The Mischief of the Mistletoe E-Book

Lauren Willig

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Pink Carnation
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 472

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

'Tis the season to get Pink! Arabella Dempsey's dear friend Jane Austen warned her against teaching. But Miss Climpson's Select Seminary for Young Ladies seems the perfect place for Arabella to claim her independence while keeping an eye on her younger sisters nearby. She accepts the position just before Christmas, expecting nothing more exciting than conducting the annual Christmas recital. She hardly imagines coming face-to-face with French aristocrats and international spies . . .

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR LAUREN WILLIG

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

‘This genre-bending read – a dash of chick lit with a historical twist – has it all: romance, mystery, and adventure. Pure fun!’ Meg Cabot

‘Wickedly erudite … her elegant sentences and droll wit complement her impeccable historical accuracy’Romantic Times

‘Relentlessly effervescent prose … a sexy, smirking, determined-to-charm historical romance debut’Kirkus Reviews

The Masque of the Black Tulip

‘Studded with clever literary and historical nuggets, this charming historical/contemporary romance moves back and forth in time’USA Today

‘Terribly clever and funny … will keep readers guessing until the final un-Masquing’Library Journal

‘Willig has great fun with the conventions of the genre, throwing obstacles between her lovers at every opportunity … a great escape’Boston Globe

The Deception of the Emerald Ring

‘History textbook meets Bridget Jones’Marie Claire

‘Pride and Prejudice lives on in Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation romance-spy series’USA Today

‘A fun and zany time warp full of history, digestible violence and plenty of romance’New York Daily News

The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

‘Willig’s series gets better with each addition, and her latest is filled with swashbuckling fun, romance, and intrigue’Booklist

‘There is wit, laughter, secrets, lies, grand schemes, and of course all those lovable spies. Don’t miss this next instalment of this awesome series by an author who has a talent of keeping her readers glued to the book until the end’A Romance Review

The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

‘Willig spins another sultry spy tale … an elegant and grandly entertaining book’Publishers Weekly

‘Witty, smart, carefully detailed, and highly entertaining, Willig’s latest novel is an inventive, addictive novel’Romantic Times

‘The characters, romance, history, action and adventure, and most of all the wonderful writing, makes The Temptation of the Night Jasmine a superior and definite page-turning reading experience’Romance Readers Connection

The Mischief of the Mistletoe

‘Forget all the Austen updates and clones – Willig is writing the best Regency-era fiction today’Booklist

‘A light-hearted and sweet holiday romance … A shift of focus away from espionage and toward Jane Austen makes for a fun, fresh instalment in a successful series’Kirkus Reviews

‘Delightful … an exciting story’Publishers Weekly

The Mischief of the Mistletoe

LAUREN WILLIG

For my Tweedos (You know who you are) & For all of you who asked for a book about Turnip

Contents

PraiseTitle PageDedicationAn excerpt from the Dempsey collection: Miss Jane Austen to Miss Arabella DempseyChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-OneChapter Twenty-TwoChapter Twenty-ThreeChapter Twenty-FourChapter Twenty-FiveChapter Twenty-SixChapter Twenty-SevenChapter Twenty-EightChapter Twenty-NineAn excerpt from the Dempsey Collection: Miss Jane Austen to Miss Arabella DempseyAcknowledgementsHistorical NoteChristmas PuddingA Note About the Pink Carnation SeriesThe Secret History of the Pink CarnationThe Masque of the Black TulipThe Deception of the Emerald RingThe Seduction of the Crimson RoseThe Temptation of the Night JasmineAbout the AuthorBy Lauren WilligCopyright

A note for readers of the Pink Carnation series: the action of this book begins after The Seduction of the Crimson Rose, but before The Temptation of the Night Jasmine.

An excerpt from the Dempsey collection: Miss Jane Austen to Miss Arabella Dempsey

Sydney Place, Bath25 November, 1803

My dear Arabella,

Your letter took me quite by surprise this morning. I believe I drank too much wine last night; I know not else how to account for the shaking of my hand today, unless it be the shock of your news. You will kindly make allowance therefore for any indistinctness of writing by attributing it to this venial error.

We are all delighted at the prospect of having you again among us, but under such circumstances! What has the world come to when elderly aunts are so profligate of their fortunes as to squander them on half-pay officers? It saddens me to see you disappointed in your expectations, however much you may claim you expected nothing of the sort. A pretty piece of work your Aunt Osborne has made of it!

Mr Hoare straightaway said that a woman should notbe trusted with money; that your aunt ought to have settled something on you as soon as her husband died. To my remark that that would have been to trust you with money, and you a woman, too, he had nothing to say … But I must say no more on this subject.

What must I tell you of your sisters? Truth or falsehood? I will try the former and you may choose for yourself another time … Margaret you will find assiduously courting all accomplishments except that of good humour. As for Olivia, I suspect she does not exist; every time I call, her head is in a book, leaving only a set of limbs sprawled on the hearthrug. I have hopes for Lavinia, who goes on as a young lady of fifteen ought to do, admired and admiring, but for a certain boisterousness of spirit that time and care will cure.

Your father was to have dined with us today, but the weather was so cold he dared not venture forth.

You deserve a longer letter than this, but it is my unhappy fate to seldom treat people so well as they deserve. God bless you! And may God speed your journey to Bath.

Yours very affectionately, J. Austen Everybody’s love.

Bath December, 1803

‘“So Emma,” said he, “you are quite the stranger at home. It must seem odd enough for you to be here. A pretty piece of work your Aunt Turner has made of it! By heaven! … What a blow it must have been upon you! To find yourself, instead of heiress of eight or nine thousand pounds, sent back a weight upon your family, without a sixpence … After keeping you from your family for such a length of time as must do away all natural affection … you are returned upon their hands without a sixpence.’”

– Jane Austen, The Watsons

‘“Poverty is a great evil, but to a woman of education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest. I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.”

“I would rather do anything than be a teacher at a school,” said her sister.’

– Jane Austen, The Watsons

Chapter One

‘I am for teaching,’ announced Miss Arabella Dempsey.

Her grand pronouncement fell decidedly flat. It was hard to make grand pronouncements while struggling uphill on a steep road against a stiff wind, and even harder when the wind chose that moment to thrust your bonnet ribbons between your teeth. Arabella tasted wet satin and old dye.

‘For what?’ asked Miss Jane Austen, swiping at her own bonnet ribbons as the wind blew them into her face.

So much for grand pronouncements. ‘I intend to apply for a position at Miss Climpson’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies. There’s a position open for a junior instructress.’ There. It was out. Short, simple, to the point.

Jane screwed up her face against the wind. At least, Arabella hoped it was against the wind. ‘Are you quite sure?’

Sure? Arabella had never been less sure of anything in her life. ‘Absolutely.’

Jane hitched her pile of books up under one arm and shoved her ribbons back into place. ‘If you rest for a moment, perhaps the impulse will pass,’ she suggested.

‘It’s not an impulse. It’s a considered opinion.’

‘Not considered enough. Have you ever been inside a young ladies’ academy?’

Arabella made a face at the top of Jane’s bonneted head. It was very hard having an argument with someone when all you could see was the crown of her hat. Jane might be several years her senior, but she was also several inches shorter. The combination of the two put Arabella at a distinct disadvantage.

Six years older, Jane had always been as much an older sibling as a playmate, telling stories and bandaging bruised knees. Arabella’s father had been at one time a pupil of Mr Austen’s at Oxford, when Mr Austen had been a young proctor at St John’s. Back in the golden days of childhood, Arabella’s father’s parish had lain not far from Steventon, and both books and children had been exchanged back and forth between the two households.

This happy state of affairs had continued until Arabella was twelve. She remembered her head just fitting on Jane’s shoulder as she had cried on it that dreadful winter, as her mother lay still and cold among the grey sheets on the grey bed, everything hued in ice and shadow. She remembered the clasp of Jane’s hand as Aunt Osborne’s carriage had come to carry her away to London.

‘And what of your Aunt Osborne?’ Jane added. ‘I thought you were only visiting in Bath. Aren’t you to go back to her after Christmas?’

‘Mmmph.’ Arabella was so busy avoiding Jane’s eyes that she stumbled. Flushing, she gabbled, ‘Loose cobble. You would think they would keep the streets in better repair.’

‘How singular,’ said Jane. ‘The cobbles are perfectly stationary on this side of the street. Why this sudden desire to improve young minds?’

That was the problem with old friends. They saw far too much. Arabella developed a deep interest in the cobbles beneath her feet, picking her steps with unnecessary care. ‘Is it so unlikely I should want to do something more than be Aunt Osborne’s companion?’

‘You have a very comfortable home with her,’ Jane pointed out. ‘One ageing lady is less bother than fifty young girls.’

‘One ageing lady and one new uncle,’ Arabella shot back, and wished she hadn’t.

Jane looked at her, far too keenly for comfort. But all she said was, ‘It is final, then?’

‘As final as the marriage vow,’ said Arabella, with an attempt to keep her voice light. ‘My aunt and Captain Musgrave were married last week.’

‘But isn’t he …’

‘Half her age? Yes.’ There was no point in beating around the bush. It had been all over the scandal sheets. ‘But what are such petty things as numbers to the majesty of the human heart?’

Jane’s laughter made little puffs in the cold air. ‘A direct quotation?’

‘As near as I can recall.’ Arabella hadn’t been in a position to memorise specific phrases; she had been too numb with shock.

Captain Musgrave had made a pretty little speech out of it, all about love defying time, all the while holding Aunt Osborne’s jewelled hand in an actor’s practised grip, while she fluttered and dimpled up at him, her own expression more eloquent than any number of speeches. In the half-dark dining room, the candle flames created little pools of light in the polished surface of the dining table, oscillating off Aunt Osborne’s rings and the diamond pendant in her turban, but nothing shone so bright as her face. In the uncertain light, with her face lifted towards Captain Musgrave, tightening the loose skin beneath her chin, one could almost imagine her the beauty she once had been. Almost. Even candlelight wasn’t quite that kind.

One of her aunt’s friends had dropped a wine glass in shock at the announcement. Arabella could still hear the high, tinkling sound of shattering crystal in the sudden silence, echoing endlessly in her ears like the angry hum of a wasp. Arabella had made her way through the wreckage of shattered crystal, spilt claret staining her slippers, and wished them happy. At least, she assumed she had wished them happy. Memory blurred.

He had never made her any promises. At least, none that were explicit. It had all been done by implication and innuendo, a hand on her elbow here, a touch to her shoulder there, a meeting of eyes across a room. It was all very neatly done. There had been nothing concrete.

Except for that kiss.

‘It would make an excellent premise for a novel,’ said Jane. ‘A young girl, thrown back on her family after years in grander circumstances …’

‘Forced to deal with carping sisters and an invalid father?’ The wind was beginning to make Arabella’s head ache. She could feel the throb beginning just behind her temples. It hurt to think about what a fool she had been, even now, with two months’ distance. ‘If you must do it, at least change my name. Call her … oh, I don’t know. Elizabeth or Emma.’

‘Emma,’ said Jane decidedly. ‘I’ve already used Elizabeth.’

Arabella smiled with forced brightness. ‘Did I tell you that I finished a draft of my novel? I call it Sketches from the Life of a Young Lady in London. It’s not so much a novel, really. More a series of observations. Sketches, in fact.’

Jane ignored her attempts to change the subject. ‘Your father said you were only home until the holidays.’

‘I was. I am.’ Arabella struggled against the wind that seemed determined to wrap her skirt around her legs as she laboured uphill. What madman had designed the streets of Bath on a nearly perpendicular grade? Someone with a grudge against young ladies without the means to afford a carriage. ‘Aunt Osborne expects me back for Christmas. I am to spend the twelve days of Christmas with her at Girdings House at the express command of the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale.’

The invitation had been issued before Captain Musgrave had entered onto the scene. An invitation from the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale was something not to be denied. The Dowager Duchess of Dovedale possessed a particularly pointy cane and she knew just how to use it.

Arabella’s aunt attributed the invitation to her own social consequence, but Arabella knew better. The house party at Girdings was being thrown quite explicitly as a means of marrying off the dowager’s shy granddaughter, Charlotte. The dowager needed to even the numbers with young ladies who could be trusted to draw absolutely no attention to themselves. After years as her aunt’s companion, Arabella was a master at the art of self-effacement.

She had been, to Aunt Osborne, the equivalent of a piece of furniture, and to her aunt’s friends something even less.

The first person to have looked at her and seen her had been Captain Musgrave.

So much for that. What he had seen was her supposed inheritance. His eyes had been for Aunt Osborne’s gold, not for her. ‘And after Twelfth Night?’ Jane asked.

She wasn’t going back to that house. Not with them. Not ever. ‘What newlyweds want a poor relation cluttering up the house?’

Jane looked at her keenly. ‘Has your Aunt Osborne said as much?’

‘No. She wouldn’t. But I feel it.’ It would have been so much simpler if that had been all she felt. ‘It seemed like a good time to come home.’

Except that home wasn’t there anymore.

When she thought of home, it had always been of the ivy-hung parsonage of her youth, her father sitting in his study, writing long analyses of Augustan poetry and – very occasionally – his sermons, while her rosy-cheeked sisters tumbled among the butterflies in the flower-filled garden.

To see them now, in a set of rented rooms redolent of failure and boiled mutton, had jarred her. Her father’s cheeks were sunken, his frame gaunt. Margaret had gone from being a self-important eight-year-old to an embittered twenty. Olivia had no interest in anything outside the covers of her books; not novels, but dusty commentaries on Latin authors dredged from their father’s shelves. Lavinia, a roly-poly three-year-old when Arabella left, was all arms and legs at fifteen, out-going and awkward. They had grown up without her. There was no place for her in their lives.

No place for her in London, no place for her in Bath. No place for her with her aunt, with her father, her sisters. Arabella fought against a dragging sensation of despair. The wind whistled in her ears, doing its best to push her back down the hill up which she had so laboriously climbed.

Absurd to recall that just three months ago she had believed herself on the verge of being married, living every day in constant expectation of a proposal. It was a proposal that had come, but to Aunt Osborne, not to her.

A lucky escape, she told herself stoutly, struggling her way up the hill. He had proved himself a fortune hunter and a cad. Wasn’t she better off without such a husband as that? And she wasn’t entirely without resources, whatever the Musgraves of the world might believe. She had her own wits to see her through. Being a schoolmistress might not be what she had expected, and it certainly wasn’t the same as having a home of one’s own, but it would give her somewhere to go, something to do, a means of living without relying on the charity of her aunt. Or her new uncle.

Uncle Hayworth. It made her feel more than a little sick.

‘She must not have been able to do without you,’ said Jane.

Arabella wrenched her attention back to her friend. ‘Who?’

‘Your aunt.’ When Arabella continued to look at her blankly, Jane said, ‘You hadn’t heard?’

‘Heard what?’

Jane shook her head. ‘I must have been mistaken. I heard your aunt was in Bath. A party came up from London. There’s to be an assembly and a frost fair.’

‘No. I—’ Arabella bit her lip. ‘You probably weren’t mistaken. I’m sure she is in town.’

Captain Musgrave had expressed a desire to go to Bath. He had never been, he said. He had made serious noises about Roman ruins and less serious ones about restorative waters, making droll fun of the invalids in their Bath chairs sipping sulfurous tonics.

Jane looked at her with concerned eyes. ‘Wouldn’t she have called?’

‘Aunt Osborne call at Westgate Buildings? The imagination rebels.’ No matter that Arabella had lived under her roof for the larger part of her life; Aunt Osborne only recognised certain addresses. Pasting on a bright smile, Arabella resolutely changed the subject. ‘But Miss Climpson’s is within easy distance of Westgate Buildings. I’ll be near enough to visit on my half days.’

‘If you have half days,’ murmured Jane.

Arabella chose to ignore her. ‘Perhaps Margaret will like me better if she doesn’t have to share a bed with me.’ She had meant it as a joke, but it came out flat. ‘I don’t want to be a burden on them.’

It was as close as she could come to mentioning the family finances, even to an old family friend.

Jane made a face. ‘But to teach …’

‘How can you speak against teaching, with your own father a teacher?’

‘He teaches from home, not a school,’ Jane pointed out sagely. ‘It’s an entirely different proposition.’

‘I certainly can’t teach from my home,’ said Arabella tartly. ‘There’s scarcely room for us all as it is. Our lodgings are bursting at the seams. If we took in pupils, we would have to stow them in the kitchen dresser, or under the stove like kindling.’

Jane regarded her with frank amusement. ‘Under the stove? You don’t have much to do with kitchens in London, do you?’

‘You sound like Margaret now.’

‘That,’ said Jane, ‘was unkind.’

Arabella brushed that aside. ‘If I ask nicely, perhaps Miss Climpson will agree to take Lavinia and Olivia on as day students.’

It was a bit late for Olivia, already sixteen, but would be a distinct advantage for Lavinia. Arabella, at least, had had the advantage of a good governess, courtesy of Aunt Osborne, and she knew her sisters felt the lack.

‘It will not be what you are accustomed to,’ Jane warned.

‘I wasn’t accustomed to what I was accustomed to,’ said Arabella. It was true. She had never felt really at home in society. She was too awkward, too shy, too tall.

‘It is a pretty building, at least,’ she said as they made their way along the Sydney Gardens. Miss Climpson’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies was situated on Sydney Place, not far from the Austens’ residence.

‘On the outside,’ said Jane. ‘You won’t be seeing much of the façade once you’re expected to spend your days within. You can change your mind, you know. Come stay with us for a few weeks instead. My mother and Cassandra would be delighted to have you.’

Arabella paused in front of the door of Miss Climpson’s seminary. It was painted a pristine white with an arched top. It certainly looked welcoming enough and not at all like the prison her friend painted it. She could be happy here, she told herself.

It was the sensible, responsible decision. She would be making some use of herself, freeing her family from the burden of keeping her.

It wasn’t just running away.

Arabella squared her shoulders. ‘Please give your mother and Cassandra my fondest regards,’ she said, ‘and tell them I will see them at supper.’

‘You are resolved, then?’

Resolved wasn’t quite the word Arabella would have chosen.

‘At least in a school,’ she said, as much to convince herself as her companion, ‘I should feel that I was doing something, something for the good both of my family and the young ladies in my charge. All those shining young faces, eager to learn …’

Jane cast her a sidelong glance. ‘It is painfully apparent that you never attended a young ladies’ academy.’

Chapter Two

They were everywhere.

Girls.

Young girls. Very young girls. Even younger girls. Not a surprising thing to be found in an all-girls’ school, but Mr Reginald Fitzhugh, more commonly known to his friends and associates as Turnip, hadn’t quite thought through all the ramifications of placing nearly fifty young ladies – using the term ‘ladies’ loosely – under one set of eaves. They thronged the foyer, playing tiddlywinks, nudging one another’s arms, whispering, giggling. There was no escaping them.

And someone had thought this was a good idea?

Turnip dodged out of the way of a flying tiddlywink, wondering why no one had warned of the hazards involved in paying calls on all-girls’ academies. Come to think of it, this must be why his parents had been so deuced eager to foist the job of delivering Sally’s Christmas hamper off on him. He might not be the brightest vegetable in the patch, but he knew a dodge when he saw one.

At the time, it had all been couched in the most sensible and flattering of terms. He was already planning to visit friends at Selwick Hall in early December; it would be only a short jaunt from there to Bath. It would give him an opportunity to test the mettle of his new matched bays, and besides, ‘Sally will be so delighted to see her favourite brother!’

Favourite brother, ha! He was her only brother. It didn’t take much school learning to count to one.

And where was Miss Sally? Some sign of sisterly devotion, that, thought Turnip darkly, leaving him stranded in a wilderness of young females armed with projectiles. If she wanted her ruddy Christmas hamper that badly, she could at least come to collect it.

He didn’t even see why she bally well needed a Christmas hamper. She would be home for Christmas. What was so devilish imperative that it couldn’t wait the three weeks until Sal hauled herself home for the holidays? She didn’t seem to be the only one, however. Among the bustle in the hallway were what appeared to be other siblings, parents, and guardians, bringing their guilt gifts of fruit, cake, and fripperies to their indulged offspring. The only one Turnip recognised was Lord Henry Innes, bruising rider to hounds, terror in the boxing ring, also lugging a large hamper.

According to his parents, there was a regular black market in Christmas hamper goods at Miss Climpson’s seminary and Sally didn’t like to be behind-hand in anything. It was, his mother explained, the female equivalent of debts of honour, and he wouldn’t want Sally to welsh on a debt of honour, would he now?

His mother, Turnip thought darkly, had neglected to mention the tiddlywinks.

‘Mr Fitzhugh?’ A harried-looking young lady lightly touched his arm. From her age and the fact that she was tiddlywink-free, Turnip cunningly surmised that she must be a junior mistress rather than a pupil. On the other hand, one could never be too sure. Deuced devious, some of those young girls. After years of Sally, he should know. ‘You are Mr Fitzhugh, are you not?’

‘The last time I checked!’ said Turnip cheerfully. ‘Not that names tend to change about on one that much, but one can never be too careful. Chap I knew went to bed one name last week and woke up another.’

Poor Ruddy Carstairs. He had gone about in a daze all day, completely unable to comprehend why everyone kept calling him Smooton. It had taken him all day to figure out it was because his uncle had stuck in his spoon and left him the title. It made Turnip very glad he didn’t have any uncles, or at least not ones with titles. He’d got rather used to being Mr Fitzhugh. It suited him, like a well-tailored suit of clothes. He’d hate to have to get used to another.

‘Ah, bon,’ said the young lady, looking decidedly relieved, as well as more than a little bit French. Odd thing, nationality. She looked just like everyone else, but when she opened her mouth, the French just came out. ‘I would have recognised the resemblance anywhere. I am Mademoiselle de Fayette. I teach the French to your sister. Will you come with me?’

Turnip hefted the Christmas hamper. ‘Lead on!’

‘Miss Fitzhugh waits for you in the blue parlour,’ said the French mistress, leading him down a long corridor dotted with doors, through which various odd sounds could be heard. Someone appeared to be reciting poetry. Through another, rhythmic thumps could be heard.

‘Dancing lessons,’ the teacher explained.

It sounded more like something being pounded to death with a large club. Turnip feared for his feet when this new crop of debutantes was let loose on the ballrooms of London and Bath.

The French mistress opened another door, revealing a parlour that lived up to its title by the blue of its paper and drapes. There was, however, one slight problem. Or rather, three slight problems.

‘I say,’ said Turnip. ‘Only one of these is mine.’

The one that happened to be his jumped up out of her chair. There was no denying the family resemblance. Sally’s bright gold hair was considerably longer, of course, and she wore a white muslin dress rather than a – if Turnip said so himself – deuced fetching carnation-patterned waistcoat, but they had the same long-boned bodies and cameo-featured faces.

They were, thought Turnip without conceit, a very attractive family. As more than one would-be wit had said, they were all long on looks and short on brains.

It was only fair, really. One couldn’t expect to have everything.

Sally gave him a loud smack on the cheek.

‘Silly Reggie!’ she said, in the fond tone she used when other people were around. ‘I wanted Agnes and Lizzy to meet my favourite brother. It’s so lovely to see you. Do you have my hamper?’

‘Right here,’ said Turnip, brandishing it. ‘And jolly heavy it is, too. What do you have in here? Bricks?’

‘What would I do with those?’ demanded Sally in tones of sisterly scorn.

‘Build something?’ suggested one of her friends, revealing a dimple in one cheek. There were two of them, both attired in muslin dresses with blue sashes. The one who had spoken had bronzy curls and a decided look of mischief about her.

‘Oh, Miss Climpson would adore that,’ said Sally witheringly. Dropping the lid of the hamper, she belatedly remembered her manners. ‘Reggie, allow me to present you to Miss Agnes Wooliston’ – the taller of the two girls curtsied – ‘and Miss Lizzy Reid.’ Bronze curls bounced.

Sally beamed regally upon them both. ‘They are my particular friends.’

‘What happened to Annabelle Anstrue and Catherine Carruthers?’

Sally’s tone turned glacial. ‘They are no longer my particular friends.’

Turnip gave up. Female friendships were a deuced sight harder to follow than international alliances.

‘What did they do?’ he asked jocularly. ‘Borrow your ribbons without asking?’

Sally set her chin in a way that her instructresses would have recognised all too well. ‘I liked those ribbons.’

‘Ah, yes, well. Righty-ho,’ said Turnip hastily, taking a few steps back. Hell hath no fury like a little sister whose ribbon box had been tampered with. ‘Good term at school, then?’

‘Oh, an excellent one!’ contributed one of his sister’s new sworn siblings. Bouncing curls … this one was Lizzy Reid. Not that it did any good to remember their names. It would be a new set by next Christmas. That is, if Sally weren’t already out on the marriage market by then. That was a terrifying thought, his little sister let loose on the world. It was one that Turnip preferred not to contemplate. Ah well, time enough to jump that hedge when he came to it. ‘Catherine Carruthers was caught exchanging notes with one of the gardeners and was almost sent home in disgrace!’

‘It wasn’t actually with the gardener,’ the other one broke in. ‘He simply carried the notes for her. It was some officer or other on leave from his regiment.’

Sally squinted at her. ‘Are you quite sure? I heard that it was an artist and they were going to run away to Rome together!’

Tugging at his cravat, Turnip glanced over his shoulder at the door. Was it just him, or did they keep the school unnaturally warm for December? The French mistress, he noticed, had already beat a hasty retreat. Deuced sensible of her. For a large room, this one felt jolly small.

‘Righty-ho, then,’ he said again. ‘Jolly good. Rome is lovely this time of year. Wouldn’t mind being there myself in fact.’

‘Reggie!’ His sister pulled a horrified face, delighted to be appalled. ‘It isn’t jolly good, it’s a terrible scandal!’

‘Then why are you all grinning about it?’

The three girls exchanged a look, one of those looks that somehow managed to combine long-suffering patience with a hearty dose of feminine scorn. They must teach those at school along with tromping on a chap’s toes during the quadrille.

‘Because,’ said Lizzy Reid, ‘without scandal, what would there be for us to talk about?’

Turnip suspected a trick question. ‘Your lessons?’ he suggested.

‘Oh, Reggie,’ said Sally sadly.

Blast. It had been a trick question.

‘Now,’ said Sally, getting down to business, ‘let us discuss my travel arrangements.’

‘What travel arrangements?’ said Turnip warily.

‘When you take me home for Christmas, of course,’ said Sally, as though it were a forgone conclusion. ‘You can call for me the morning of the twentieth. That should leave plenty of time to drive up to Suffolk.’

‘Oh no.’ Turnip wasn’t falling for that one. He folded his arms across his chest. ‘Can’t be done, I’m afraid. The Dowager Duchess of Dovedale is having a house party. Wouldn’t want to cross the Dowager Duchess.’

Even Sally wouldn’t want to cross fans with the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale. The woman had a tongue of steel and drank the blood of young virgins for breakfast. Well, the blood-drinking had never been proved. But she could be jolly nasty when she chose, and she usually did choose. That cane of hers left quite a welt.

‘Pooh,’ said Sally. Pooh? Turnip regarded his little sister incredulously. When had it come to this? ‘Parva Magna is on the way. You can drop me off home and then go on to Girdings. Do say yes,’ she wheedled. ‘We’ll have such fun along the way. You can buy me lemonades and tell me all about your latest waistcoats.’

Turnip wasn’t quite sure why buying her lemonades was meant to be a privilege, but Sally clearly viewed it as such, so there was no point in arguing.

‘Didn’t the mater and pater make other arrangements for you?’ he asked suspiciously.

Sally wrinkled her nose. ‘Yes, to travel with Miss Climpson! But she’s a regular antidote. It will be deadly.’

‘A fate worse than death!’ chimed in Agnes Wooliston, loyally rushing to her friend’s support.

‘Doing it a bit too brown there,’ said Turnip frankly. ‘Death is death and there’s no getting around that.’

‘That,’ said Lizzy Reid, ‘is because you haven’t yet met Miss Climpson. If you had, you would understand. She’s ghastly.’

Turnip rubbed his ear. What was it about young ladies and italics? It was deuced hard on the hearing, having all those words pounded into his head like so many stakes into the ground.

‘Ghastly and deadly,’ he said weakly. ‘Sounds like quite the character.’

‘Yes, but would you want to spend four days in a covered conveyance with her?’ demanded Sally. ‘You couldn’t possibly wish that on anyone.’

Agnes Wooliston assumed a thoughtful expression. ‘What about Bonaparte?’

‘Well, possibly Bonaparte,’ allowed Sally, making an exception for the odd Corsican dictator. Her blue eyes, so very much like Turnip’s, only far more shrewd (or so she liked to claim), narrowed. ‘Or maybe Catherine Carruthers.’

‘Really liked those ribbons, did you?’ commented Turnip, and regretted it as three sets of female eyes turned back to him. ‘Never mind that. I’ll think about it. It’s only the beginning of the month now. Plenty of time to come to an agreement.’

His little sister favoured him with an approving smile. ‘Excellent! I’ll expect you the morning of the twentieth, then. Do try to be on time this year.’

‘Just a minute, now.’ Turnip did his best to look stern, but his features had never been designed for that exercise. ‘I never said—’

‘No worries!’ said Sally brightly. ‘I wouldn’t want to keep you when I’m sure you have other things you want to do today. We’ll have plenty of time to catch up in the carriage together.’

‘About that—’

‘Here.’ Getting up, she grabbed something off the windowsill and pressed it into his palm. ‘Have a Christmas pudding.’

‘A—’ Turnip squinted dubiously down at the muslin-wrapped ball in his hands.

‘Christmas pudding,’ Sally contributed helpfully.

She was right. It was indubitably a Christmas pudding, if a small one, roughly the size of a cricket ball, wrapped in clean muslin and tied up with pretty gold and red ribbons with a sprig of mistletoe for decoration.

‘What am I to do with a Christmas pudding?’

‘Throw it?’ suggested Lizzy Reid. ‘One certainly can’t be expected to eat them.’

Interesting idea, that. Turnip hefted the pudding in one hand. Nice fit, nice weight. It would make a jolly good projectile.

Good projectile or not, it didn’t make up for four days on the road, fifty-two stops for lemonade, and an endless refrain of ‘But why can’t I hold the reins this time?’ When he thought about what had happened the last time he had let Sally drive his greys … It was the reason he no longer had greys and now drove bays. The greys had been so traumatised by the experience that they had to be permanently rusticated to a peaceful pasture in Suffolk.

Turnip juggled the pudding from one hand to the other. ‘I say, frightfully grateful and all that, but …’

‘Think nothing of it,’ said Sally firmly, looping an arm through his and leading him inexorably from the room. ‘It’s the least I can do. To thank you for being such a lovely brother.’

‘I think I deserve a bigger pudding,’ mumbled Turnip as he stumbled out along the hallway, wondering just how it was that Sally had got her way yet again.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love the minx. Of course, he did. As these things went, she was the positive gold standard of female siblings, the Weston’s waistcoat of little sisters. That didn’t mean he loved the idea of four days in a carriage with her.

With a meditative toss of his pudding, Turnip reached for the door. Unfortunately, someone else was there first. The pudding tumbled to the floor as Turnip collided with something soft, warm, and quite clearly not a door.

Doors, after all, seldom said ‘Ooof!’

Chapter Three

Half an hour later, Arabella emerged from the headmistress’s office as a newly minted junior instructress of select young ladies.

All around her, the hall had been decked for Christmas, with bright bows of greenery and sprigs of holly. A pair of bright-eyed young girls walked past her, arm in arm, whispering confidences. Arabella forced herself to unknot her hands, taking a deep, ragged breath. It was done. She had done it, persuaded Miss Climpson to take her on, on short notice with no prior experience. It helped that Arabella had enjoyed the tutelage of an excellent governess, courtesy of Aunt Osborne. It also helped that the headmistress had found herself short an instructress with only three weeks remaining to the term. That, Arabella knew, had been the deciding factor, rather than anything inherent to herself.

Whatever the cause, she had accomplished her goal. She was to start on Monday, and if the three weeks before Christmas went well, she could stay on for the following term. Miss Climpson had made no promises regarding Olivia and Lavinia, but she had promised to consider it. Should Arabella prove satisfactory.

Arabella looked around the hall, at the bows and greenery and whispering girls. She could picture Lavinia and Olivia here. It would be good for them. Olivia needed to be drawn out of herself, exposed to the society of, well, society. As for Lavinia, exuberant and endearing, she needed just the opposite. Miss Climpson’s would provide her with structure and polish.

As for herself … well, there were worse fates, no matter what Jane said. Better to be a teacher at a school than a governess, dependent on one family for her livelihood, caught in a strange half-world between the drawing room and the servants’ hall. Going back to Aunt Osborne was out of the question. And she had long ago accepted that she wasn’t the sort of girl who could expect an advantageous marriage to secure her future and that of her family.

She was, not to put too fine a point on it, average. Not ugly, not striking, just average, with eye-coloured eyes and hair-coloured hair. Her eyes were blue, but they weren’t the sort of blue about which her father’s poets sang. They weren’t azure or primrose or deepest sapphire. They were just blue. Plain, common, garden-variety blue, and about as remarkable in England as a daffodil among a field of daffodils. Hardly an asset on the marriage market, especially when coupled with lack of fortune, an invalid father, and three undowered sisters.

It was highly unlikely that any gentlemen of large fortune and undiscriminating taste would rush forward to bowl her over.

Arabella staggered sideways as a large form careened into her, sending her stumbling into the doorframe, while something small, round, and compact managed to land heavily on her left foot before rolling along its way.

‘Ooof!’ Arabella said cleverly, flailing her arms for balance. This was not an auspicious beginning to her career as a dignified instructress of young ladies.

A pair of sturdy hands caught her by the shoulders before she could go over, hauling her back up to her feet. He overshot by a bit. Arabella found herself dangling in midair for a moment before her feet landed once again on the wooden floor.

‘I say, frightfully sorry!’ her unseen assailant and rescuer was babbling. ‘Deuced ungentlemanly of me – ought to have been watching where I was going.’

Arabella’s bonnet had been knocked askew in the fracas. She was above the average height, but this man was even taller. With her bonnet brim in the way, all she could see was a stretch of brightly patterned waistcoat, a masterpiece of fine fabric and poor taste.

Everyone knew about Turnip Fitzhugh’s waistcoats.

Mr Fitzhugh bent earnestly over her. ‘Frightfully sorry and all that. I do beg your pardon, Miss …’

He paused expectantly, looking down at her, waiting for her to complete the sentence for him, his blue eyes as guileless as a child’s. And as devoid of recognition.

‘Dempsey. Miss Arabella Dempsey. We’ve met before. In fact, we have danced together, Mr Fitzhugh. Several times.’

‘Oh.’ His broad brow furrowed and an expression of consternation crossed his face. ‘Oh. I say. I am sorry.’

‘Why?’ She had never thought she could be so bold, but it just came out. ‘I don’t recall stepping on your feet. You ought to have emerged from the experience unscathed.’

In fact, she was quite a good dancer. But did anyone ever notice? No. If she looked like Mary Alsworthy or had five thousand pounds a year like Deirdre Fairfax, they’d all be praising her for being as light on her feet as thistledown, but she could float like a feather for all any of them cared, or sink like lead. At that rate, she ought to have stomped on a few toes. At least that would have been one way to leave an impression.

‘Wouldn’t want you to think … I never meant to imply … That is to say, what I meant was that I’m not much of a dab hand at names, you see. Or faces. Or dates.’

Arabella smiled determinedly at Mr Fitzhugh, and if the smile was rather grim around the edges, hopefully he wouldn’t notice. ‘It is quite all right, Mr Fitzhugh. You’re certainly not the first to have forgotten my name. Or the date of the Norman Conquest,’ she added, in an attempt to inject a bit of levity.

It didn’t work. Instead of being diverted, Mr Fitzhugh just looked sorry. For her. ‘I won’t forget it again,’ he said. ‘Your name, that is. I can’t make any promises about the Norman Conquest.’

‘Thank you, Mr Fitzhugh. You are too kind.’

‘Didn’t think there was such a thing,’ Mr Fitzhugh mused. ‘As too much kindness, that is.’ Peering down at her, he added, as though the thought had just struck him. ‘I say, I didn’t mean to detain you. Or knock you over. Might I, er, see you anywhere? My chariot is at your disposal.’

‘Oh, no, that’s quite all right. I’m joining friends for supper just across the street.’

‘That’s all right, then,’ Mr Fitzhugh said with evident relief. ‘Shouldn’t like to leave you here by yourself. Not after knocking you over and all that.’

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 at all,’ 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 leant over the pudding wrapper, saying in puzzled tones, ‘It seems it wanted someone to meet it at Farley Castle tomorrow afternoon.’

It was, Arabella realised, 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.’

Chapter Four

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 …’

‘Irregular?’ suggested Turnip.

To his surprise, her lips turned up at the corners. ‘I was going to say intriguing, but irregular would suit as well.’ Turning to the would-be pudding thief, who had levered himself up off the ground, she asked, ‘Who was it who sent you after the pudding?’

‘Dunno. She came running up to me all distressed-like, grabbed my arm, and told me there’d be a guinea in it for me if I got ’er pudding back.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s all.’

‘And you never asked why?’ asked Miss Dempsey.

The man gave her a look, as if to wonder why she would suggest such a harebrained thing as that. ‘There was a guinea in it,’ he repeated.

‘Right, of course,’ said Miss Dempsey, shaking her head slightly. ‘Naturally.’

The man stuck out his hand at Turnip. ‘Speaking of guineas … Care to cross my palm and we’ll call it no ’ard feelings about the jaw-box?’

‘How about a shilling?’ asked Turnip, digging into his pocket.

Miss Dempsey edged around him. ‘This woman. Where did she come from? What did she look like?’

The man’s fist closed around the shilling Turnip dropped into his palm. ‘Dunno. She promised me a guinea for the pudding is all.’

And with that, he touched his forelock and sauntered away.

Miss Dempsey looked at Turnip thoughtfully. ‘Where did you get the pudding?’ she asked.

Turnip scratched his temple, displacing his hat in the process. ‘My sister, Sally,’ he said. ‘Can’t think why she’d be hiding messages in – oh.’

‘Oh?’ Miss Dempsey tilted her head quizzically.

‘No,’ he said decidedly, dismissing the idea as quickly as it had arisen. It would be deuced unfair to Sally to go about accusing her of setting up illicit assignations. He had every faith in his sister’s moral rectitude. And her ingenuity. If Sally were to arrange an assignation, she wouldn’t do it in such an addlepated way. He was the addlepated one in the family, and he was sticking to it. ‘It ain’t like Sal to set up assignations through puddings. She’s not the assignating kind.’

‘My assailant did say a woman,’ Miss Dempsey murmured. ‘Perhaps one of the instructresses? Your sister might have got hold of the pudding by accident.’

Turnip clapped his hat firmly back onto his head. ‘Only one way to find out, isn’t there? We can ask her.’

‘We?’

‘You will come with me, won’t you, Miss Dempsey?’ Turnip flashed her his most winning smile. ‘You can’t expect a chap to venture back into that den of females unprotected, can you? No offence meant. Your being a female and all that, I mean.’

‘How kind of you to notice,’ muttered Miss Dempsey.

‘Nothing against the breed – er, gender,’ Turnip hastened to reassure her. ‘Some of my favourite people are females. But it’s when you put lots and lots of them together in a room … it becomes …’

‘A bit overwhelming?’ Turnip spotted a hint of a smile beneath Miss Dempsey’s bonnet brim and knew he was winning.

Turnip nodded vigorously. ‘The very thing.’

‘I have three younger sisters,’ Miss Dempsey contributed. ‘All of them at home.’ She didn’t need to explain what she meant. Turnip felt for her, right down to the bottom of his waistcoat. There was no saying what younger sisters might get up to.

‘Will you come with me?’ he asked eagerly.

Miss Dempsey looked at the pudding cloth in her hand and then back at Turnip. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘This day certainly can’t get any stranger.’

It was not exactly a resounding affirmative, but Turnip knew how to seize his advantage when he had it. ‘Jolly good!’ he exclaimed, hustling her forward before she could change her mind. ‘Shan’t regret it! Lovely girl, Sally. Most of the time.’

‘Most of the time?’ repeated Miss Dempsey as she hurried along beside him into the foyer. Turnip pretended not to hear her.

‘Right this way!’ he said with exaggerated cheerfulness. ‘Can’t think they will have gone far. When I saw them last they were – ah, right. Here we go.’

The three girls were still together in the blue salon, their heads together, cackling like those three hags in that play he had slept through last month. Something to do with a Scotsman.

Miss Dempsey, he noticed, was still limping slightly, undoubtedly from her tumble on the cobbles. Pluck to the backbone, she was, he thought admiringly. Not a word of complaint out of her.

The same couldn’t be said of Sally.

‘Reggie!’ exclaimed Sally, her pearl earrings swinging as she jumped up. Technically, Miss Climpson’s girls weren’t supposed to wear earrings, but Sally was firmly of the opinion that foolish rules were for other people. ‘What are you doing back so soon? When I told you to be early, I didn’t mean this early.’

‘Oh, ha, ha,’ said Turnip cleverly. ‘What’s the idea of giving me a pudding with a message in it? Oh, this is Miss Dempsey. Miss Dempsey, my sister Sally and her two most peculiar friends.’

‘You mean my two most particular friends,’ corrected Sally through gritted teeth. Donning the mask of sweetness she wore in front of non-family members, she dipped into a curtsy. ‘Miss Dempsey. How did you ever come to be associated with my ridiculous brother?’

Miss Dempsey extended the cloth. ‘We were brought together by an accident of pudding.’

‘The one you gave me,’ Turnip prompted, looking sternly at Sally. ‘A thief knocked Miss Dempsey over in an attempt to retrieve it.’

‘Really?’ Lizzy Reid’s eyes were as round as … well, as very round things. ‘A footpad? How simply smashing!’

‘Yes, if you’re the pudding. It was quite smashed, and so was Miss Dempsey.’