The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas (8 page)

Margaret hastily masked her stricken expression with one of extreme scorn. “Farley Castle,” she said dismissively, jabbing her needle into the fabric on her embroidery frame. “It's a poky old place.”

“How would you know?” demanded Lavinia tactlessly. “You've never been. Oh, I wish I were old enough to go!”

“I wish I could take you all,” said Arabella guiltily. “But there is only room for one more in the phaeton.”

“I wouldn't want to go,” said Margaret. “It's too cold for an excursion. I can't think what your Mr. Fitzhugh was thinking to suggest such a thing in this weather.”

Arabella caught Cassandra and Jane exchanging glances with one another over her head.

“Would anyone like more tea?” asked Cassandra.

T
he heroine of
my
story,” said Jane determinedly, “shall confine herself only to indoor events.” She rubbed enthusiastically at her nose, which had turned the color of holly berries.

“Preferably in summer,” agreed Arabella, tripping over a brick as she tried to maneuver her frozen limbs out of the phaeton. It had originally been a hot brick, but like everything else in the carriage it had cooled down considerably over the course of the ride. Farley Castle was a good deal farther than Mr. Fitzhugh had optimistically prophesied.

“Devilish sorry,” said Mr. Fitzhugh humbly, handing her down to the ground with diligent care. “Hoped we'd make better time than that.”

“There, there,” said Jane, shedding blankets as she wiggled her way off the seat. “You certainly couldn't have anticipated the cows.”

Arabella choked on a laugh at the memory. A troupe of the creatures, all in malicious conspiracy, had strayed into the road. Deciding they liked it, they had elected to stay there, despite considerable urging, threats, and cajolery. Mr. Fitzhugh had put Drury Lane to shame in his dramatic attempts to persuade the cows to take their leisure elsewhere. The sight of him trying to reason with a large red-and-brown beast, who responded to all his entreaties with a bored “moo,” had been one of the highlights of what had been a surprisingly entertaining trip.

Mr. Fitzhugh had spared no effort or expense for their comfort. There had been hot bricks, warm broth in a flask, blankets edged in fur, pastries that smeared sugar across their gloves, and hot chocolate that had solidified into a solid mass before they had crossed into the countryside. Jane, for all her teasing about low-hanging fruit, had taken to Mr. Fitzhugh immediately.

All in all, the ride had passed in a cheerful aura of cold chocolate, squished pastries, and general mirth. Mr. Fitzhugh had regaled them with tales of his sister, while Jane contributed anecdotes from Steventon. The one topic they hadn't broached was puddings.

Puddings and her aunt's marriage.

With the castle before them, Arabella found herself suddenly possessed of a craven wish that the journey had been longer.

“Bingley,” Jane murmured to Arabella, as Mr. Fitzhugh handed the reins to his groom. “Quite definitely a Bingley.”

“Shall he have a role in your new story?” Arabella asked.

“That,” said Jane, “depends on you.”

Arabella gave her a look and crossed over towards Mr. Fitzhugh. “We're here now, all in one piece. That's all that matters.”

Mr. Fitzhugh slapped his hands together. “Jolly good. Looks rather pleasant, don't it?”

Arabella wasn't sure “pleasant” was quite the adjective she would have used. Opulent, extravagant, whimsical . . . any of those would do. The picturesque ruins of Farley Castle had been turned into a medieval fantasyland for the jaded men and women of the
ton
. Within the ruined castle walls, coal-burning braziers warmed the air to a temperature endurable for picnicking. Fashionably dressed ladies and gentlemen quaffed steaming beverages from silver cups. Musicians in faux medieval livery had struck up their instruments. A man with a droopy mustache was crooning,
“Helas, madame, celle que j'aime tante,”
while his companions struck poses and the occasional chord on the lute. As they strummed, two footmen staggered past, weighted down by two huge pies.

“Mmm. Pie,” said Mr. Fitzhugh, looking longingly after them. “Meat in a pastry shell. One of the greatest inventions known to man.”

“I had always thought it was the wheel,” said Jane.

Mr. Fitzhugh looked meaningfully at Arabella, raising his eyebrows as far as they would go. “Might be an excellent place to find a spot of pudding.”

“We can always look,” she said, although she rather doubted they would find anything of the kind.

Mr. Fitzhugh raised his hand in an enthusiastic wave. “Look! There's Vaughn.”

The man in question, sleekly dressed in a well-tailored black coat, glanced over at the sound of his name. His eyes narrowed. It might just have been the glare of the sun, but Arabella doubted it.

“He doesn't look pleased to see us,” observed Jane in an undertone.

“Lord Vaughn never looks pleased to see anyone,” Arabella murmured back.

“That's just his way,” said Mr. Fitzhugh cheerfully. “Can't take it too to heart. If I had a penny for every time the chap has greeted me with,
Oh, it's you again. . . .”

“Yes?”

Mr. Fitzhugh waved a hand. “I'd have lots of pennies. Jolly useful things, pennies. Vaughn, old bean! Didn't think to see you out here!”

“The feeling is mutual,” said Lord Vaughn drily. “This party was by invitation only.”

“Got the invitation straight from the horse's mouth,” Mr. Fitzhugh protested indignantly. “Henry Innes told me to come. Saw him at Miss Climpson's yesterday, bringing parcels to his cousin.”

“How delightful,” said Lady Vaughn, in a voice that suggested it was anything but.

Arabella took a step back from the glare of Lady Vaughn's rubies. “We didn't mean to intrude upon your party.”

“Such a pity, then, that your intent didn't match your execution,” said Lady Vaughn, so smoothly that it took one a moment to notice the stiletto beneath the silk. “Miss . . .”

Arabella knew that the former Miss Alsworthy knew very well who she was. Aunt Osborne and Miss Alsworthy's mother had been cronies of sorts. They went shopping together, spurring each other on to ever more egregious purchases. But now that Miss Alsworthy was Lady Vaughn—and now that it was known that Arabella was no longer likely to be her aunt's heiress—Lady Vaughn couldn't be bothered to recall a mere Miss Dempsey.

“It's Dempsey,” Mr. Fitzhugh provided for her, looking sternly at Lady Vaughn. “Miss Dempsey. And her friend, Miss Austen.”

“Dempsey?” Lord Vaughn eyed her lazily through his quizzing glass. “Not Lady Osborne's ward?”

“Her niece,” Arabella corrected. Ward implied a status that Arabella no longer enjoyed.

The sun glinted off the serpent scrolled around Vaughn's quizzing glass. “Ah,” said Vaughn. “You must be here to see your aunt. How . . . touching.”

So they were here. For all her speculations, she hadn't really expected they would be.

Arabella felt her fingers go hot, then cold.

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Fitzhugh blithely, immune to nuance. “We're here to see the ruins.”

Lady Vaughn looked innocently up at her husband. “Isn't that what you said, Vaughn?”

Her meaning was impossible to mistake. Arabella squirmed, feeling uncomfortable for her aunt, for Jane, for herself. Aunt Osborne's marriage had made all the papers. The scandal sheets had reveled in the ridiculous spectacle of an aging woman marrying an ambitious young man. Arabella had, for the most part, been left out of it, but there had been one or two mentions made of dashed hopes and disinherited relations.

Just so long as no one ever realized exactly which sorts of hopes had been dashed.

“Farley Castle is accounted very picturesque,” Jane was saying, when a woman came hurrying out of the castle gates, nearly bumping into their party.

“I do beg your pardon—,” she began.

“I say!” Mr. Fitzhugh's face lit up with recognition. “Don't I know you? Met you at Miss Climpson's yesterday. You're the French mistress.”

“Mademoiselle de Fayette,” said the lady in a soft voice. “And you are Mr. Fitzhugh.”

“Miss Climpson's, did you say?” asked Jane, looking meaningfully at Arabella. The young woman, while prettily and warmly dressed, looked harried, her hair escaping in dark wisps from its pins, her bonnet askew.

“Mr. Fitzhugh's sister is a pupil at Miss Climpson's,” said Mlle de Fayette. “A most apt pupil too.”

She made one of those quick, shifting movements people make as they prepare to excuse themselves, but she was forestalled by Lady Vaughn.

“A Fitzhugh?” Lady Vaughn's laugh, sickly sweet as syrup and just as devoid of any genuine nourishment, grated on Arabella's nerves. “Apt?”

“I shouldn't be too hasty to condemn the entire garden on the basis of one vegetable, my sweet,” returned her husband blandly, as though the vegetable in question weren't standing right there. “One never knows where one might find the odd flower.”

Lady Vaughn tossed her glossy head, making the crimson plumes on her hat dance. “Why bother with root vegetables when there are roses to be had?”

Lord Vaughn regarded his wife from beneath half-closed lids. “Too humble for you?”

Lady Vaughn's gaze shifted to Mr. Fitzhugh's dangling watch fobs, all decorated with exaggerated enamel carnations. “Too tasteless.”

Arabella remembered the hot bricks and the cold chocolate and the solicitude with which Mr. Fitzhugh had tucked blanket after blanket around them in the carriage. When had Lady Vaughn, for all her vaunted good taste, ever performed a kind deed for anyone? Turnips might be plain, but they were certainly nourishing.

“Even humble fare has its advantages,” said Arabella defiantly.

“Yes, thirty thousand of them a year,” said Lady Vaughn with a knowing arch of her brows. “And all in gold.”

Arabella looked at Lady Vaughn, at her crimson-dyed feathers and watchful eyes. “Not everyone counts a man's worth in coins.”

Lord Vaughn lifted his quizzing glass. “Who said anything about a man? I spoke merely of cultivating one's garden.”

Arabella could feel Mr. Fitzhugh step closer to her, ranging himself protectively beside her. It was a sweet thought, even if misplaced. Lord Vaughn's weaponry was something other than physical.

The French mistress backed away, eager to be gone. “If you will excuse me . . .”

“Ah, Delphine!” Another man joined them, fashionably dressed, but without the ostentation of Mr. Fitzhugh's costume. His voice had a slight French lilt to it, although less so than Mlle de Fayette, whom he addressed in tones of familial intimacy. “Have you found your lost lamb yet? Sebastian, Lady Vaughn,” he added, with a nod to the others.

Mlle de Fayette subsided, with a worried look over her shoulder. “Mr. Fitzhugh, ladies. I do not believe you know my cousin, the Chevalier de la Tour d'Argent.”

The chevalier directed his smile at Arabella and Jane. “It is a mouthful, is it not? I am Argent to my friends. Nicolas to my very, very close friends.”

“And scamp, scapegrace, and limb of Satan to his relations,” said Mlle de Fayette. She did not seem to be entirely joking.

“All terms of endearment,” explained the chevalier complacently. “It is simply their way of saying ‘I love you.' ”

“Why not simply say it, then?” suggested Mr. Fitzhugh, with a tinge of asperity. “They could save a lot of bother that way.”

“But they would lose so much face,” the chevalier returned. “Ladies don't like to make their affections too generally known. Do they, Miss . . . ?”

“Dempsey,” Mr. Fitzhugh provided for her, folding his arms across his chest. “Miss Dempsey. And that is Miss Austen.”

Ignoring him, the chevalier continued to direct his smile at Arabella, carrying on as though Turnip had never spoken. “What do you say, Miss Dempsey? Have hearts gone out of fashion as ornaments on one's sleeve?”

Arabella glanced away. “I'm sure I couldn't say.”

Through the castle gate, she could see the fashionable set milling about. There was Lord Frederick Staines and Mr. Martin Frobisher, both tricked out in the latest of multi-caped coats; Percy Ponsonby and his sister; Lord Henry Innes, Lieutenant Darius Danforth, and a group of their cronies; others she recognized from her many years on the fringes of London's elite.

A dimple appeared in the chevalier's cheek. “Have you no affections, then, Miss Dempsey? Would you, as your poet says, sooner hear your dog bark at a crow than a man say he loves you?”