The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas (29 page)

Turnip made a face at Penelope. “Might want to watch yourself there, old thing.”

Clasping her hands to her bosom, Penelope pivoted to face the dowager. “He cares! How sweet.”

Turnip peered past her, at the misrule reigning in the hall. Freddy Staines was passing the cup to Martin Frobisher; Lady Charlotte was diligently tying red velvet bows around sprigs of greenery; and someone had decided to practice sword dancing with axes instead of swords.

There was still no sign of Arabella. Instead, Turnip caught sight of Pinchingdale, who was making his shadowy way towards the stairs.

He had a few questions he wanted to ask Pinchingdale.

“Here.” Turnip shoved the mistletoe at Penelope. “You win. You take it.”

“No gumption,” decreed the dowager and sped him on his way with a well-placed jab of her cane.

Turnip careened into Pinchingdale. “Just the chap I wanted to see,” he said, seizing him by the arm and dragging him off into the next room. It was an anteroom, of the sort used for keeping unimportant people waiting until they were duly intimidated by the ducal decorating scheme. “How important is this list of yours?”

Pinchingdale rubbed his shoulder where Turnip had grabbed him and checked to make sure the door was closed. The walls of Girdings were thick enough to withstand a siege; they wouldn't be overheard. “Very.”

“Important enough for someone to tear up someone's room to get it?”

“I'd say that's the least of what people would be willing to do to get their hands on it. Why? What do you know?”

“I think,” said Turnip, choosing his words very carefully, “that Miss Dempsey might have had it. Or that someone might think she had it.”

“Miss Dempsey?”

“We've been through this before,” said Turnip irritably. “You know who she is.”

“I know I know who she is,” said Pinchingdale, and shook his head a little, as though to clear it. “What I want to know is what she would be doing with a highly sensitive government document.”

“She teaches at Miss Climpson's. There was—well, long story, but the short of it is that people were blundering about in the middle of the night and Miss Dempsey ended up with a notebook that wasn't hers. Someone tore her room up the next day. The notebook disappeared.”

Pinchingdale shook his head. “The document I'm talking about is a single sheet of paper, not a whole notebook. The two incidents are probably unrelated.”

“But what if they're not?”

“If they're not?” Pinchingdale looked grim. “Then your Miss Dempsey is in a great deal of danger.”

I
say,” said Turnip in wounded tones. “There's no need to go all melodramatic.”

“Well, you did seem to be fishing for it,” said Pinchingdale apologetically. “I didn't want to disappoint you.”

“I was being serious!” said Turnip indignantly.

“And so was I,” said Pinchingdale, sobering. “Up to a point. If your Miss Dempsey really did have that document, she would be in grave danger. I, for one, find it highly unlikely. A student notebook is an unlikely means of conveyance.”

“The notebook was in French.”

“The document wasn't.”

“What exactly is this list? How long is it?”

“Long enough,” said Pinchingdale gravely. “Long enough to cause a great deal of bother. We have a string of Royalist agents posted between Boulogne and Paris. Most are French. They serve as couriers for both information and people. Without them, a vital link to the coast would be cut.”

“That ain't all, is it?” said Turnip shrewdly.

“Isn't that enough?” Pinchingdale tapped his fingers against the green marble mantelpiece. “Bonaparte would give his eyeteeth to get his hands on that list. Having to rebuild that network would set us back months, perhaps years.”

“What are eyeteeth?” asked Turnip.

Pinchingdale mustered a tired grin. “I don't know, but they appear to be uniquely expendable. Some people feel the same way about human life.”

“You don't need to tell me,” said Turnip. “I've met some of them.”

He was fairly sure they were both thinking of the same person: the Marquise de Montval, agent of the dread spy, the Black Tulip. She was, by all accounts, dead. Turnip wouldn't have believed it if Pinchingdale hadn't witnessed it himself.

The marquise had had a marked fondness for stilettos. She had worn them in her hair, decorated with diamonds, disguised as ornaments. She hadn't been all that particular as to where they landed. Turnip didn't like to think what she might have done to Arabella. The marquise's motto had been stiletto first, questions later.

Where there was one demented French spy, there would be others. They were a bit like bees, thought Turnip philosophically. Swat one and the whole hive came swarming down on your head.

“Why are you here?” Turnip asked. “Why are you really here?”

Pinchingdale tried the eyebrow trick. “To celebrate Christmas?”

“Ha,” said Turnip intelligently. Pinchingdale couldn't fool him, not even with that eyebrow. A chap didn't go off to a Christmas party without his wife. “Where's Lady Pinchingdale, then?”

“Letty,” said Pinchingdale, “is upstairs sleeping. The trip tired her.”

“Oh.” It sounded reasonable enough on the surface, but it didn't quite wash. From what Turnip had seen of the new Lady Pinchingdale, she was fairly indefatigable. Unless . . .

“I say!” he blurted out. “Is she . . . ?”

Pinchingdale looked up at the ceiling overhead, which was decorated with several overblown nymphs. “You really do say whatever comes into your mind, don't you?”

“Sink me if that ain't good news!” Turnip pounded his old school chum on the back so hard that Pinchingdale doubled over, coughing. “Splendid, I say! Make a deuced smashing father. Hope you have ten. Not all at once, of course.”

“Thank you,” said Pinchingdale, when he got his breath back. “I'll tell Letty you said so.”

“Why aren't you with her family? Or yours?”

“You've met my mother,” said Pinchingdale. “You don't want to meet Letty's mother.”

“You're here about the list, aren't you?”

“Worse than fleas,” said Pinchingdale, addressing himself to the nymphs. They simpered in sympathy. “Yes. I am. The man who lost it will be attending the party with his wife and daughter. They're due to arrive just before Epiphany. I gather they plan to announce the daughter's betrothal to Lord Grimmlesby-Thorpe.”

“So that's what that old sack is doing here!” exclaimed Turnip. “Didn't seem the sort the duchess would want to marry off to her granddaughter.”

“No, but there was a scandal about the daughter, and Carruthers is eager to get her off his hands. I gather Grimmlesby-Thorpe was the only one to bite.”

“Carruthers? Catherine Carruthers?”

“You know her?”

“She's friends with Sally.
Was
friends with Sally,” Turnip corrected himself. He looked at Pinchingdale, struck by a sudden thought. “Arabella—I mean, Miss Dempsey—is one of her teachers.”

Pinchingdale's eyebrow went up at that careless use of her first name, but he forbore to comment. He didn't need to. If they could deploy Pinchingdale's eyebrow against the French, Bonaparte would be all rolled up within the week.

“You don't think that Catherine—,” Turnip said hastily.

“No one is suggesting that Catherine took the list,” Pinchingdale pointed out. “Why would she take it? And what would she do with it?”

“Fair point,” said Turnip. “Do you know a chap named the Cheval-whatsis de la Tour de Something-or-Other?”

Pinchingdale took a moment for mental translation. “By which I presume you mean the Chevalier de la Tour d'Argent?”

“So you do know him!”

“Not well,” said Pinchingdale cautiously.

“I wasn't asking if you'd ask the chap to stand godfather to your firstborn child,” said Turnip impatiently. “But if you're looking for something rotten in the state of Bath, I'd say he's a jolly good candidate.”

Pinchingdale shook his head. “Unlikely. Argent is one of the Comte d'Artois's circle—and his father was one of the first victims of the guillotine. He has no cause to love the revolutionary regime.”

“That's what they all say,” grumbled Turnip. “Well, you can't expect me to believe that Miss Climpson is secretly a French spy, because I won't.”

“That's the curious thing,” said Pinchingdale thoughtfully. “There may be no French spy. The paper went missing in November. If it had fallen into the wrong hands, we should have had some word of it already. Instead . . .” He spread his hands in the universal gesture of perplexity. “Silence.”

Turnip squinted at him. “Which leaves us . . . ?”

“Absolutely nowhere,” said Pinchingdale wryly. “Or rather, at Girdings House for Christmas. So we might as well strive to enjoy it. I hear the dowager has mummers' plays and morris dancers for us tomorrow.”

“Where's my partridge in the pear tree?” mumbled Turnip.

“I think he was stepped on by the lords a-leaping,” said Pinchingdale amiably. “I wouldn't worry too much about your Miss Dempsey. I doubt we have any spies on the loose at Girdings. The dowager would never allow it.”

DESPITE PINCHINGDALE'S REASSURING WORDS, Turnip did his best to keep an eye on Arabella, who half the time was out of the room, running errands for her aunt, who seemed to have a remarkable propensity for mislaying everything that wasn't actually pinned to her person. Hard to keep an eye on someone who was constantly in and out of the room. Even harder when they weren't officially speaking. They weren't officially not speaking, either. They just sidled around each other, stealing glances when convinced the other wasn't, and producing strained smiles when caught. It was all deuced confusing.

On the fourth day of the house party, with the mummers' plays and morris dancers of Christmas Day behind them and the larger festivities for Twelfth Night still to come, the guests broke into their own separate amusements. Some of the gentlemen went off to practice their fencing in the long gallery; the ladies retreated to their writing desks. And Arabella went off to fetch her aunt's shawl.

“Not the long one,” Aunt Osborne had instructed, giving Arabella's hand an affectionate squeeze. “The one with the silk fringe. The one I gave you to give Rose to mend. She does a much neater job than my Abigail.”

Arabella was passing through one of the many interlinked reception rooms on her way back to the gallery, examining the tiny stitches on the shawl, when she looked up to see Hayworth Musgrave approaching her from the far side of the room. They were in one of the smaller drawing rooms, decorated in shades of yellow with accents of rose picked up in the porcelain arranged in cabinets to either side of the room.

“Arabella,” he said warmly. “How fortuitous.”

The winter sun slanted through the long windows, creating an illusion of warmth as specious as her new uncle's smile.

“Captain Musgrave,” she said.

His smile widened. “I like to hear you call me so,” he said sentimentally. “It reminds me of . . . old times.”

“How nice,” said Arabella. “If you will excuse me, my aunt wanted her shawl.”

Captain Musgrave moved to block her egress. “We've seen so little of one another since the wedding.”

“Mmm,” said Arabella, noncommittally, wondering if it would be ridiculously rude to simply walk around him.

Musgrave took her murmur for assent. “I've been wanting a chance to talk to you.”