The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas (33 page)

“And some boils?” Arabella hitched up her blanket, which was slipping down over her lap. “It won't work. Locks can be picked and walls can be scaled.”

“Not these walls,” said Turnip with confidence. “There isn't a trellis. I checked.”

Their eyes met and Arabella felt all the heat in the room go straight to her cheeks. “Well,” she said, in muffled tones, “that is reassuring.”

“I feel like I'm missing something,” murmured Lady Pinchingdale to her husband, not quite sotto voce.

“A trellis, apparently,” said Lord Pinchingdale. “But you raise an interesting point. As long as our villain thinks you have the list, he has an interest in following your movements.”

“Which means,” his wife finished for him, her eyes bright, “that we can follow him.”

“Oh no,” said Turnip, catching their drift. “Don't like it. Don't like it a'tall. Won't have Miss Dempsey being used as bait.”

“What I don't understand,” Arabella intervened, before he could start steaming at the ears, “is why this . . . person persists in believing that I have his list in the first place. Unlike all of you,” she added, looking from Lord Pinchingdale to his wife to, at very long last, Turnip, brooding by the mantelpiece, “I have nothing to do with spying or spies.”

“You mean you
had
nothing to do with them,” contributed Lady Pinchingdale wryly. “I felt much the same way.”

Turnip, who had been brooding into the flames, turned abruptly. “It's the notebook. It must have been in the notebook. Everyone saw Miss Climpson hand it to you.”

“Everyone being your sister, her friends, Miss Climpson, and Signor Marconi,” countered Arabella ticking them off on her fingers. “Somehow, I doubt that Sally has been augmenting her allowance by running an international spy ring.”

A slight grin tweaked one side of Turnip's lips. “Shouldn't put it past her,” he said fondly. “But you're forgetting someone. Signor Marconi. No man who wears false mustachios can be up to any good.”

“Words to live by,” murmured Lord Pinchingdale. “You are right in part. Signor Marconi isn't what he seems.”

“Ha!” said Turnip. “Thought I saw him lurking about the place. That third dragon from the left in Monday's mummer play . . .”

“Couldn't have been Marconi,” Pinchingdale interrupted him pointedly. “Marconi is, in fact, none other than Bert Marks of Tipton Downs, Yorkshire, and has never been farther abroad than Portsmouth.”

“Oh,” said Turnip. “How—?”

“He was Henrietta Selwick's voice teacher,” Lady Pinchingdale provided on her husband's behalf, snuggling down on the arm of his chair. “Apparently Italians do better as music teachers, just as Frenchwomen do better as dressmakers, so Mr. Marks became Signor Marconi. Lady Uppington had his background thoroughly vetted before allowing him into the house. He's a fraud, but not a traitor.”

“At least as far as we know,” Lord Pinchingdale qualified. “More honorable men have been known to turn traitor for the right sum. Marks—or Marconi—hasn't exactly shown himself to be of sterling character.”

“It needn't have been Marconi,” Turnip interjected. “What with the furniture flying and the porcelain breaking, anyone could have marched through that room and no one would have noticed. Half of Bath was climbing in and out the windows of the school that night.”

Arabella forbore to point out that he had been one of them. That would only bring up trellises again, and heaven only knew where that would lead them.

Lady Pinchingdale's round blue eyes were even rounder than usual. “What sort of school is this?”

“Not one to which we are sending our daughter,” said Lord Pinchingdale. “We seem to be straying from the point.”

“One gets to much more interesting places that way,” murmured Arabella. Who was it who had said that to her? Oh. The chevalier. That reminded her of Mlle de Fayette's visit earlier that night, and the flashes of lights in the garden that had set the whole bizarre series of events in train. “There was someone else in the garden that night, someone signaling with a lantern.”

“By Gad! That's it!” Turnip slapped a hand on the mantel so emphatically that a china vase tottered on its base. “The lantern and the notebook. The chap with the lantern must have come to collect the notebook. It was always on that windowsill.”

“It's true,” agreed Arabella from her nest of blankets. “I saw it there almost every time I was in the blue parlor. Sometimes it moved about from window to table, but no one ever claimed it.”

Turnip's blue eyes were bright with excitement. “Would have been an excellent way to pass on information. So commonplace that no one remarked on it. Deuced clever when you think about it.”

Arabella hated to destroy his pretty theory. “There's just one problem. The notebook went missing. I don't have it. If our villain was the one who looted my room, why is he still bothering me?”

Turnip lost some of his glow. “Oh,” he said. “Haven't worked that out yet.”

Lord Pinchingdale looked from one to the other. “The document that went missing would have been a single sheet of paper, closely written on both sides.”

Something snagged at Arabella's memory. Like flotsam in a river, it bobbed briefly to the surface before drifting away again.

“The paper might have been inside the notebook,” suggested Lady Pinchingdale practically, wiggling to get a more comfortable purchase on the edge of her husband's chair. “There's no better place to hide a piece of paper than among other pieces of paper.”

Lord Pinchingdale shifted to make room for her, sliding an arm around her waist to steady her. She leaned her head comfortably against his shoulder, in a gesture of such affection and trust that it made Arabella's throat hurt to look at it.

As Arabella watched, Lord Pinchingdale absently rubbed a finger along Lady Pinchingdale's arm, a movement too small to be officially called a caress, and yet intimate enough to make Arabella look away. It reminded her of the casual intimacy of Turnip's thumb stroking the side of her hand as they had sat together in the garden, her fingers twined with his.

Clasping her hands in her lap, Arabella hastily cleared her throat. “It would be an excellent way to get messages in and out of the school,” she babbled, not looking at anyone. “People were constantly in and out of that room, and no one would have remarked on the window being open. All you would have to do is reach through the window, extract the paper from between the covers, and exit by the garden gate again.”

She could see the tassels swinging on Turnip's boots as he paced excitedly back and forth in front of her chair. “The first pudding was by the window too, wasn't it? That's where Sal said she found it. On the windowsill.”

“Pudding?” Lady Pinchingdale said warily from the vicinity of her husband's shoulder.

“I'll explain later,” said her husband. He looked at her with concern. “Are you all right?”

Now that he asked, Arabella noticed that Lady Pinchingdale was looking very green.

“Um-hmm,” she said, her lips pinched very tightly together. “Go on. Please.” There was a faint sheen of sweat at her brow.

“All right.” He dragged his gaze reluctantly away from the top of his wife's head, looking from Turnip to Arabella. “In short, your villain might have been anyone at the school. We know Mr. Carruthers lost the paper while at Miss Climpson's. It might have been extracted from him by nearly anyone there. We have no idea who took the paper or for whom it was intended.”

“We just know that they want it back,” contributed Lady Pinchingdale. Her lips had gone very pale. Even her freckles seemed subdued.

Turnip looked seriously at his old school friend. “Do you think if they have it, they'll leave Miss Dempsey alone?”

Lord Pinchingdale raised one dark brow. “So one presumes.”

“Right,” said Turnip, squaring his shoulders. “Then we just have to give them what they want.”

“But I don't have it,” said Arabella, to her own knees.

“Don't you see?” Turnip's eyes were blazing with excitement. He looked like a man whose team had just beat Rugby at rugby. “We give them a false list! We change names and places about. We rout the spy, stymie Bonaparte, and keep those demmed knives from your throat!”

Lady Pinchingdale lifted her head briefly from her husband's shoulder. “That's brilliant.”

“Two problems,” said Lord Pinchingdale. Both his wife and his friend shot him wounded looks. He held up his free hand in a gesture of self-defense. “Don't shoot the messenger. I'm not disputing the desirability of the plan, simply the odds of executing it.”

“Care to translate that to English?” requested Turnip.

Lady Pinchingdale rolled her head over just enough to clear her mouth. “He thinks it can't be done,” she said, and then rolled her face back into his sleeve.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” said Pinchingdale affectionately to the top of her head. “Succinctly put. Our first problem is that we haven't seen the list. He has. He'll spot a fake.”

“Not until he has it in hand!” said Turnip hotly. “And by then we'll have pounced.”

He made a pouncing motion.

“Second,”
said Lord Pinchingdale, pointedly ignoring the pouncing, “we run up against our fundamental problem. It's almost tautological in nature.”

“English, Pinchingdale?” prompted Turnip.

“If we don't know who he is, how do we communicate with him?”

“Ha,” said Turnip, folding his arms across his chest. “I already thought of that. We leave him a pudding.”

The mention of pudding proved too much for Lady Pinchingdale. From the crook of her husband's arm, she made a slight gurgling noise.

“Will you excuse me, please?” she said faintly, and half stood, half slid off the side of the chair.

Face averted, she stumbled towards the door that connected sitting room and bedroom. What Arabella could make out of her face had gone greener than her green wool dress.

“Be right back,” she mumbled, fumbling at the doorknob. “Carry on without me.”

“She has morning sickness,” said Pinchingdale distractedly, his eyes following his wife. “And afternoon sickness and evening sickness. Excuse me for a moment.”

Pushing himself off his chair, he disappeared into the bedroom after her, leaving Arabella and Turnip momentarily unchaperoned.

Scooching down in her chair, Arabella looked at the gilded frame of the door, all but disguised by the paneling. “She reminds me of my mother. Not physically”—her mother had been tall and big-boned where Lady Pinchingdale was short and plump, fresh faced where Lady Pinchingdale was freckled, straight-haired where Lady Pinchingdale's was curly—“but in spirit.”

It was nearly impossible to remember that Lady Pinchingdale was sister to the terrifying Lady Vaughn, scourge of wallflowers everywhere.

During their ballroom days, she had often shared a patch of wall with the former Miss Letty Alsworthy, but they had never done more than exchange a smile and a nod. Arabella wondered why they had never spoken. She rather wished they had. She had been so busy trying to pretend that she wasn't there that she had missed the chance for a friend.

Arabella's teacup listed dangerously to one side. Turnip plucked it from her hand. Lifting it to his nose, he sniffed the contents. “Letty must have emptied half a decanter in here. We'll have to sober you up before tonight.” He hunkered down on his knees in front of her chair, looking up at her hopefully. “Unless you'd rather stay in your room?”

Arabella shook her head, making his features swim. “And miss the Epiphany Eve dance? I wouldn't think of it.”

Turnip sighed. “That's that, then.” Standing, he rested a hand on her shoulder, the only part of her showing above the blanket. “Won't leave your side for a minute. I'll keep you safe. I promise.”

For just a moment, Arabella leaned her cheek against his hand, letting herself savor the prospect of comfort and tenderness it offered.

Turnip's hand lingered on her arm, protectively covering the slit in her sleeve. Through the corner of her eye, she could see his face, perturbed, his brows drawn together over his nose. “Arabella, I—”

She knew what he was thinking. “Don't worry,” she said, allowing herself, very fleetingly, the luxury of touching his hand where it covered her arm. She could feel the muscles in his fingers contract at her touch. “I'm not in any danger. This is England, not
The Castle of Otranto.
It is silly. The whole thing. Messages being passed in puddings, paper swords—it's something out of farce, not tragedy.”

“I hope you're right.” Turnip's hand tightened protectively on her arm. “But I'm sticking by your side until we know for sure. Anyone who wants you will have to get through me first.”