The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas (41 page)

Instead, she took a deep breath, and said, “I love you.”

“Really?” Turnip's face lit up.

He looked at her with such tenderness and hope that Arabella had to say it again. “I love you. I want to prowl castles with you and celebrate Christmas with you and get annoyed with you for climbing things. And I'm terribly fond of raspberry jam. Lots of it.”

Turnip wrapped his arms around her, his eyes on her lips. “We'll celebrate our anniversary with jam,” he promised, leaning forward. “With jam and Christmas pudding.”

Struck by a sudden thought, Arabella pulled back in his arms, tilting her head back to see his face.

“One last thing—”

“Anything!” Turnip promised extravagantly.

“Why were you carrying a pudding?”

F
our matched footmen in medieval tabards marched into the Great Dining Room of Girdings House bearing a tremendous sugar sculpture in the shape of a dove, the ancient crest of the Dovedales. The light of two dozen candelabras glittered off crystal glasses, off crested silver, off diamonds and rubies and silks of a hundred shades. The festivities that marked the end of the Christmas season sparkled like the icing sugar that dusted the tops of the traditional Twelfth Night cakes that had been set before all the guests. The high, clear notes of trumpets rang out in a triumphal fanfare.

“I like your dress,” said Turnip.

Arabella glanced down at her own décolletage. It was a shiny white meringue of a dress, one of Aunt Osborne's choosing, with lots of frills around the neckline.

There was one thing to be said about it. It bared a great deal of bosom.

“It makes me look like a milkmaid.”

“I know,” said Turnip happily. “Always liked the dairy, don't you know.”

Arabella saw it all through a happy haze, like the world viewed through the side of a champagne glass, everything bubbling and beautiful and tinted with a golden glow. She didn't even mind that the dowager had seated Penelope Deveraux on Turnip's other side, not with Turnip's hand discreetly clasping hers under the tablecloth.

As untitled, and therefore uninteresting, people, both Arabella and Turnip had been seated all the way down at the far end of the table. Turnip hadn't even had to juggle placement to put them together; the duchess in her infinite wisdom had already known. Or, more likely, the duchess had decided that two of her least favorite guests ought to bore each other rather than others.

Turnip had dashed off a letter to his parents, with a special postscript for Sally, and another, shorter letter to her father, formally requesting an interview, but other than that, they had made no announcements. It was still too new and precious to share.

All around them, people were prospecting in their cakes, searching for the tiny golden tokens that would proclaim the two main figures of the Twelfth Night festivities to come: the Lord of Misrule and the Queen of the Feast. In lesser households, it would be a bean and a pea. The dowager used a jester's staff and a miniature golden crown, specially made for the occasion.

Turnip poked about his cake with his fork. “Nothing,” he announced. He took a whopping forkful of sugared dough, adding, somewhat indistinctly, “Jolly good cake.” Catching Arabella's eye, he grinned. “Better with jam, though.”

“Everything is better with jam,” said Arabella serenely.

Turnip rocked back in his chair. “There are berry brambles all around the grounds of Parva Magna. We can go berry picking next summer.”

“With Sally?”

“And your sisters, too, if they like. Shouldn't wonder if Sally takes your Lavinia on as a protégée.” He gave an exaggerated shudder. “Heaven help us all.”

From the middle of the table came a great roaring noise. “I say!” Henry Innes shouted. “Freddy got the staff!”

There was a great clattering as inebriated gentlemen pounded their appreciation on the tablecloth, making china tremble and crystal jump.

“Hope you put it to good use!” shouted Martin Frobisher, one hand on the claret decanter, followed by something else that Arabella didn't quite catch, but was distinctly bawdy in nature.

Turnip turned red and looked anxiously at Arabella. “It's all right,” Arabella said, patting his hand. “I've read my Shakespeare.”

Lord Freddy pumped a hand into the air, spraying crumbs across the table and down Lucy Ponsonby's décolletage. The golden staff looked absurdly small in his large fist.

“All hail your Lord of Misrule!” he cried.

“Couldn't have picked a better man for the job,” muttered Turnip.

“Except maybe Lieutenant Danforth,” said Arabella.

Darius Danforth had been spirited off to London that morning, the folds of his cape hiding the ropes around his wrists.

The Carruthers family had also made a precipitate departure, Catherine all but invisible between the flanking forms of her parents. Mrs. Carruthers had looked like a very angry Pekingese. Arabella hadn't envied Catherine the long carriage ride back to London.

“Do you think they'll get that annulment?” Arabella asked Turnip.

Turnip shook his head. “Shouldn't think so. Marriage was illegal, and all that, but it would be too much of a scandal. Better for them to wait for a time and then announce a match.”

Remembering the hard glitter of Catherine's eyes, Arabella shivered. “If I were Danforth's older brother,” she said, “I would be very, very careful of what I ate. I would also avoid balconies and open windows.”

Under the table, Turnip's fingers tightened around hers. “Lost ten years of my life when I saw her herding you towards that window. New rule: no windows.”

“That would get very dark,” Arabella pointed out.

Turnip grinned rakishly. “I don't mind the dark, do you?”

Arabella's blushes were spared by a loud commotion at the head table, where the Duke of Dovedale and his cousin, Lady Charlotte, sat in lonely splendor. She glanced hastily away, all too aware of Turnip's knee bumping hers under the table.

“We have a monarch!” roared out the Duke of Dovedale. “Queen Charlotte!”

“I say, does he mean the real one?” demanded Turnip, craning to look over his shoulder, in case the Queen might have entered while he was otherwise occupied.

“Oh, do be quiet,” said Penelope Deveraux, whacking him on the shoulder with her fork. Cake crumbled down the front of Turnip's jacket. “It's our Charlotte—
that
Charlotte. Over there.”

She pointed with her fork up the table, where Lady Charlotte was blushingly allowing the duke to help her from her chair, gazing up at him as though he were all the knights of the Round Table rolled into one. The duke was a handsome man, to be sure, but there was something about him that Arabella didn't like, something self-contained to the point of secretive.

She looked at Turnip, his mouth wide with laughter, a dusting of multicolored cake sugar glittering on one side of his jacket and felt like laughing herself. How wonderful not to have to worry about subtexts and secrets and things that couldn't be said; everything Turnip thought or felt was in his eyes and his lips.

“What is it?” he whispered.

Arabella shook her head. “Nothing. Just you.”

At the head of the table, the Duke of Dovedale once more called the revelers to attention. “To Her Majesty, our Queen of the Feast—Queen Charlotte!”

All up and down the table, crystal glittered as the houseguests raised their glasses, dutifully echoing, “Queen Charlotte!”

All except Turnip. He didn't lift his glass to the evening's Queen.

He lifted it to Arabella, whispering, for her ears alone, “Queen Arabella. Queen of my heart, in any event,” he added, in more normal tones, as he set the glass back on the cloth.

“Do you have any pronouncements for your loyal subjects?” shouted out Tommy Fluellen, from Arabella's other side.

Lady Charlotte beamed down from the head table, a gilded crown of mistletoe set slightly askew on her golden curls. “That I do!” she called back, deploying her fan like a scepter. “Go forth and enjoy yourself mightily.”

A roar of approval went up from the table as chairs scraped back against the polished floors and inebriated guests staggered towards the conveniences, the gallery, or their own private alcoves. The rest of the guests were already beginning to assemble in the grand reception rooms on the other side of the house, wandering through a wonderland of improbably flowering urns, champagne fountains, and elaborate garlands of holly and mistletoe.

Turnip squeezed Arabella's hand. “I claim your first dance. Rather like the second and third ones too.”

“What about the fourth?” Arabella stood as a footman drew her chair back.

Turnip pretended to consider. “Take that one as well. Shouldn't want it to feel left out.”

Hand in hand, they joined the giddy crowd making its way out of the dining room. Turnip looked hopefully at the doorframe, but there was no mistletoe there. Tommy Fluellen trailed along after Penelope, who was pretending not to notice Freddy Staines—at least, until he grabbed her by the back of the dress and pulled. Everyone was loose and laughing with wine and feasting, returned to the mores of an earlier, faster era.

Everyone, apparently, but Arabella's new uncle by marriage. He stalked stiffly up to them, his expression rigid. “Fitzhugh,” he said in an undertone. “I've been wanting to speak to you.”

“Have you? Jolly good of you,” said Turnip. “Look forward to it. After the dancing.”

“I'm afraid it won't wait until after the dancing,” said Musgrave.

Across the room, Aunt Osborne raised a diamond-spangled hand to hail him. Diamond bracelets wrapped around her pudgy wrists and diamond rings sparkled on her gloved fingers. In her too-youthful white and silver gauze, she looked like an aging water nymph liberated from the edge of a fountain.

Musgrave waved unenthusiastically back.

“You shouldn't keep my aunt waiting,” said Arabella, enjoying herself just a little too much.

“I came to speak to you on behalf of your aunt,” he said, but his eyes shifted as he said it. He turned to Turnip. “She is very perturbed by the way you have been trifling with her niece.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” said Arabella, twining her arm through Turnip's. “Nobody is trifling with anyone. We're quite in accord on that.”

“Perfectly in accord,” echoed Turnip. “In accord as an accordion.”

Musgrave looked at her with concern, and more than a little bit of pity. “You can't think he means to marry you?”

He meant it, she realized. In his own odd way, he genuinely thought he was protecting her honor. Having not wanted to marry her himself, he assumed no one else would. It would have been amusing if it hadn't been mildly insulting.

Lowering his voice, Musgrave addressed Turnip. “You do know she doesn't have a dowry?”

Turnip's deliberately daft smile never faltered. “That's quite all right. I do,” he said. Turning to Arabella, he asked, with great seriousness, “Would you prefer it in goats or pigs?”

“Cows,” said Arabella, “definitely cows. You can waylay them for me.”

“Deuced tetchy beasts, cows,” warned Turnip.

“But they make such lovely dairy.”

“Always did like dairy,” agreed Turnip. “Have I mentioned how much I like that dress?”

“You're both mad,” muttered Musgrave.

“Mad with happiness,” said Turnip. “True love and all that, don't you know.”

Captain Musgrave looked from one to the other, making a belated attempt to regain control over the situation.

“Does this mean that you do intend to marry?” he asked, with difficulty, as though the idea were such an oddity that it pained him to even entertain it.

“A pertinent question,” Arabella said to Turnip. “What with one thing and another, I don't believe you ever did officially ask for my hand.”

Turnip whapped himself on the head with the flat of his hand. “Blast this deuced absent mind of mine! Could've sworn I had . . . but, oh well, no harm in doing it again. Would you like the grand display or would a small one do?”

“The grand display,” said Arabella, her lips twitching. “Quite definitely the grand display.”

“I love that about you,” said Turnip abruptly.

Arabella looked quizzically at him. “My instinct for drama?”

“The little lip-twitchy thing you do when you're trying not to laugh. It's very high on the list of things I love about you.”

“How long is this list?”