The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas (36 page)

They disappeared into the shadows, Penelope's slippers soundless, Lord Frederick's booted feet crunching on the gravel.

“Not good,” Turnip said. “Not good a'tall.”

“No.” He looked down to find Arabella watching him, all the humor that had animated her face a moment ago gone. She looked weary and more than a little bit unhappy. “I'm sorry,” she said, and the words seemed to cost her an effort.

“So am I,” agreed Turnip. Not that he should talk, having inveigled Arabella out onto the balcony, but there was a difference. He knew his intentions were honorable. Staines wouldn't know honorable if it bit him in the backside. Penelope might be a bit of a wild thing, but she was a good soul at heart. She deserved better. “Staines is a rotter.”

Stepping away from him, Arabella placed both hands on the flat surface of the balustrade, leaning her weight on her palms as she gazed out over the thickly planted shrubbery. “Perhaps if you said something?”

“Doubt old Pen would thank me for going jumping over the balcony and disturbing her fun.”

For that matter, he wasn't entirely thrilled with old Pen for having disrupted his. One minute they had been laughing with each other, a whisper away from a kiss, and now Arabella was as distant as the moon.

Turnip didn't understand it. He didn't understand it at all. Did she want him to go rescue Penelope? Was that it?

Arabella appeared to have developed a deep interest in the urn on the side of the balustrade. Not that it wasn't a perfectly nice urn, but it had the unfortunate effect of turning her face well out of his view.

“Did you ever think to declare yourself?” she asked the urn.

“Declare? Declare what?”

Arabella waved her hands helplessly. “Your feelings. For her.”

Feelings?

Turnip looked sharply at Arabella who was very pointedly not looking at him. “You didn't think that Penelope—? That I—?” It was too absurd to articulate. “By Gad, that's a good one.”

“I don't see how it's funny,” said Arabella stiffly. “Everyone keeps saying you mean to marry her.”

“Pen is—well, she's a chum.”

More than a chum if one counted those interludes on balconies, but Turnip deemed it wiser not to go into that. Penelope took something of a male approach to things like balconies, but Turnip didn't think Arabella would quite understand that.

“We've known each other since I was in dresses. But marry her?” Turnip shuddered dramatically. “She'd have me for breakfast.”

“With or without raspberry jam?” Arabella asked suspiciously.

“Without,” Turnip said with authority. “Pen is more a marmalade sort of girl. More tart than sweet, don't you know.”

“No, I wouldn't know,” said Arabella crankily. “But I do know that it's very cold out here.”

She pushed away from the balustrade, making as though to go to the door, but Turnip moved to block her. “You're jealous, aren't you?”

She blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

Hmm. Maybe he oughtn't to have said that aloud.

“She's not the flavor of jam I want,” he said hastily. “Never has been. Didn't mean to give anyone that idea, least of all you.”

Arabella hastily shook her head, not looking at him. “You don't need to explain yourself to me. Really.”

Turnip took her chin in his hand, raising her face to his. “Yes, I do. Wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't.” More important, he wouldn't be able to live with her. “Your good opinion matters to me. It matters a lot.”

He wasn't doing a very good job of this, was he? At least she had stopped trying to wiggle past him.

She bit her lip, as though unsure what to say. “Thank you. I value your good opinion too.”

They sounded like a couple of Oxford dons exchanging commendations. Bother, bother, bother. Next they would be shaking hands and saying things like “value and esteem,” which were about as passionate as a glass of warm milk.

Turnip planted his hands on the balustrade on either side of her, effectively boxing her in. “What I'm trying to say is—” What was he trying to say? “You don't have a handkerchief, do you?” he blurted out, playing for time.

Now he understood why chaps generally liked to have a ring about them when they proposed. Whipping it out bought a chap time to figure out what he was trying to say. The shinier the ring, the longer the reprieve.

Confused but game, Arabella fumbled at the side of her skirt, looking for a pocket that wasn't there.

Rolling her eyes, she laughed nervously. “You see how unfashionable I've become. We had pockets in our dresses at Miss—”

She broke off, her face frozen. Her mouth was slightly open and her eyes were fixed in a glazed sort of way on something just past Turnip's right shoulder. Turnip glanced back, but he didn't see anything other than the stone wall of the house. Not so much as a caterpillar.

“Arabella?” Turnip waved a hand in front of her face. “Hallo? All right there?”

Arabella grabbed his hand, face glowing brighter than all the candles in the ballroom. “Turnip! I've got it!”

Well, that was a relief. That would save him trying to explain it.

“If you mean my hand,” he said, giving hers a squeeze, “yes, you have. And while we're on that topic . . .”

“Turnip! Don't you see?” She gave a little hop, taking his hand along with her. She clapped her other hand to her face. “Oh, Lord, how stupid I've been! It's been here all along.”

Turnip didn't mind the clinging to his hand—he had rather hoped for that bit—but he was beginning to feel that he had lost the thread of the conversation.

“What has?” he asked cautiously.

Arabella tossed her head back, looking him straight in the eye. She crackled with excitement, like an explorer looking for the first time on a long-awaited shore.

“Don't you see? I
do
have it. The list! Turnip, I know where to find the list!”

T
urnip blinked down at her in confusion. “The list?”

Arabella belatedly realized that she was clinging to Turnip's hand. Blushing, she dropped it.

She covered her consternation by waving her hands about just a little too enthusiastically. She probably looked like she was about to take flight. “I can't believe I didn't think of it before. What an idiot I am!”

“I never thought you were an idiot.”

There was something about the way Turnip looked at her that made Arabella look away. “You may change your mind when I tell you where it is,” she said, only half-jokingly. “It was right under my nose the whole time, and I never knew it was there. Oh, I'm sorry. Were you about to say something?”

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.