The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas (39 page)

“Catherine,” she began briskly.

“Just because someone invited you to this party doesn't mean you have any right to address me so familiarly.” Catherine's nose lifted in an uncanny imitation of her mother's. “From now on, you will address me as Mrs. Danforth.”

Danforth. Danforth? Whatever Arabella had expected, it hadn't been that. “As in . . . Lieutenant Darius Danforth?”

As she said it, she could picture him. Danforth, who was friends with Catherine's cousin. Danforth, who had been disowned for dishonoring a young lady of good family. Danforth, who had spearheaded that game of blind man's buff.

“The very one,” said Catherine smugly.

A host of disregarded images came belatedly and painfully into focus: Danforth passing close by Catherine, stopping to murmur something into her ear; Danforth and Catherine, exchanging glances across the drawing room; Danforth and Catherine, in collusion.

Arabella licked her dry lips. “Not Lady Grimmlesby-Thorpe?”

Catherine tossed her head. “You didn't think I was going to marry that old sot? No. Darius and I were married by special license in November.” She preened. “He does have important connections, you know. Darius is the son of an earl.”

The disowned son of an earl, but Arabella deemed it wiser not to point that out while Catherine was holding a pistol.

It had been in November that Catherine had been expelled from Miss Climpson's. “That was when you ran away from the school.”

“I didn't
run away
,” Catherine corrected her. “I
eloped
.”

“Of course,” Arabella said quickly. Rule Number One: Don't make the woman with the pistol angry. “My felicitations.”

Diving for the pistol wasn't really an option. Arabella wouldn't be surprised to find that Catherine really was as good a shot as she claimed.

There was a rather heavy perfume atomizer on the dressing table. If she could reach behind and grab it, she could throw it at Catherine, duck, and run. Of course, that presumed that she managed to reach it without Catherine noticing, and, once she had it in hand, that she threw true, neither of which seemed highly likely.

“Thank you,” Catherine took her congratulations as her due. “But as you can see, this is hardly a social call. You have caused me a great deal of bother since you arrived at Miss Climpson's.”

Arabella had caused
her
a great deal of bother?

“I'm so sorry,” Arabella said. “Was that your pudding?”

“Whose did you think it was? The Prince of Wales's? You had no business reading it, no business at all.”

“You left it on the windowsill,” Arabella said slowly, “so Lieutenant Danforth could pick it up.”

“Those pedants at Miss Climpson's persisted in watching me to make sure I didn't see Darius. But they didn't think anything of a Christmas pudding left on a windowsill.”

“Or a notebook?”

“Clever, wasn't it?” Catherine smirked.

Arabella was still putting all the pieces together. “That night at Miss Climpson's Christmas performance. You were one of the wise men.”

“I gave Darius my robe and my sword while Sally and those other angels were still preening themselves onstage. It was easy enough. The robe was too short on him, but you didn't look very closely, did you?”

“One doesn't when one is being dragged backwards in a dark corridor.” One by one, the pieces were beginning to fall into place. “You were the one who searched my room.”

“Twice. Really, you might think of investing in some new walking dresses. That green one is disgraceful.” Catherine shuddered in distaste. If one had to paw through someone else's belongings looking for treasonous documents, they might, in Catherine's view, at least be fashionable ones.

Catherine's snobbery might have been all that had kept her from discovering the paper the first few times; she would never have considered touching Arabella's gray school dress, any more than Rose had. It was an amusing irony that Arabella would be sure to savor at her leisure. If she survived to do it.

“Whose idea was the game of blind man's buff?”

“I came up with the idea, of course”—Catherine was leaving no doubts as to the evil mastermind in this partnership—“but I had to leave it to Darius to execute. Being a gentleman, he didn't have the nerve to do it properly.”

Gentleman? Arabella bit her tongue on the acerbic comment that rose to her lips.

Catherine's curls quivered as she contemplated the inefficiency of the opposite sex. “I was appalled when I arrived this morning to find that he had been here two weeks and done nothing! Nothing! I had given him very specific instructions.”

Arabella didn't like to think what those instructions might have been. She suspected Catherine's methods of information extraction ran to the rack-and-thumbscrews variety.

“I can't fault him for the delicacy of his nature,” Catherine went on, with a pro forma simper. As far as Arabella could tell, Darius Danforth was about as delicate as a goat, but Catherine apparently knew a different, more sensitive man. “His scruples become him, but it just wouldn't do and I told him so.”

Arabella knew she should have reported Catherine's midnight escapades to Miss Climpson while she still had the chance. This was what she got for being tolerant and understanding.

“So he got up his game of blind man's buff,” Arabella said grimly.

“
My
game of blind man's buff, you mean.” Catherine wasn't willing to be cheated out of her credit, even at the expense of her husband. “Those idiot friends of his will do anything if you tell them it's for a wager. By the end, each of them thought it was his own idea. They all find you an utter antidote, you know.”

“Lovely,” said Arabella.

“After all that, Darius made a botch of it, poor lamb. So here I am.” Catherine smiled brightly at Arabella and brought her pistol back up. “Give me the list. Now.”

In a novel, the proper sort of heroine would refuse to hand over the list, guarding it to the death.

Arabella didn't want to die.

What good could she do to anyone dead? Other than alert the others to the treason with the sound of the shot that killed her, but, frankly, the walls of Girdings were too thick for that sort of thing. It might, in fact, be wiser to let Catherine have the blasted thing—as least, for the moment. Stranded in Girdings House, Catherine wouldn't be able to get terribly far. While she was savoring her triumph, Arabella could muster the troops and catch her with list in hand.

“All right,” Arabella said slowly. “It was yours, after all. I only came upon it by accident. I never meant to interfere with your plans.”

It was what Catherine wanted to hear. She laughed happily. “Can you believe Darius even suggested paying you for it? I told him not to be absurd.”

Arabella reached behind her for the crumpled piece of paper. “Why do you want it so very badly? I don't see you as a French spy.”

Catherine sniffed derisively. “As if I would be in it for that! Darius knows someone who knows someone who's willing to pay good money for the thing. We'll be set for life.”

“If you aren't hanged for treason.” Seeing Catherine's brows draw together, Arabella said hastily, “You can still put it back, you know. You can hide it among your father's things. He'll think he misplaced it. No one will be the wiser.”

“And live in some little hovel until my parents forgive me? No.” So much for their hard-won rapport. Catherine's lips curved in a distinctly feline smile. Arabella could all but see her licking the cream off her whiskers. With impeccable logic, Catherine said, “They can't hang me for treason if no one knows about it.”

Catherine was going to kill her. Arabella knew it as surely as she knew her own name. It wouldn't have mattered if she handed over the list or not. Catherine had been planning to kill her either way. If there were no witnesses, those nasty events had never happened.

She wasn't mad. It would be easier if she were. One could reason with a madman, suss out his distorted logic and play on it. But Catherine wasn't mad. She was just very, very determined and entirely selfish.

What was the life of a lowly schoolmistress so long as she got her Darius and the money too?

Not to mention all of those other lives, the Royalist agents stationed between Paris and Boulogne, the English agents who relied upon them, the locals who supported them, all the hundreds of individuals whose lives would be forfeit when that list reached Bonaparte's hands.

Arabella could see the carnage stretching out from Norfolk to Paris, life after life, all at the hands of the self-satisfied sixteen-year-old standing in front of her, gold bracelets gleaming on her wrists, all frills and ruffles and deadly self-indulgence.

Jane was right, teaching was a far more hazardous profession than Arabella had ever envisioned.

“How do you explain about the money, then?” Arabella asked desperately.

Catherine widened her eyes guilelessly. “Didn't you hear? The money was a gift to Darius from a very elderly relative.” Dropping the pose, she added frankly, “She's senile, you know. She'll never know the difference. She may even think she did give it to us.”

Arabella retreated as Catherine advanced. “But someone else does know. That friend of Lieutenant Danforth's, the one who arranged the deal.”

Catherine dismissed that with a casual wave of her pistol. “He wouldn't dare tell. He's in it too. You, on the other hand, are not.”

“Have you ever thought that he might be a counteragent? Perhaps he's really working for the government and only pretending to sell secrets to the French.”

“He's not,” said Catherine with terrifying certainty. “You forget. My father is in the government.”

“The government might pay you for it!” Arabella's back was against the window. She could feel the latch digging into her spine. “You can tell them you found it. There might be a finder's fee. You would be a heroine. His Majesty would invite you to tea.”

“Open the window,” said Catherine.

“Pardon?”

“Open the window.” Catherine pointed with her pistol. “You are going to have a nice little fall.”

Little wasn't the adjective Arabella would have chosen. Her room was three stories up. They were very tall stories. The kitchen garden lay below, but, at this height, Arabella doubted that the winter-gray stalks of thyme and sage were going to do much to break her fall.

Arabella frowned at her former pupil. “These aren't the sort of windows one just falls out of. You won't be able to pass it off as an accident.”

Catherine looked smug. “I don't need to. Everyone knows that you've been flinging yourself at Sally Fitzhugh's brother. When he turned you down—who's to say what you might do?”

Arabella eyed her askance. “Killing oneself for unrequited love? Does anyone really do that these days?”

Catherine jabbed the gun in her direction. “As of now, you do. Just think, you can start a whole new fashion.” She adopted an expression of mock remorse. “Such a shame that Mr. Fitzhugh didn't return your affections.”

“ 'Fraid there's a problem with that plan,” came a voice from the doorway.

Y
ou see,” said Turnip Fitzhugh, “I do. Return her affections, that is. So your little scheme ain't going to work.”

Turnip looked entirely at home, lounging in the doorway, his shoulders propped against the frame. Arabella didn't know whether to be elated or horrified.

Catherine swung wildly around, backing up to keep both of them in her sights, her pistol wavering from one to the other.

“Her? You love
her
?”

“Don't see what's so odd about it.” Turnip deliberately moved towards the bed, away from Arabella, forcing Catherine to widen her range.

Following his lead, Arabella inched in the other direction, towards the fireplace. There was a poker in the rack beside the fireplace, a poker and a shovel, either of which could be used to whack the pistol from Catherine's hand.

Catherine's face was a study in bewilderment and rage.

“But she's a
schoolmistress
.”

“Mistress of my heart, and all that,” said Turnip cheerfully, his eyes on the pistol. “Well-schooled in affection. Tutored in—”

Catherine put a period to the catalogue by stamping her foot. “Fine!” she declared, flinging up her hands. Arabella instinctively ducked. “You can just die together, then.”

Choosing her target, she spun to face Arabella, her finger tightening on the trigger. Arabella flung herself to the ground. In the confused moment of falling, she saw Turnip's arm draw back, and something round and pale fly with astonishing speed across the room, straight at Catherine. A piece of mistletoe fluttered like a lost feather to the floor.