The Mischief of the Mistletoe

Chapter 14

“My brother was looking for you.” Sally pounced the moment Arabella walked through the door.

Arabella put down her parcels and applied herself to untying the strings of her bonnet. Why had she never noticed before that the world was distinctly oversupplied with Fitzhughs? They were everywhere.

Arabella had woken this morning with a headache, a nasty taste in her mouth, and the wild hope that last night had, in fact, been a particularly bizarre dream. That was a hope that had been rudely counteracted at breakfast, where all the older girls were buzzing over the brilliant gossip that Signor Marconi had been caught climbing through a window and chased down and wrested to the ground by Miss Climpson, who had battered him into submission with a china cupid.

Fortunately, no one appeared to have seen a large man climbing the trellis.

In an attempt to give herself something to think about other than Turnip, Arabella had fled to the Austen house, commandeering a surprised but amenable Jane for some impromptu shopping. On a superficial level, the expedition could be counted a success. Arabella had found gifts for all the members of her family, even Margaret, but Christmas shopping hadn’t been quite the distraction that she had hoped it would be.

When Jane had asked her what she meant to buy for Margaret, Arabella had replied, “A trellis.”

Arabella carefully removed her bonnet and gathered up her parcels before turning back to Turnip’s sister. “Don’t you have a music lesson?”

“No.” Sally sauntered along beside her as Arabella made for the stairs. “The harp needs to be restrung. Several strings were broken in the altercation last night.”

“The harp wasn’t in the drawing room.” If she had tripped over it, she would have known. Harp strings left painful welts.

“Wasn’t it?” Sally widened her eyes so far it was painful to watch.

“If you stay like that too long, your face will freeze that way.”

“People have told me that before. It hasn’t happened yet. What do you think he wanted?”

“Signor Marconi?”

Sally rolled her eyes. “No. Reggie.”

Reggie. Arabella applied the name to the person and tried to decide if it fit. She had kissed him, but she had never called him by his first name. Or even by his nickname.

She didn’t want to think about that. If she were ten years younger, she would have stuck her fingers in her ears and made loud humming noises.

“What do you think he wants?” persisted Sally.

“The answer to that completely eludes me.”

Sally wasn’t that easily dismissed. “You must have some idea.”

“I’ve sworn off all ideas until after Christmas.”

Once upon a time, she had prided herself on her critical judgment, on her ability to step back and take a clear view of her own character and those of other people. But what if it wasn’t that her judgment was so good? What if it was just that she had spent most of her life untested, and now, having been tested, failed miserably? It hurt to find that her feet were as clay-like as anyone else’s.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like Turnip. She did. She liked him tremendously. She liked his innate decency and his ridiculous sense of humor and — no, she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that bit. In any event, she did like him, and she was fairly sure that he was equally fond of her, but the thought of anything more between them was entirely out of the question. He was Turnip Fitzhugh — and she was Miss Who? Miss What-Was-Your-Name-Again?

As for Turnip, he was made of a different clay than she was — a shinier, more sophisticated clay. She knew his world, even if she wasn’t quite part of it, knew it well enough to know that flirtation was just part of the game, and that it was a game for them. Not meant maliciously — she didn’t think Turnip could be malicious if he tried — but the stakes were different for him, for all of them who had the backing of fortune and standing.

It was easy enough for him, with no intent to harm, to kiss Penelope Deveraux on a balcony one day, and Arabella the next, never thinking that in the world from which Arabella hailed, the quiet assemblies of the country gentry, a kiss might be taken as more than a kiss. The gilded circle of the elite operated by less rigorous rules than a country parson’s daughter.

The best thing for everyone concerned was simply to pretend that the kiss had never happened.

It didn’t help that she could still feel the curve of his cheek beneath her fingers and the way the short hairs at the back of his neck had prickled against the palm of her hand. The body, it seemed, had a long memory.

Well, her body would just have to forget. When she saw him, as she supposed she must someday, she would be friendly but distant. Dignified. If she could put it off until she were eighty or so, that would help tremendously. Nothing said dignity like gray hair and a cane.

“Reggie did say he would be at the recital tomorrow night.” Sally watched Arabella out of the corner of her eye. She was about as successful at looking sly as her older brother. Their faces just weren’t constructed for it.

“Splendid,” said Arabella. “Brilliant. Lovely.”

She would be the one there with a burlap sack over her head, hiding. Or perhaps she could find a nice potted plant to hide behind. Now all she needed to do was locate a six-foot-high poinsettia and her plan would be complete.

“He’s really not a bad sort,” said Sally. “When he isn’t acting like a complete buffoon, that is.”

“Signor Marconi?” It hadn’t worked the first time, but it was worth another try.

Sally cast her a reproachful glance. “No. Reggie.”

“Good,” said Arabella brightly, heaving herself up the last few stairs. “I wouldn’t want you getting any ideas about the music master. I doubt your parents would approve.”

“Ugh.” Sally shuddered. “Those mustachios.”

Jumbling her packages, Arabella nodded to her door. “Would you mind opening that for me? I’m afraid I’ll drop something.”

“Oh, certainly.” Sally gave the door a shove on Arabella’s behalf. “Did you hear about Signor Marconi and — oh.”

She broke off, stopping so abruptly that Arabella nearly tripped over her foot.

Arabella grappled for a sliding package, catching it just before it fell. “What — oh.”

She very slowly straightened, still clutching her inconvenient mound of packages, staring openmouthed at the wreckage that had been her room.

“Good heavens,” Sally said breathlessly.

Arabella attempted to wrestle her jaw back into its usual position. “More like the other place.”

Her room — while she hadn’t exactly left it in a pristine condition — had been nothing like this when she left it. The compositions that had been piled on her desk were now strewn about the floor. Black sludge seeped down the side of the desk from the overturned inkwell, puddling on top of Arabella’s favorite Kashmir shawl, which was wadded into a crumpled heap. Her best petticoat sprawled wantonly over the splayed legs of the overturned chair, while bits of ribbon, bonnet trim, and gloves littered the floor like the ground after a parade. The wardrobe doors gaped open, the empty drawers sticking out as though the wardrobe were putting out its tongue at her.

Feathers adhered to everything, even the walls. It wasn’t hard to tell where they had come from. She could see the burst skin of a pillow, belching yet more feathers. Who knew that such a little pillow could have so many feathers in it? It was positively Shakespearean. Some of the feathers had landed in the ink, turning the color of a crow’s wing.

Without waiting to be asked, Sally wandered into the room ahead of her. Paper crunched beneath the heels of her slippers. The coral beads from Arabella’s one decent piece of jewelry skittered about underfoot.

“What happened here?” Sally asked in wonder. A stray feather, stirred by her passage, grazed her nose in passing and she sneezed explosively, covering her mouth with her hand.

Whoever it was had even stripped the bedclothes off her bed, dumping them in an untidy mound at the foot. Whoever it was had ripped long gashes into the mattress itself, out of which sprayed a combination of wool and feathers and whatever else it was that people stuffed inside mattresses. It looked as though rats had been burrowing in it. But it wasn’t rats. Just one very malicious human.

Mechanically, Arabella reached out and tried to smooth out the bent brim of a bonnet. The straw stubbornly bounced back out of position. Arabella pushed, harder. The bonnet pushed back. Angry tears prickled at the back of Arabella’s eyes.

She hastily dropped the bonnet on top of the pile of Christmas shopping. This was absurd. She was not, not, not crying over a bonnet. She had never liked that bonnet anyway. She was just overwrought, that was all. And tired. And angry. She tried to focus on anger.

“You’re very sanguine,” said Sally.

“No,” said Arabella, keeping her face carefully averted. She reached down and shook out a petticoat. This one, at least, only seemed crumpled, not stained. “Not really. But I applaud your vocabulary.”

Sally dropped the remains of the pillow on the desk, where it landed in a pool of ink. “I’ve seen some pranks in my time, but nothing like this. This is just plain nasty.”

“Thank you,” said Arabella. Her tongue felt too thick for her mouth and her throat was so dry she could barely manage the words. “I find that terribly comforting.”

“I didn’t mean — ” Sally bit her lip, the picture of contrition. “Sorry. Shall I have one of the maids fetched up? To clean all this up?”

Arabella stooped down, lifting one of the crumpled pages from the floor. It was a piece torn out of her journal, a description of the carriage ride to Farley Castle. Or, rather, it had been. Now it was nothing more than wastepaper, hardly legible even to her. And she was the one who had written it. It looked as though someone had danced a jig on it. In heavy boots.

“Yes,” Arabella said heavily. “I think that would be best.”

They might as well shovel the whole lot up and throw it in the dustbin. It wasn’t fit for much else.

Arabella methodically lifted a corset from the wreckage. Aside from the ink stains and the feathers, her clothing didn’t appear to be damaged, at least any more than could be expected from its having been thrown across a room. Her papers, on the other hand, had been thoroughly ransacked, as though someone had gone through them, looking for something, and had wreaked his vengeance on the offending papers when he hadn’t found it.

Which made no sense at all.

“But why would anyone want to do this to you?” asked Sally.

Arabella shook her head helplessly. “Maybe someone didn’t like the marks I gave her. Maybe Signor Marconi was looking for his lost mustachio. I don’t know. Weren’t you going to fetch that maid?”

Sally planted her hands on her hips, turning in a slow circle around the room. “It does look as though someone were looking for something.”

“In that case, I hope they found it,” said Arabella shortly, shaking a shawl free of feathers before folding it and placing it in one of the open drawers. One had to start somewhere.

Cheer up, she told herself. None of it was irreparable. Ink stains could be washed out; linen could be ironed; coral could be restrung. Everything could be put back just the way it was.

Well, mostly.

“Is anything missing?” Sally asked keenly. She was trying so hard to be helpful that Arabella didn’t have the heart to tell her to leave.

“I don’t have anything anyone would want to steal.” Arabella rose painfully to her feet, clutching at the drawer for balance. She nodded at the desk. “Unless someone wanted your history compositions.”

“I don’t want my history composition,” said Sally.

Arabella leaned against the open wardrobe and tried to conjure up an image of her room as she had left it this morning. It shouldn’t be that hard. Aside from her clothing, which was now scattered all across the floor in varying degrees of dilapidation, she hadn’t brought that much with her from Aunt Osborne’s house. There had been her coral necklace, now in pieces; four or five favorite books, of no interest to anyone but herself; and her journal, which appeared to have been chewed by a rabid beast before being scattered across the floor.

Otherwise, the contents of the room were only those things that had been given her when she arrived — one coverlet, one pillow, one desk, one chair, one candlestick — and those that she had acquired through her employment — paper, pen, inkwell, three history texts, a pile of half-read student compositions.

Sally had opened the window, to dispel the scent of ink. The curtains fluttered in the wind just as they had last night, when it had been Turnip sitting on the desk. Arabella remembered that horrible moment as the chair had gone over, clanging against the floor. Something else had fallen too.

Squelching her way through the feathers and the papers, Arabella gingerly lifted the ink-sodden shawl that lay next to her desk. Underneath, there was only a half-page from Clarissa’s history composition and a very old volume of poetry, the cover now stained with ink.

Shooing Sally aside, Arabella scrabbled through the debris on the desk. The remains of her journal... more history compositions... a broken pen... Nothing. It wasn’t there.

Arabella leaned back against the desk, feeling even more confused than she had before.

“What is it?” asked Sally eagerly.

“The notebook,” Arabella said in bewilderment. “Someone took the notebook.”