The Mischief of the Mistletoe

by Lauren Willig

  The party in front of them turned around a corner, momentarily obscured from view. Lowering his voice, Turnip said, “No matter what Sally and her peculiar friends said, I would lay money that that pudding was someone’s private affaire. Shouldn’t wonder if one of the girls from the school was trying to sneak out to meet someone she shouldn’t.”

  “Like Catherine Carruthers?” said Miss Dempsey.

  “Exactly like Catherine Carruthers,” agreed Turnip. Over by the musicians, Mlle de Fayette was engaged in earnest conversation with Signor Marconi, who seemed to be disclaiming any knowledge of the errant schoolgirl. “Might even be Catherine Carruthers. Can’t imagine a grown man writing a message on pudding, but it’s just the harebrained sort of thing one of Sally’s friends would do. According to Sal, that sort of thing goes on rather a lot.”

  “I agree with you in theory,” said Miss Dempsey, “but doesn’t Farley Castle strike you as rather a long way to go for . . . um . . .”

  “A spot of dalliance?” Turnip provided helpfully.

  “Yes. That.” Miss Dempsey’s cheeks went pink. “The Sydney Gardens are right across the way from the school. Wouldn’t that be a more logical place for young lovers to meet?”

  “They’re not the most logical of breeds, young lovers.” He might not be much for book learning, but young love was something on which Turnip could expatiate with absolute authority. There had been that milkmaid the summer he was thirteen. . . . The scent of straw and fresh milk still made him vaguely nostalgic. “Swept away by passion and all that, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know.” The words came out like gunshots, cracking in the cold winter air. Flushing, she added, in more normal tones, “But I have read about such things. They generally seem to end badly.”

  “Only some of them. There are happy endings, too.”

  “But how do you know which it’s going to be? How do you know when to sweep and when not to sweep? Or be swept, I suppose.”

  Turnip grinned. “Always preferred the sweeping myself.” She still seemed to be waiting for an answer, so he said, “Never thought about it that much. Happy endings, I mean. A chap’s bound to have one eventually. Hunker down on the old family estate, beget some children, scoff down toast and marmalade at the breakfast table, all that sort of thing.”

  Miss Dempsey looked up at him curiously. “Is that your happy ending? Toast and marmalade?”

  “With the odd bit of raspberry jam. What about you, Miss Dempsey? If you could have a happy ending, what would it be?”

  “Me?”

  “You’re the only you I see. Would you choose princes in Spain and jeweled castles? Or was it castles in Spain and jeweled princes?” Turnip couldn’t remember.

  Miss Dempsey scuffed the toe of her boot against the frost-blasted grass. “I should think jeweled castles would be drafty. And I don’t speak any Spanish.”

  “Then what would you like?” Turnip asked curiously.

  She looked away, her bonnet brim hiding her face from view. Deuced annoying contraptions, bonnets.

  “To see the ruins,” she said lightly. “I’ve heard the chapel is very fine. I imagine Jane and the chevalier must be there already. We’ve dawdled.”

  Had they? It hadn’t felt like it. “I rather enjoyed the dawdling,” Turnip said honestly.

  She was a good chap, Miss Dempsey. Easy on the eyes and the ears. She didn’t simper or giggle or slap his arm or say, “Oh, Reggie!” or “Oh, Turnip!” or his least favorite, “Oh, Mr. Fitzhugh!” It made a nice change, talking with someone who actually, well, talked to him. No head-shaking, no eye-rolling, no fluttering her lashes and asking coyly after his bank balance.

  And he hadn’t forgotten the way she had defended him to Lady Vaughn. Not one bit.

  “I’m deuced glad I knocked into you yesterday,” he blurted out. “I mean, not that I knocked you over—shouldn’t be glad of that—but that we bumped into one another.”

  Miss Dempsey looked at him in surprise.

  “Thank you. That’s very kind of you.” The corners of her lips twitched. “I’m very glad you bumped into me too. Although I must admit I wasn’t quite so enthusiastic about it at the time.”

  “A simple hello would have sufficed, eh?” Turnip grinned back at her, swept up on a wave of good fellowship. “I’ll remember that for next time. And I am sorry I forgot your name. Deuced sorry.”

  There it was again, that downward tilt of the bonnet, as though she were trying to erase her own presence. Turnip was tempted to take the edge of the brim and peel it back.

  “It was more than understandable. We occupied different parts of the ballroom.”

  “Not anymore,” said Turnip with feeling. “Next time we see a ballroom, we’ll be on the same side of it. Or maybe the middle. The best place for dancing, the middle of the room. Shouldn’t like to stand up on the sides. People give one odd looks. So we’d best stand up in the middle. Safest that way.”

  Miss Dempsey blinked up at him. “Are you asking me to dance?”

  “Why, yes. I suppose I am. Not at the moment, of course. But I shall hold you to it the next time we encounter a ballroom. And a band. Bally hard to dance without music, although I suppose one could hum if one had to.”

  “Or beat time with a stick?” suggested Miss Dempsey.

  Turnip liked the way she thought. “Might be a bit dangerous, that, especially in a close-packed ballroom. Wouldn’t want one of the dowagers to think you were challenging her to a duel. That Dowager Duchess of Dovedale has a nasty way with a cane. You’d be doing me a favor if you stood up with me. Shielding me from the cranky old dowagers and whatnot.”

  “Oh, so I’d be the one hit in the ankles, not you?” Miss Dempsey said, smiling. He liked to see her smile.

  Through the open windows, they could hear the crunch of dry grass as the others prowled around outside, exploring the remains of the old chapel garden. Inside, the chapel was dark and cool, with bits of old armor hanging from the walls.

  “You can fight the dowager off with those,” said Turnip, nodding at an old broadsword hanging from the wall.

  “Mmm,” said Miss Dempsey, craning her neck to stare at the remnants of a painting that had once adorned the chantry ceiling. She pointed up at the shadowy outlines. “Who do you think those are? They must be saints of some sort. The Apostles, maybe?”

  They just looked like blobs to Turnip, but then, he had never been much of one for art.

  “Most likely,” he said amiably, and took her elbow to keep her from tripping over an old slab marking the top of a tomb as they ambled together into the chantry that abutted the chapel.

  A large white marble tomb lay in the middle, looking, Turnip thought, incongruously like a bed. Sprawled across it were the effigies of a gentleman in full armor and a lady in a flowing robe, her feet incongruously propped on a small lion.

  “Shouldn’t like to wake them,” he said, nodding at the effigies. At least, that was what he meant to say. The last word came out as a sort of strangled noise.

  “Pardon?” Miss Dempsey looked down from the ceiling, blinking.

  Turnip jabbed a finger in the direction of the raised tomb. “Look,” he said. “Look.”

  An incongruous splotch of color showed against the white stone. In the marble hands of the effigy lay a Christmas pudding tied with bright crimson ribbons.

  Chapter 8

  Good heavens,” said Arabella. “What is it doing here? Who on earth is going about dropping puddings all over the place?”

  There was something a little macabre about it, the gaily wrapped Christmas pudding so purposefully perched in the cold, marble hands of the effigy. Cold marble hands, cold marble lips, and beneath it all, the bones of the woman who had been, eaten bare by worms and slow time.

  It might be decorative, but it was still a grave.

  Arabella shivered, and not from the cold. “Is it just me, or do you find this a little . . . incongruous?”

  Mr. Fitzhugh tilted his head, taking in
the scene from another angle. “Not so odd as all that, when you think of it. We leave flowers on graves, so why not a pudding?”

  “I doubt this one was intended for . . . well, whatever her name is.”

  “Lady Margaret Hungerford,” Mr. Fitzhugh provided promptly.

  Arabella looked at the tomb and then back at Mr. Fitzhugh. There was no inscription, at least none readily apparent from where they were standing.

  Mr. Fitzhugh developed a deep interest in the folds of his cravat. “I read up a bit before we came,” he mumbled. “Thought you and Miss Austen might want to know. Let’s take a look at the pudding, shall we?”

  “Someone has very odd ideas about billet doux,” she managed to say, with a suitable approximation of sangfroid, as Mr. Fitzhugh leaned over the pudding.

  Mr. Fitzhugh grinned up at her. “If you’re going to have sweet letters, why not put them in a sweet meat?”

  “Because it’s rather sticky?” ventured Arabella. She looked over her shoulder, very much hoping that no one else would take it upon themselves to visit the chapel just now. She could just picture the expression on Jane’s face when she entered to find the two of them avidly dissecting a Christmas pudding in search of secret messages.

  Arabella grimaced at herself. If there was anything worse than being caught in an assignation, it was being caught in one that wasn’t about assignating.

  “The ribbons are the same shade as the last one,” Mr. Fitzhugh was saying, leaning in for a better look. “And there’s definitely writing on it—whoever it was wrote on the ribbons this time. Guess she didn’t like the pudding goo mucking up her message.”

  “So we assume it is a she?”

  Going back to his examination of the pudding, Mr. Fitzhugh said, with great authority, “Looks like a woman’s handwriting to me.”

  Did he see a wide range of women’s handwriting?

  Arabella strained to see over his shoulder. “What does it say?”

  Her shoulder bumped against his. There was no padding there. She could feel the muscles flex beneath his tightly fitted coat as he leaned forward to flip over a ribbon. Arabella edged a little closer. He was so nicely warm, and she was cold even in her long pelisse.

  Mr. Fitzhugh squinted at the minuscule writing that nearly blended with the fabric. “Whoever it was wrote in French again. Il faut que . . .”

  It is necessary that . . . Arabella tentatively tapped him on the arm. “Il faut que what?”

  His breath steamed in the air as he peered at the ribbon. “Something about a deal. It is necessary that the deal be struck at once. The authorities . . .”

  Arabella leaned over his shoulder, intrigued despite herself. “Which authorities?”

  Mr. Fitzhugh shook his head in frustration. “The writing’s gone blurry. Something suspicieux.” He scrolled along the slippery length of the ribbon. “The authorities are suspicious—”

  “And this,” announced a faintly foreign voice, “is Saint Anne’s Chantry.”

  Arabella’s head jerked up like a puppet on a string. Her eyes met Mr. Fitzhugh’s. In unspoken accord, they spun around, blocking the pudding with their backs.

  Arabella banged into Mr. Fitzhugh’s side. Her elbow connected with a rib.

  Mr. Fitzhugh smiled manfully and gasped out, “Cheval—um-er! Enjoying the ruins, eh, what?”

  “Not nearly so much as you,” commented the chevalier blandly, amusement dancing in his hazel eyes. “You seem to have got ahead of me, Fitzhugh.”

  Arabella hastily righted her bonnet. “Fascinating chapel, isn’t it?” she said brightly, her voice a full octave above its normal range. “So many funeral monuments!”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Jane, wrinkling her brows at her. “One does enjoy a good funeral monument. Always amusing to be reminded of one’s own mortality.”

  “Memento mori and all that!” contributed Mr. Fitzhugh, resting his elbows on Sir Edward Hungerford’s marble arm in an attempt to block any view of the pudding.

  “Are these all funeral monuments?” Jane asked, looking around curiously.

  “Yes, indeed.” The chevalier must have been the sort of boy who put frogs in people’s beds. His eyes were bright with mischief. “Each one a marker of the mortal remains of your not-so-distant ancestors.”

  “Well, then,” said Mr. Fitzhugh heartily, leaning so far back that he was practically lying across Sir Edward Hungerford’s lap. “No point in dwelling here among the dead. Shall we go back to the picnic?”

  The chevalier showed no sign of moving. “Have you no interest in the fate of your ancestors, Mr. Fitzhugh? Look at this plaque. It dates to sixteen forty-eight. That was during your civil war, was it not?”

  “Don’t know about you,” said Mr. Fitzhugh loudly, “but there’s a pie with my name on it out there.”

  “It was not a good era for heads, your civil war,” said the chevalier.

  “Civil wars seldom are,” agreed Jane.

  “All these chaps seem to have their heads on straight. At least the ones on the walls,” said Mr. Fitzhugh in an attempt to redirect the attention of the chevalier. Arabella could feel him shift on his feet as he surreptitiously stretched out his arm, groping for the pudding.

  “Well, they would, wouldn’t they?” said the chevalier, raising an eyebrow at Mr. Fitzhugh. Mr. Fitzhugh froze. Arabella was reminded of a children’s game, one called statues, where the players could only move when the primary actor’s back was turned. “One wouldn’t want to be preserved for posterity without one’s most identifiable feature. Like the Duke of Monmouth.”

  “The duke of who?” asked Jane innocently.

  Arabella gave her a hard look. Jane had written her own, rather mocking, history of Britain. She knew very well who the Duke of Monmouth was. But she would have her fun.

  To Arabella’s surprise, it was Mr. Fitzhugh who answered. “Duke of Monmouth. He was a, um, er, child of Charles II.” He tactfully omitted the word bastard. “Got his head lopped off for treason.”

  “But they didn’t do it right,” contributed the chevalier, in thrilling tones. “It took five blows of the ax to sever Monmouth’s head. And that—”

  Mr. Fitzhugh looked anxiously at the ladies. “Don’t know if—,” he began.

  “Is when they remembered that they had forgotten to paint his portrait,” the chevalier finished innocently.

  “Oh,” said Mr. Fitzhugh. “Right.”

  “You can see how that would be a problem,” said the Chevalier.

  “History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in,” pronounced Jane. “I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me.”

  “How so?” asked the chevalier. Arabella wondered if he suspected that Jane was bamming him.

  Jane waved a hand. “The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all. It is very tiresome.”

  “That sounds like something out of a book,” said the chevalier. “Not Dr. Johnson, surely?”

  Jane was at her most demure. “No, although no doubt someday someone will lay claim to it on his behalf. I have recently been informed with great authority that Dr. Johnson was the author of Camilla.”

  “Nonsense,” said the chevalier blandly. “I have it on even better authority that both Camilla and Evelina were the works of Voltaire. Operating under a pseudonym, of course.”

  “Of course,” agreed Jane. “And I’m quite sure that the collected works of Mrs. Radcliffe were all written by Monsieur Rousseau. In his spare time. I think I should like some of that pie you mentioned, Mr. Fitzhugh. If you would escort me?”

  “I should like nothing better,” Mr. Fitzhugh said gallantly, casting Arabella an anguished glance.

  It didn’t take terribly much intuition to interpret. The moment he moved, the pudding would be exposed to view.

  Mr. Fitzhugh babbled on, playing for time. “Hope it’s a good kind of pie. Not that there are
bad kinds of pie. Amazing thing, the pie! Sheer genius, in pastry form. You can take any type of food and wrap it in dough. Happy consumption and easy transportation, all in one. Doesn’t get much better than that.”

  His fingers glanced off the side of the pudding, sending it rocking on its precarious marble perch. Gathering speed as it went, the pudding went rolling slowly backwards over the side of the monument to fall with a splat on the other side.

  “What was that?”

  “My reticule. I dropped my reticule,” said Arabella, diving towards the ground before they could see that her reticule was still dangling from her wrist.

  From this vantage point, Mr. Fitzhugh’s boots were very shiny. She could see her own reflection in them.

  “You all right down there?” asked Mr. Fitzhugh.

  “Yes! Fine! Perfectly all right!”

  Arabella made a show of groping around on the floor, scrabbling at the ground with her hands, before popping back up with her reticule in hand. She waved it around a few times so everyone could see that it was, indeed, a reticule.

  “These strings are such a bother. I’ve nearly lost it at least three times today. Shall we? Chevalier?”

  She swept forward, bearing the Frenchman along with her. Glancing over her shoulder, she could see Mr. Fitzhugh mime his approval with a little happy dance, which he brought to an abrupt halt as Jane turned to him.

  “Are you joining us, Mr. Fitzhugh?”

  “I say!” Mr. Fitzhugh made a show of clapping his hand to his head. “Can’t think how I came to be so clumsy. Dropped a watch fob, don’t you know. Do go on without me. Shan’t be a moment.”

  “Such a rash of falling objects,” commented the chevalier.

  He led Arabella out into the sunlight, directing her unerringly towards the smell of food and the sound of lute strings being tortured.

  “Did you know,” said the chevalier conversationally, “that for a time it was rumored that Mr. Fitzhugh was the spy known as the Pink Carnation?”

  “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Arabella.

  On the other hand, it might take a very clever man to play that much of a fool. But could anyone sustain that kind of act for that long?