and took a bracing swig. “Good for the constitution and all that. Nothing like a good English December.”
“Yes, but not all night,” retorted Arabella. If Mr. Fitzhugh had been outside all this time, then . . . “It might have been your light I saw. Maybe Catherine really was in the convenience.”
Lowering the flask, Mr. Fitzhugh wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Catherine?”
“Catherine Carruthers.” Of course, there was no reason for Catherine to have piled pillows in her place if all she intended was a quick trip to the necessary. “She wasn’t in her bed. Your sister thought—”
“That’s your mistake, right there,” said Mr. Fitzhugh helpfully. “Letting Sally think. Comes up with some deuced odd notions that way.”
“Sally comes up with odd notions?” said Arabella.
Mr. Fitzhugh had the grace to blush. Or perhaps it was just windburn. “Just wanted to make sure you were safe. And there was a chap lurking about here earlier in the evening. I saw him last night, too. Went around the other side.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t just your Gerkin?”
“Not a chance of it. Gerkin and I have a signal.”
Arabella had a fairly good idea of what that signal might be. �
�Two flashes of light, a pause, then another flash?”
Mr. Fitzhugh shook his head. “Too obvious. Someone might see the light. Sort of thing schoolgirls would do. No. Our secret signal is the mating call of the two-billed thrush.”
“How can a bird have two bills?”
“That’s the genius of it!” Mr. Fitzhugh bounced on his heels, all boyish enthusiasm. “They can’t. Made it up ourselves.”
“Then how can—never mind.” If it wasn’t his lantern, whose was it?
Arabella was about to voice that important point when a familiar creaking sound arrested her attention.
“There’s someone coming!” Arabella flapped her hands at Mr. Fitzhugh. “Quick! Hide.”
“Your wish is my—ugh.” Arabella put a hand on his head and pushed. Flailing, Mr. Fitzhugh went down.
She very much hoped he would take the hint and stay down. It was going to be hard enough explaining to Miss Climpson or one of the other mistresses just what she was doing roaming the lower floors at nearly eleven at night without the added complication of the older brother of one of her pupils squatting in the flower bed. There was no good way to explain that. Arabella doubted Miss Climpson would believe that she was updating Mr. Fitzhugh on Sally’s progress in history.
Arabella yanked the curtains closed as she turned to face the doorway. They were thin curtains, designed for ornament more than use, but they at least provided the illusion of a barrier.
Arabella took a tentative step towards the door. “Miss Climpson?” she said, peering into the darkness beyond. She held up her candle. “Is that you?”
The footsteps came to an abrupt halt.
So did Arabella.
It wasn’t Miss Climpson. Not unless the headmistress had recently taken to wearing trousers.
“Oh,” said Arabella, as the candle flame danced between them. “You’re not Miss Climpson.”
Chapter 11
Turnip popped out of the flower bed just in time to see a dark figure loom up in the doorway in front of Miss Dempsey.
It might have been dark, but it was unmistakably male, which didn’t seem at all the thing in an academy for young ladies. As Turnip knew from Sally—and their parents, who had paid close attention to such points—the school was designated a male-free area after dark, with all male teachers and staff packed off back to their respective lodgings. The only man who was allowed to be on the grounds was the gardener, and it seemed highly unlikely he would be in the house when his job was to be active outside it.
As Miss Dempsey held up her candle, the man shied back, flinging up an arm to shield his eyes from the light or his face from view.
Miss Dempsey advanced on the newcomer. “What—,” she began.
Whoever he was, he wasn’t in the mood to answer questions. Looking left, then right, the intruder summed up his options and charged for the window. There was one slight problem. Miss Dempsey was in his path.
She swerved. He swerved.
Unfortunately, they both swerved in the same direction.
Time to make his daring entrance and charge to the rescue, sweeping away all malefactors with a hey-ho and a heave-to. Turnip flung himself onto the sill, only to find himself tangled in the folds of a white linen curtain that someone had inconveniently drawn across the window. As Turnip struggled against a tangle of curtains, the intruder feinted to the side, trying to make a run around Miss Dempsey. His shoulder banged into her side, sending her flailing for balance, just as Turnip lost the battle with the curtain and went tumbling back into the flower bed. From his semi-prone position, he could see Miss Dempsey’s candlestick arc through the air, trailing a brief plume of flame like a falling star before winking into darkness.
From the black nothingness came a feminine cry of surprise and distress as Miss Dempsey landed with a thump flat on her rump on the drawing-room floor.
“Sorry,” mumbled the thief. His accent was pure Yorkshire. “Sorry. Sorry.”
Turnip groped for the edge of the window frame, banging his hand on the side of the window in the process.
The man in the room appeared to be having similar problems. There was a crashing noise as a small table went over, taking with it the intruder and several china knickknacks.
Turnip clawed away the curtain, shoving the window up high enough that he wouldn’t bang his head on the way through. He had just swung a foot up onto the ledge when a flurry of activity sounded in the hallway. The sound started low, the merest swish and rustle of fabric, like moths battering their wings against a window, and then gained in intensity, with hisses, whispers, and the slap of bare feet against the floor.
Like a cork exploding from a champagne bottle, someone else shot into the room.
“Don’t worry, Miss Dempsey! We’re here now!” cried an exuberant female voice.
Turnip froze, his foot propped at an uncomfortable angle on the window ledge.
“Each for each, that’s what we teach!” caroled another, calling out the school motto. Turnip knew that voice. He knew it far too well. “Ouch! That was my foot! Lizzy!”
“That wasn’t me, it was Agnes,” protested the first voice.
“Sorry,” said Agnes, in a small voice.
“Girls?” ventured Miss Dempsey, from somewhere on the floor. She sounded more than a little bit breathless. Turnip knew just how she felt.
“We’ve come to your rescue,” explained Sally. “We thought you might need us. Ouch!”
“Sorry,” said Lizzy, sounding anything but. “That was me this time. Well, it’s dark in here.”
“Does anyone see the villain?” demanded Sally. “There is a villain, isn’t there?”
The villain had very wisely decided to conduct his own exit. Turnip could hear a low scrabbling sound not far from the window, like someone crawling on his hands and knees.
“Quick!” exclaimed Sally. “He’s trying to escape!”
As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, Turnip could just vaguely make out his sister snatching up a notebook off the windowsill and rushing forward, wielding it like a club, only to go catapulting over the same table the intruder had knocked over before. The notebook spiraled through the air, spewing bits of paper, before landing thwack on the head of the burglar, who let out a loud curse.
“Oooh, there he goes!” squealed Lizzy, and blundered into Agnes, who reeled sideways and stepped on Sally, who was still on the floor in front of the table.
There was a flurry of feet and the sound of more crockery breaking and a good deal of gasping and stumbling and stubbing of toes and “mind the table!” during which Miss Dempsey made an attempt to call the group to order, Sally was stepped on again as she was trying to get up, Lizzy Reid tripped over the hem of her own robe, Sally and Lizzy banged heads, and Agnes exclaimed, in tones of wonder, “I think I’ve got him!”
“Quick, quick, tie him up,” urged Lizzy, jiggling up and down in place rather than risking the scattered furniture.
“Use my sash! Here!” Sally charged forward, a long strip of fabric dangling from her hand, and promptly tripped over the exact same table. Her disembodied voice rose eerily from the floor. “Who left that there?”
“Not me,” said Agnes quickly.
Taking advantage of her inattention, the intruder wrenched himself free from Agnes’s grasp, making a dash for the window.
“Not so fast!” yelled Lizzy, and flung herself chest-first at the intruder. He went down hard, landing with a gasp on the floor, Lizzy on top of him.
Turnip winced in sympathy. That had sounded jolly painful.
“You got him! You got him!” exclaimed Turnip’s sister, jumping up and down like a little girl on Christmas morning.
Lizzy planted her bottom firmly on the intruder’s back. “He’s not going anywhere,” she said smugly.
“Girls!” exclaimed Miss Dempsey, trying belatedly to exert some control over the situation. “Don’t—”
Lizzy gave a little bounce and the intruder made a sound like a dying accordion a
s all the air rushed out of his lungs.
“—squash him.”
“Sorry, Miss Dempsey,” said Sally. “Who has the candle?”
“I do,” pronounced a new voice.
Light washed over the room. It glinted off shards of broken porcelain, pooled in the folds of white linen nightdresses, limned the sides of fallen furniture, and blared like twin beacons off the spectacles of the woman holding the candle.
Miss Climpson stepped into the room, the starched ruffles of her dressing gown rustling stiffly as she moved. Her graying brown hair was confined beneath a nightcap of truly impressive proportions. From his vantage point on the far side of the window, it reminded Turnip of a large muffin. A decidedly distressed muffin.
Furniture and girls in white nightdresses littered the room, none of it where it ought to be. Bits of white porcelain were scattered across the blue carpet from what had once been a particularly ugly china cupid. A Meissen shepherdess lay headless in the hearth. Sally, still lying where she had landed, sprawled on the floor in front of an overturned table, her nightcap squashed to one side and her braid over one shoulder. Lizzy Reid was sitting proudly on the back of some poor sod while Agnes Wooliston attempted to locate his hands so she could string a pink-edged sash around them.
Lizzy looked decidedly pleased with herself. It was impossible to discern how the intruder looked. His face was pressed into the ground, from which emerged, from time to time, the odd moaning noise.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” Miss Climpson murmured, surveying the tattered remnants of her domain. “Oh dear. Miss Dempsey?”
Unlike the girls, Miss Dempsey was still fully dressed, but her hair had burst its pins, unraveling down her back in a burst of congealed sunshine. It looked, somehow, more dramatic against the demure gray of her day dress than it would have had she been in a nightdress like the others. Turnip had never seen her hair down before; it had always been ruthlessly coiled away, stuck about with pins, with a bonnet squashed down on top of it for good measure. He had known it was blond, but he would never have imagined it would be quite so exuberant.
The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas Page 10