Lauren Willig: The mischief of the mistletoe

Instead of taking it from her, Mr. Fitzhugh bent over her shoulder to peer at the muslin. “I say! You’re quite right! Can’t think why that should be there.”

“It’s not for you, then?” said Arabella.

“Not that I know of. Can’t think of anyone who would correspond with me via pudding.” Making one of those masculine grunting noises that passed for ratiocination among the other half of the population, Mr. Fitzhugh leaned over the pudding wrapper, saying in puzzled tones, “It seems it wanted someone to meet it at Farley Castle tomorrow afternoon.”

It was, Arabella realized, a perfectly accurate translation. Her own French was limited, but she spoke it well enough to be able to read, “Meet me at Farley Castle, tomorrow afternoon. Most urgent.”

T urnip snapped his fingers. “There’s a frost fair at Farley Castle tomorrow! Knew I had heard that name before.”

“A frost fair?” Miss Dempsey echoed.

“Like a big picnic, but colder,” Turnip explained. “Outdoor entertainment among the castle ruins, with mulled wine and all that sort of thing. Huh.” Turnip turned the scrap of fabric around. “Deuced funny coincidence.”

“It’s too coincidental to be a coincidence,” said Miss Dempsey. There was a slight smudge of dirt on one cheek. “We seem to have stumbled upon someone’s assignation. How very…”

“Irregular?” suggested Turnip.

To his surprise, her lips turned up at the corners. “I was going to say intriguing, but irregular would suit as well.” Turning to the would-be pudding thief, who had levered himself up off the ground, she asked, “Who was it who sent you after the pudding?”

“Dunno. She came running up to me all distressed-like, grabbed my arm, and told me there’d be a guinea in it for me if I got ’er pudding back.” He shrugged. “That’s all.”

“And you never asked why?” asked Miss Dempsey.

The man gave her a look, as if to wonder why she would suggest such a harebrained thing as that. “There was a guinea in it,” he repeated.

“Right, of course,” said Miss Dempsey, shaking her head slightly. “Naturally.”

The man stuck out his hand at Turnip. “Speaking of guineas… Care to cross my palm and we’ll call it no ’ard feelings about the jaw-box?”

“How about a shilling?” asked Turnip, digging into his pocket.

Miss Dempsey edged around him. “This woman. Where did she come from? What did she look like?”

The man’s fist closed around the shilling Turnip dropped into his palm. “Dunno. She promised me a guinea for the pudding is all.”

And with that, he touched his forelock and sauntered away.

Miss Dempsey looked at Turnip thoughtfully. “Where did you get the pudding?” she asked.

Turnip scratched his temple, displacing his hat in the process. “My sister, Sally,” he said. “Can’t think why she’d be hiding messages in-oh.”

“Oh?” Miss Dempsey tilted her head quizzically.

“No,” he said decidedly, dismissing the idea as quickly as it had arisen. It would be deuced unfair to Sally to go about accusing her of setting up illicit assignations. He had every faith in his sister’s moral rectitude. And her ingenuity. If Sally were to arrange an assignation, she wouldn’t do it in such an addlepated way. He was the addlepated one in the family, and he was sticking to it. “It ain’t like Sal to set up assignations through puddings. She’s not the assignating kind.”

“My assailant did say a woman,” Miss Dempsey murmured. “Perhaps one of the instructresses? Your sister might have got hold of the pudding by accident.”

Turnip clapped his hat firmly back onto his head. “Only one way to find out, isn’t there? We can ask her.”

“We?”

“You will come with me, won’t you, Miss Dempsey?” Turnip flashed her his most winning smile. “You can’t expect a chap to venture back into that den of females unprotected, can you? No offense meant. Your being a female and all that, I mean.”

“How kind of you to notice,” muttered Miss Dempsey.

“Nothing against the breed-er, gender,” Turnip hastened to reassure her. “Some of my favorite people are females. But it’s when you put lots and lots of them together in a room… it becomes…”

“A bit overwhelming?” Turnip spotted a hint of a smile beneath Miss Dempsey’s bonnet brim and knew he was winning.

Turnip nodded vigorously. “The very thing.”

“I have three younger sisters,” Miss Dempsey contributed. “All of them at home.” She didn’t need to explain what she meant. Turnip felt for her, right down to the bottom of his waistcoat. There was no saying what younger sisters might get up to.

“Will you come with me?” he asked eagerly.

Miss Dempsey looked at the pudding cloth in her hand and then back at Turnip. “Why not?” she said. “This day certainly can’t get any stranger.”

It was not exactly a resounding affirmative, but Turnip knew how to seize his advantage when he had it. “Jolly good!” he exclaimed, hustling her forward before she could change her mind. “Shan’t regret it! Lovely girl, Sally. Most of the time.”

“Most of the time?” repeated Miss Dempsey as she hurried along beside him into the foyer. Turnip pretended not to hear her.

“Right this way!” he said with exaggerated cheerfulness. “Can’t think they will have gone far. When I saw them last they were-ah, right. Here we go.”

The three girls were still together in the blue salon, their heads together, cackling like those three hags in that play he had slept through last month. Something to do with a Scotsman.

Miss Dempsey, he noticed, was still limping slightly, undoubtedly from her tumble on the cobbles. Pluck to the backbone, she was, he thought admiringly. Not a word of complaint out of her.

The same couldn’t be said of Sally.

“Reggie!” exclaimed Sally, her pearl earbobs swinging as she jumped up. Technically, Miss Climpson’s girls weren’t supposed to wear earbobs, but Sally was firmly of the opinion that foolish rules were for other people. “What are you doing back so soon? When I told you to be early, I didn’t mean this early.”

“Oh, ha, ha,” said Turnip cleverly. “What’s the idea of giving me a pudding with a message in it? Oh, this is Miss Dempsey. Miss Dempsey, my sister Sally and her two most peculiar friends.”

“You mean my two most particular friends,” corrected Sally through gritted teeth. Donning the mask of sweetness she wore in front of non-family members, she dipped into a curtsy. “Miss Dempsey. How did you ever come to be associated with my ridiculous brother?”

Miss Dempsey extended the cloth. “We were brought together by an accident of pudding.”

“The one you gave me,” Turnip prompted, looking sternly at Sally. “A thief knocked Miss Dempsey over in an attempt to retrieve it.”

“Really?” Lizzy Reid’s eyes were as round as… well, as very round things. “A footpad? How simply smashing!”

“Yes, if you’re the pudding. It was quite smashed, and so was Miss Dempsey.”

“I wouldn’t say I was quite smashed. Just a trifle shaken.” Taking the chair that Turnip offered her, Miss Dempsey turned to the girls. “The odd thing about it was that there was a message on the pudding cloth. Would you know anything about that?”

“What sort of message?” asked Lizzy.

Miss Dempsey and Turnip exchanged a look. Turnip nodded slightly, and Miss Dempsey went on, “The message appears to be an invitation to an assignation. It was written in French.”