Лорен Уиллиг - The Mischief of the Mistletoe

Arabella’s smile turned sour. “Think nothing of it,” she said.

With a tip of his hat, he strode jauntily out the door. Gathering her scattered wits together, Arabella made to follow, but her booted foot struck something hard and round, half hidden under the hem of her walking dress.

Bending over, she picked it up. While slightly the worse for her stepping on it, it was unmistakably a Christmas pudding, small and round and wrapped in white muslin, finished off with jaunty red and gold ribbons.

“Mr. Fitzhugh?” she called after him, holding the small, muslin-wrapped parcel aloft. “Mr. Fitzhugh! You forgot your pudding!”

Blast. He didn’t seem to have heard her. Lifting her skirts, Arabella hurried down the short flight of steps. Mr. Fitzhugh, his legs longer than hers, was already some way down the street, making for a very flashy phaeton driven by a team of matched bays.

“Mr. Fitzhugh!” she called, waving the pudding in the air, when the second man in one day knocked the breath out of her by taking a flying leap at the pudding she held in her hand.

It must have been pure stubbornness that caused her to keep her grip, but as the man tugged, Arabella found herself tugging back. Harder.

“I need that pudding!” he growled. “Give it over!”

“No!” gasped Arabella, clinging to the muslin wrapper with all her might. People couldn’t just go about taking other peoples’ puddings. It was positively un-British.

“Hey! I say!”

Over the buzzing in her ears, Arabella heard the heavy thrum of booted feet against the cobblestones. With a powerful whoosh, her attacker was lifted up and away from her as a large fist connected with his jaw, sending him sprawling backwards. As the counterpressure was released, Arabella abruptly landed backside first on the cobbles, the wrapper of the pudding clutched triumphantly in one hand. Released from its muslin binding, the gooey ball of mince rolled free, collecting a fine coating of dust, mud, and other inedibles in the process.

This really wasn’t shaping up to be a good day. What next? Arabella sat in the gutter and contemplated the scrap of white muslin in her hand. Perhaps she should just stay here. It would save all the trouble of being knocked over again.

For the second time that day, she found herself being hauled up by Mr. Fitzhugh, who lifted her as easily as though she were a lady’s reticule. “Are you all right, Miss Dempsey?” he demanded, showing off his newfound command of her name. “Did the cad hurt you?”

“No,” said Arabella, forbearing to mention her backside. “Just your pudding.”

“Bother the pudding!” said Mr. Fitzhugh.

“I don’t think anyone will bother with it now,” said Arabella, regarding the gooey ball philosophically. “Although that man seemed to want it rather badly.”

That man was lying where he had fallen, making small groaning noises. Now that she was no longer locked in combat with him, Arabella could see that he was only of medium height, slightly built and shabbily dressed.

The man started to lever himself up on his elbows, looked at Mr. Fitzhugh, and thought better of it. “Is ’ee going to ’it me again?” he asked darkly.

“Only if you attack the lady,” said Mr. Fitzhugh, looming rather impressively. “That was a jolly rum thing to do.”

“I didn’t mean to attack ’er. My orders was to get the pudding.”

“Orders?” Arabella squinted down at her assailant. “Someone ordered you to collect the pudding from me?”

“There were a lady. There.” Struggling to a sitting position, the man gingerly touched his unshaven chin with one hand and pointed to the right with the other, to a narrow alley between Miss Climpson’s seminary and the building next door.

There was no lady there now.

“A lady told you to fetch the pudding,” repeated Mr. Fitzhugh. “There’s a Banbury tale if ever I heard one!”

“I don’t know nothing about no Banburies,” said the would-be thief belligerently, “but there were a lady and she promised me a guinea for that pudding, she did.”

“Delusional,” said Mr. Fitzhugh to Arabella, in what he fondly believed to be an undertone, but which carried at least three streets away. “The man’s disordered.”

The man gave Mr. Fitzhugh a look of pure dislike. “I weren’t disordered until you landed me a facer. Although,” he admitted grudgingly, “it were a good ’un. Nice and clean.”

Mr. Fitzhugh beamed with pleasure. “Much obliged.” Belatedly remembering the story was meant to have a moral, he adopted a stern expression. “Only don’t let me find you attacking any ladies, or I’ll land you more than a facer.”

Arabella’s backside still hurt and unless she was much mistaken, she had mud in unfortunate places upon her person. And all for a little pudding. Discounting his absurd story, she could only imagine that the man must have been driven to it by hunger. Arabella looked dubiously at the wrapper. Extreme hunger.

Something caught her eye, something odd.

Arabella scraped at the brown spots with one gloved finger, but they didn’t come off. It wasn’t mud or pudding splotch, as she thought, but rather a particularly untidy script.

Someone had gone to the trouble of writing on the inside of the muslin wrapper. Whoever it was had used a brown ink that, when the pudding was wrapped, would not show through the fabric. The message was written in uneven letters, slightly smeared now with pudding goo, but still legible. Legible and... French? Arabella squinted at the muslin. Yes. French.

“Mr. Fitzhugh?” she said sharply.

Looking somewhat sheepish, her rescuer bounded to his feet. “All right there?” he asked solicitously. “Feeling quite the thing?”

“Mr. Fitzhugh,” she said, dangling the muslin in front of him. “Were you aware that your pudding speaks French?”

Mr. Fitzhugh blinked at her, confused but game. “My puddings generally don’t speak to me a’tall,” he said, before adding gallantly, “But if a pudding were to speak, can’t see why it wouldn’t parle the Français, if it took the mind.”

The thief looked at him as though he were quite crazy. In fact, he looked at both of them as though they were quite crazy. Arabella couldn’t blame him.

“Forgive me,” she said hastily. “That’s not what I meant. What I meant was that there seems to be a message written inside your pudding. And it’s in French. See?” She thrust the muslin towards him.

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.”

Turnip 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...”