The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas (30 page)

Arabella raised her eyebrows in polite inquiry, but said nothing.

Her silence seemed to fluster Captain Musgrave. He clasped his hands behind his back, puffing out his chest. “This nonsense about teaching at a school, there's no need for that, you know.”

“I like it there.” She realized as she said it that it was true. She liked the bustle of it and the feeling of belonging. She liked the odd democracy of girls, all sharing the same meals and the same classes. She liked not having to worry about what she said or what she wore or about having to be grateful.

Captain Musgrave made no attempt to disguise his disbelief. “There's no need to put a good face on it. You can come back, you know. We miss you.”

Once upon a time, those words from his lips would have set her hands tingling and her heart fluttering. She would have gone hot and cold and thrilled at the memory of them for days to come.

Now they left her with only one of those sensations: cold. She felt entirely cold, detached, as if she were a third party watching the conversation, unrelated to either of the participants.

“Is that the royal We?” she said coolly.

Captain Musgrave blinked. That hadn't been in her script. “I mean, your aunt and I. Both of us.”

“How sweet.” If her aunt wanted her back, she could tell her so herself. Captain Musgrave might be her aunt's husband, but he wasn't her uncle. On an impulse, Arabella said, “You should ask Margaret for the season.”

“Margaret?”

“My next sister. She would be very glad to have the time in town. I believe she and my aunt would get along famously.” And they would, Arabella realized. Aunt Osborne would adore Margaret. How ironic to think that she'd had the wrong sister all along. And even if Margaret chose not to come to town, at least it would be her choice. She would have the chance. “Ask her. You'll see.”

“I'm sure Margaret is lovely.” Brushing extraneous sisters aside, Captain Musgrave hastily returned to his prepared program. “But it's you I'm concerned about.”

“How kind,” said Arabella.

Musgrave frowned. He wasn't used to interruptions, at least not from her. That, Arabella realized, must be why he wanted her back so badly. He missed the audience, and the adoration.

“You do realize that our home is still your home. My marriage changes nothing.”

Arabella smiled brightly at him. “Except that now I have an uncle.”

He was even starting to look like one. A few more years and that paunch would be coming along nicely.

“Arabella . . .” Captain Musgrave took a step forward, oozing earnestness and bay rum cologne. “I hope you never thought . . .”

Oh no.

Arabella hitched her aunt's shawl up over her arm. “As a friend of mine likes to say,” she said briskly, “I make it a practice to think as little as possible.”

“Friend?” Captain Musgrave was clearly put out at being interrupted mid-scene. “You don't mean that Fitzhugh character?”

The way he said it put Arabella's teeth on edge. She forced herself to say pleasantly, “Yes. I do.”

Captain Musgrave made an incredulous face. “I'm surprised to hear you call him friend. Have you heard what people say about him?”

“I've heard what people say about you,” said Arabella.

She didn't need to elaborate. Any man who married a woman more than twice his age had to have a good idea of what the rumors were.

Captain Musgrave reddened. “The man's a buffoon!”

Arabella thought of Turnip's many kindnesses and her lips went tight. “The man is a gentleman. In the truest sense of the word.”

Captain Musgrave made a very ungentlemanly snorting sound. “With that income, a chimpanzee could be a gentleman.”

“Are you volunteering for the attempt?” Arabella didn't wait for him to figure out how he had just been insulted. She swept on, buoyed by a cold anger that prickled like ice. “It's nothing to do with income or properties or anything that can be measured in shillings and pence. It's about character. I am sure you're familiar with the concept.”

Captain Musgrave's nose twitched, as though he smelled something unpleasant. “Watch yourself, my dear. From the way you say it, one would almost think you were in love.”

“In love? Me?” The idea was absurd. “Me? I—no. No.”

Arabella felt like an hourglass that had just been flipped over. Everything she thought she had known looked different viewed the other way around. Time ran backwards, through Miss Climpson's parlor, her bedroom, Farley Castle, the street outside the school, Turnip grinning, frowning, picking her up off the ground.

Dizzy and disoriented, she shook her head and repeated the one word she seemed capable of remembering, “No. It's . . . no.”

Captain Musgrave folded his arms across his chest, eyeing Arabella narrowly. “Everyone says he's planning to marry that Deveraux girl.”

Something twisted in Arabella's chest. The last of the sands shifted down, leaving the bulb empty.

“If he does,” Arabella said calmly, “I will be the first to wish him happy. He deserves to be happy.”

She looked at the man she had once thought to marry. The facile charm that had once dazzled her was still there, but it had begun to peel away at the edges, like an ill-fitting mask. It was marred by the discontented droop of his mouth, by the way his eyes narrowed when she failed to play her proper part in the drama he had scripted for them.

Musgrave might have attained his heart's desire, but he would never be happy. And she, Arabella realized, would never have been happy with him. He had never wanted her for herself, only for the inheritance he thought she would provide.

“If you will be so kind as to excuse me, I must bring my aunt her wrap.”

She didn't wait for him to reply. She turned on her heel and walked away without looking back. She realized her hands were shaking beneath the silk of the shawl. She drew a deep breath into her lungs. What a loathsome, venal little man. And how stupidly blind she had been.

“Oh, Miss—er. Hello.” Lord Henry raised a hand. He was walking with a pack of the other guests in the direction of the great doors that opened onto the gardens. “We were wondering where you had got to.”

Arabella sincerely doubted it, but she smiled politely, wanting nothing more than to be in the privacy of her own room, to pace and think and sort through everything that had just happened.

“We were just about to play blind man's buff in the gardens,” drawled Lord Frederick Staines. “If you'd like to join us.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” lied Arabella. She held up the silky fall of shawl, which she had managed to twist and crush into something resembling a rope. “I just need to bring this to my aunt. Excuse me.”

“Here. Let me.” Darius Danforth plucked the shawl from her hands, passing it over to a footman. “Give this to Lady Osborne.”

“Problem solved,” said Martin Frobisher, and giggled. From the scent of his breath, he had already been hitting the claret decanter. He pushed at the glass doors just as one of the omnipresent footmen swung them open, sending him staggering sideways down the shallow flight of steps.

“Since Miss Dempsey was late,” drawled Lieutenant Danforth, “she must be the hoodsman.”

“I am quite happy to cede the honor to someone else,” said Arabella quickly.

She hated blind man's buff. It wasn't so bad being on the hiding end, but her whole spirit revolted at the helpless humiliation of staggering about to giggles and whispers, knowing that the others could all see you, but you couldn't see them. She preferred to be the observer, not the observed.

“Oh, no,” said Lieutenant Danforth smoothly. “I wouldn't hear of it.”

He exchanged a look with Lord Henry, and Arabella suspected them of having a private joke at her expense. A wager of some sort, no doubt. They had already wagered on how many times Turnip Fitzhugh would walk into the same sprig of mistletoe and whether Penelope Deveraux would be caught in a compromising position, and, if so, with whom.

Arabella didn't like to think what they might wager about her. Nothing salacious, to be sure, but something petty and cruel, like how many times she would fall down while blind and if her petticoats would show when she did so.

“Here,” said Lord Frederick, sauntering over to join his friends, “is your hood.”

It was a wide strip of purple satin, entirely opaque.

He reached across her face to draw the fabric over her eyes, the red stone of his ring flashing in the winter sunlight. He yanked the fabric tight, tying it in a double knot that was going to take a good deal of doing to undo.

Cold bit through her dress and the gravel of the garden path was gritty through the thin soles of her slippers.

Arabella took a deep breath, raising her hands to tentatively touch the sides of the cloth. People did this for fun?

“No cheating,” drawled Lieutenant Danforth. He was a fine one to talk. Hadn't he been expelled from Brook's for cheating at cards?

“All right!” called out Arabella, trying to look as though she were enjoying herself. “Is everyone ready?”

“Yes,” shouted back Martin Frobisher, “but are you?”

There was a chorus of hoarse guffaws, oddly distorted through the material of the hood. Arabella twisted this way and that, knowing how a fox felt as the hounds converged on it, barking. Only she was supposed to be the predator and they the prey. Wasn't she? She had a very bad feeling about this.

Hands grabbed her and spun her around in clumsy circles, again and again, as her slippers crunched on the gravel and her head swam with the motion. “Around, around, around,” someone was chanting, and one of them said, “Dizzy yet?”

“Very,” Arabella gasped, and they let her go so abruptly that she stumbled into the boxwood. The needlelike foliage scraped her fingers, but it broke her fall.

“Ready, steady, here I come!” she called.

She could hear the shuffle of feet against the gravel, the hissing sound of whispers and muffled laughter coming from all around her as her quarry scattered.

Arabella groped her way forward, hitting another hedge. They weren't supposed to hide behind things, were they? She generally avoided the game, but she was fairly sure it wasn't considered sporting to remove oneself entirely.

There was a slithering noise as someone trod gently on the pebbles of the path behind her. Arabella blundered towards the noise.

Her fingers grazed fabric. Thank goodness. “Got you!” she called gaily.

“No.” A hand clamped down on her forearm, swinging her around. Her back was pressed to someone's chest, her arms pinned behind her. “I've got
you
.”

She could feel herself being pulled. Gravel skittered beneath her slippers and boxwood plucked at the fabric of her dress.

“That's not the way the game works,” she protested, struggling against his grip. “Who is this?”

Her captor yanked her back against him, hard, so hard that she could feel the breath knocked out of her.

“We're playing my game now,” he said harshly. She could feel his breath, hot even through the silk of the hood, heavy and rasping. Something sharp pricked against her neck.

Fear trickled down Arabella's spine, colder than the frost on the statues. She didn't need to see it to know that this was no paper scimitar this time. She could feel the prick of steel, real steel this time, against her jaw.

“Where is it?” he hissed. “Where is the list?”

C
are to place a wager, Fitzhugh?”

Turnip wandered into the masculine province of the red salon, which Henry Innes's lot appeared to have taken over as their personal playground. Henry Innes was sprawled by the hearth, the claret decanter beside him on the rug, along with a plate of cheese and cold meats. Freddy Staines was dicing with Darius Danforth at a table in the corner, while Sir Francis Medmenham lounged with one elbow on the mantel, where the flames could cast a suitably diabolical glow over his attire.

Martin Frobisher had possession of the wager book. He flapped it in Turnip's general direction. “Last chance to place a bet.”

“On what?” asked Turnip, without interest.

They had already tried to get him to participate in a wager to see how many times he could hop around the long gallery with a glass of port balanced on his head. Turnip had said no. He didn't particularly like port.

Frobisher smirked. “It was quite the prank, if I do say so myself. Wish I could take credit, but it was Danforth's idea—or maybe Miss Ponsonby's.”