The Mischief of the Mistletoe

Chapter 9

“The Middle Ages were called the Dark Ages because they had no windows. In the Renaissance, they discovered glass and everything became light.”

Arabella stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. Half past ten, five papers still left to mark, and her mind was already beginning to wander. Arabella squinted at the dense curlicues and ink blots of Clarissa Hardcastle’s history composition.

The Middle Ages were called the Dark Ages because they had no windows.

Arabella cocked her pen, trying to think of some tactful way to tackle Clarissa’s first sentence. Scratch, scratch, scratch went the nib against the page. Windows were, in fact, invented as early as...

When were windows invented? A fine instructress she was, Arabella thought, vigorously scratching out the half-written line. Did the Romans have windows? The Greeks? All she knew was that the apertures in Farley Castle had seemed quite sufficiently windowlike to her, thank you very much.

Sitting in the close confines of a small room on the fourth floor of Miss Climpson’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies, Farley Castle seemed farther away than its actual geographic distance. The last few days had passed in a blur of activity, as Arabella struggled to remember names and schedules. Some of the girls had already left for the holidays, but the rest of the school was in a ferment over the annual recital put on by the girls for their friends and family. In addition to her classes, Arabella had coached girls through their lines, soothed hurt feelings, and adjusted hems. Jane had been right about one thing, at least; she hadn’t seen the outside of the building since she had entered it.

Even if she hadn’t squashed Mr. Fitzhugh’s plans, there would have been no way for her to leave the school to take part in them.

Arabella frowned at the shadowy reflection of her own face in the window. Mr. Fitzhugh had looked so confused when she had told him not to call, confused and then hurt, like a puppy being abandoned by the side of the road. He had followed along after her back to the Vaughns, casting her troubled looks from under the brim of the hat he had stuck back on the top of his head.

Well, whatever his hurt feelings at the time, he had obviously got over them.

Like the pudding, she had been a two-day diversion, to be forgotten the moment the next, more interesting toy came along. There was nothing malicious about it; it was just the way of the world. Or, rather, the way of the ton, England’s perpetually bored aristocracy. Arabella had seen it before, the restless shift from diversion to diversion. They wagered on absurdities, they drove their horses too fast, they drank their way into oblivion or gorged their way into ever more ambitious exercises in corsetry.

By now, Turnip Fitzhugh had probably forgotten about both her and puddings and was currently engaged in hopping three times around Bath Cathedral on one foot or trying to balance a rhubarb on his nose.

Reaching for the pile of marked papers, Arabella gave them a brisk shake, making sure all the corners were neatly aligned, all the edges in place. It was for the best, really it was. The casual intimacy of the pudding hunt had been nothing more than the product of the moment, a strange little moment, and very much momentary.

A gentle tap-tap-tapping on the door interrupted her thoughts.

Arabella swiveled in her chair. “Come in!”

Drat. Where had her shoes got to? Arabella scrounged desperately for her slippers with a stockinged toe. Arabella’s big toe connected with the side of the shoe and sent it skidding even farther under the desk.

“Miss Dempsey?” The door creaked a few inches open, revealing a hem of gray skirt very like Arabella’s own.

The hem was followed by the rest of the dress, as its wearer pushed open the portal with her hip, her hands occupied with two cups balanced on saucers.

“I thought you might be in need of some refreshment,” said Mlle de Fayette, extending one of the steaming cups in a hand that trembled from the strain of holding it upright.

Arabella blinked stupidly at a curl of steam rising above the rim of the cup. “Oh. Thank you.”

The saucer wobbled in Mlle de Fayette’s hand. Arabella belatedly launched herself forward to take it from the other teacher. “How kind of you,” she said, and wished it didn’t sound so much like a question.

“It is of no moment. I was fetching one for myself; it was no bother at all to carry another.” Mlle de Fayette set her own cup down on the desk, next to Clarissa’s composition. She nodded knowingly at the crumpled piece of paper. “Miss ’Ardcastle?”

Arabella scooted her chair back slightly to make room for the other woman. “Yes. How did you know?”

Lifting her cup, Mlle de Fayette blew gently on her tea. “The blots, mostly. Miss ’Ardcastle has a way with blots.”

“Unfortunately, some of the words still got through,” said Arabella wryly.

Mlle de Fayette’s cheeks creased, displaying a dimple very like that of her cousin, the chevalier. “Not everyone can be clever. With that sort of dowry, I shouldn’t bother to be clever either.”

“Is Miss Hardcastle an heiress, then?”

It shouldn’t have been surprising. Most of the girls in the school came from money of some sort. With a few exceptions, they tended to be the daughters of the landed gentry — untitled, but secure in both their birth and their fortunes.

“Her father is a — what do you call it? A ‘cit.’ ” Mlle de Fayette pronounced the word in inverted commas. “Something to do with the manufacture. He makes the guns. Or is it the cannon?”

“Something that makes loud banging noises and produces smoke,” Arabella provided for her. “I can’t tell one firearm from the other either. It’s what comes of not having brothers.”

Mlle de Fayette’s fingers stilled on the handle of her teacup. She looked like a lady on a cameo, her profile still and pale in the uncertain light. “I had brothers. Two of them.”

Arabella could have kicked herself for tactlessness. What had the girls said that afternoon of the pudding? It had been something to do with their French mistress, and the awful fuss she made over her brother’s head being chopped off. Arabella felt a cold chill creep along her spine at the thought. Hard to believe that so nearby, just across the Channel, such atrocities could still occur in their supposedly civilized world, that one could wake up one morning and find oneself bereft of brothers, parents, friends, all with the slice of an ax.

In the sudden hush, she heard herself asking, “What happened to them?”

Mlle de Fayette stared out over the garden, somewhere a million miles away. For a moment, in the unnatural calm of the ill-lit room, it seemed as though she might actually answer.

A light flickered on the grounds — or more likely, thought Arabella, blinking, just the guttering of the candle reflected in the dark glass of the window. Mlle de Fayette turned with an uncharacteristically abrupt movement, sloshing tea over the rim of her cup onto the gray fabric of her dress.

“Tiens! How clumsy I am.” She scrubbed at the spill with her handkerchief. “And tea is so very difficult to get out.”

“Here, let me.” Crossing the room, Arabella wet her own handkerchief from the washbasin and handed it to the other woman. “I am sorry about your brothers.”

Mlle de Fayette dabbed at the blotch with the damp handkerchief, succeeding only in spreading the stain. “I have Nicolas now. He is more trouble than three brothers put together.”

“He seems very charming,” said Arabella at random.

“The devil charms for his own purpose.” Having created a very wide, damp patch with no visible diminution of the stain, Mlle de Fayette shook out the handkerchief and handed it back to Arabella. “Your Mr. Fitzhugh has his measure of charm as well. A very different sort of charm, but charm nonetheless.”

He wasn’t her Mr. Fitzhugh. He had only been borrowed for a little while, like a piece of jewelry taken on loan.

“Sally tells me that charm runs in the family,” Arabella said with careful neutrality.

Mlle de Fayette accepted the tacit change of subject. “Ah, she gets far with charm, that one. But do not be fooled. She is charming like a fox.”

“A very nice fox,” said Arabella loyally. For all her airs, Sally had been kind, taking her under her wing as she had.

“A friendly fox,” Mlle de Fayette agreed. Or perhaps it wasn’t agreement, after all. Friendly wasn’t at all the same thing as nice. “She would be quite clever if she weren’t expending so much energy trying to avoid being so.”

Arabella perched against the side of the desk, sliding her own teacup aside to prevent further spillage. “What else should I know about the girls?”

Settling herself down on the other end of the desk, Mlle de Fayette contemplated the remains of her tea, and thought better of it. “Miss Anstrue, she has the habit of helping herself to the belongings of the other girls. Only the small things, and she always returns them by and by, but it is of the most awkward.”

Sally had warned her of the same, advising Arabella to keep her jewel box locked up. Arabella hadn’t liked to tell her that she didn’t have a jewel box, only the one strand of coral that Aunt Osborne had given her for her eighteenth birthday.

Mlle de Fayette frowned at her own reflection in the window. “Miss Grandison likes to pretend to the ague so she can spend the day in bed reading novels. Miss Reid copies her sums from Miss Fitzhugh.”

Arabella hitched herself up higher on the desk, letting one foot dangle. Gossiping like this, she felt like the schoolgirl she had never been. “I would have thought they both would have been copying from Miss Wooliston.”

“Oh no. Miss Fitzhugh, she has the way with maths. Miss Wooliston helps the others with their drawing. Miss Reid cannot draw a straight line.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Arabella. Lizzy Reid seemed to have an endless reserve of restless energy. Her very hair bristled with it. “What about Catherine Carruthers?”

Mlle de Fayette made a face. “I am glad she is yours rather than mine for the rest of the term. She is cunning, that one, and very determined.”

“Not so very cunning if she got caught,” Arabella pointed out.

“It is not good that Catherine came to Farley Castle,” said Mlle de Fayette somberly. “It was to avoid the scandal, you see, that her parents agreed to leave her at the school until the end of term, but only under the condition that she remain under the strictest supervision.” Mlle de Fayette lowered her voice, leaning forward. “Catherine is to be betrothed to someone else at Christmas.”

“Oh. Oh.” Arabella grimaced to show her comprehension. “So if it got out...”

“It would not be at all good for Catherine,” said Mlle de Fayette solemnly. “Or for the school. Not that she left the school in the first place, nor that she left it again. It would be of the most embarrassing for Miss Climpson and for all of us.”

“Does Miss Climpson know?”

Mlle de Fayette shook her head. “Not yet. Lord and Lady Vaughn have pledged themselves to the strictest secrecy — ”

Arabella would trust to the word of the Vaughns about as much as she would a snake peddling fruit. But she didn’t say that to Mlle de Fayette. The woman looked worried enough.

“As has Nicolas,” continued Mlle de Fayette. “But it is of the most imperative that Catherine not be allowed to behave so again. If the scandal were to get out...” She spread her hands in a gesture that needed no translation.

To keep the scandal from getting out, that meant they would have to keep Catherine from getting out too.

Catherine was on Arabella’s floor. Under her supervision.

A sense of deep foreboding settled deep in Arabella’s stomach.

“How did she get out last time?” Forewarned was forearmed, as the saying went.

Mlle de Fayette squinted into the garden. “They say the gardener helped them, by unlocking the garden gate, but this I cannot believe. He is not the helping kind.”

Which provided Arabella with absolutely nothing. Sally would probably know, although Arabella doubted the propriety of asking a student to snitch on another student. On the other hand, the impropriety of snitchery would be far less than the impropriety of Catherine Carruthers careering around the countryside.

Arabella sighed.

Mlle de Fayette put out a hand as though to touch her arm. “I am sure you shall do your best,” she said.

Why did she find that less than encouraging?

Arabella levered herself up off the corner of the desk. “This really is very kind of you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. The advice and the tea.” She hoisted her cup in illustration. The surface was beginning to get that vaguely scummy look that served as the universal sign of tea gone cold.

Taking the hint, Mlle de Fayette slithered off the edge of the desk, slippered feet searching for the floor. It was a much farther way down for her than it had been for Arabella. Her feet, Arabella noticed, were tiny. They were Cinderella feet, just made for glass slippers. Mlle de Fayette’s skirt brushed against the pile of papers, jostling them all out of alignment.

“It was my pleasure. We must do this again sometime, you and I.”

“Oh, yes, certainly,” said Arabella, trying not to think about Catherine. Or feet. Just one of her own slippers would make two of Mlle de Fayette’s.

As she looked up at the other woman, a glimmer of light caught her eye. It flickered and then went out again, like a firefly. A very large firefly. Arabella squinted around Mlle de Fayette.

“Did you see something?” she asked abruptly.

Mlle de Fayette twisted to peer over her own shoulder. The garden lay dark and still, peopled only by their own shadow images in the window. “See what?”

Arabella pressed her eyes shut. Gold sparkles exploded against the back of her lids. “Never mind. My eyes are playing tricks on me.”

“It is the fatigue,” said Mlle de Fayette, retrieving her own cup from the desk. “I remember my first week here. I thought I should drop in my porridge.”

“That about sums up my current condition,” Arabella admitted. “Does it get any better?”

Mlle de Fayette eyed Clarissa’s paper. “The compositions? No. The fatigue? Yes. One grows accustomed.”

Something about the way she said it made Arabella wonder what it was that she had been accustomed to before. Something other than this, that was quite sure. Many émigrés had come to England during the Revolution with little more than the clothes on their backs, forced to make their way as best they could. But it did seem rather odd that Mlle de Fayette’s cousin was dazzling in town tailoring, chumming about with the likes of the Vaughns, while Mlle de Fayette herself was reduced to teaching her native tongue to the daughters of prosperous squires and socially ambitious cits.

Mlle de Fayette sketched a slight gesture of apology. “It is most unkind of me to keep you when you will be wanting your rest.”

“Thank you. Really. I’m so glad you decided to come by.” Arabella wondered if the other woman was lonely too. The other schoolmistresses were a closemouthed bunch, and all at least a decade older. The chevalier was very dashing, but he didn’t seem the sort to pay regular calls. Immured in the school as she was, Mlle de Fayette couldn’t have formed a broad acquaintance in Bath. And, as she was learning, even when one did have the chance to get out, the rigors of the schedule tended to dampen one’s ardor for excursions. “The girls are lovely, but I’d forgotten what it is to talk to another adult. And the tea was just what I needed.”

Hopefully, Mlle de Fayette wouldn’t notice that she hadn’t drunk any of it.

Mlle de Fayette smiled at her. “If you need me, I am only one floor down. My room is directly below yours, the third door on the left.”

“If I need you, I’ll simply stamp on the floor,” said Arabella, getting into the spirit of it. “Two stamps for ‘Come up for a chat,’ three stamps for an emergency.”

“Er, yes. Quite. The very thing.” Mlle de Fayette backed towards the door. “Good night, Miss Dempsey.”

“I wasn’t really going to stamp on the floor.” Arabella found herself addressing the whitewashed panels of the door.

Too late.

Oh well. That was what came of actually saying the odd things that popped into her head. She had been much better at holding her tongue at Aunt Osborne’s. Be grateful, they had told her. Be quiet. Be obedient. And so she had, for twelve long years.

And what had that got her?

Marking papers at Miss Climpson’s, that was what. There was no point in dwelling on might-have-beens; she had work to do. Shoving the teacup aside, Arabella reached for Clarissa’s composition. She paused, her hand on the paper, as a twinkle of light caught her eye.

Bracing both hands on the desk, Arabella leaned forward, feeling the edge of the desk cutting into her stomach. Through the floating image of her room and the blob of light that was her reflected candle flame, she could just make out the garden, the high shrubs that bounded the edges of the property, the faint herringbone pattern of the brick walks, the square shape of the gardener’s humble habitation.

There it was again. Sparks of light. Flicker. Flicker. Pause. Flicker. Too stationary to be fireflies, too precise to be the wavering of a candle. It looked, in fact, as though someone were drawing the shutter of a lantern open and closed, creating a pattern and then repeating it.

Flicker. Flicker. Pause. Flicker.

Almost as though someone were signaling.