There was something a little macabre about it, the gaily wrapped Christmas pudding so purposefully perched in the cold, marble hands of the effigy. Cold marble hands, cold marble lips, and beneath it all, the bones of the woman who had been, eaten bare by worms and slow time.
It might be decorative, but it was still a grave.
Arabella shivered, and not from the cold. “Is it just me, or do you find this a little... incongruous?”
Mr. Fitzhugh tilted his head, taking in the scene from another angle. “Not so odd as all that, when you think of it. We leave flowers on graves, so why not a pudding?”
“I doubt this one was intended for... well, whatever her name is.”
“Lady Margaret Hungerford,” Mr. Fitzhugh provided promptly.
Arabella looked at the tomb and then back at Mr. Fitzhugh. There was no inscription, at least none readily apparent from where they were standing.
Mr. Fitzhugh developed a deep interest in the folds of his cravat. “I read up a bit before we came,” he mumbled. “Thought you and Miss Austen might want to know. Let’s take a look at the pudding, shall we?”
“Someone has very odd ideas about billet doux,” she managed to say, with a suitable approximation of sangfroid, as Mr. Fitzhugh leaned over the pudding.
Mr. Fitzhugh grinned up at her. “If you’re going to have sweet letters, why not put them in a sweet meat?”
“Because it’s rather sticky?” ventured Arabella. She looked over her shoulder, very much hoping that no one else would take it upon themselves to visit the chapel just now. She could just picture the expression on Jane’s face when she entered to find the two of them avidly dissecting a Christmas pudding in search of secret messages.
Arabella grimaced at herself. If there was anything worse than being caught in an assignation, it was being caught in one that wasn’t about assignating.
“The ribbons are the same shade as the last one,” Mr. Fitzhugh was saying, leaning in for a better look. “And there’s definitely writing on it — whoever it was wrote on the ribbons this time. Guess she didn’t like the pudding goo mucking up her message.”
“So we assume it is a she?”
Going back to his examination of the pudding, Mr. Fitzhugh said, with great authority, “Looks like a woman’s handwriting to me.”
Did he see a wide range of women’s handwriting?
Arabella strained to see over his shoulder. “What does it say?”
Her shoulder bumped against his. There was no padding there. She could feel the muscles flex beneath his tightly fitted coat as he leaned forward to flip over a ribbon. Arabella edged a little closer. He was so nicely warm, and she was cold even in her long pelisse.
Mr. Fitzhugh squinted at the minuscule writing that nearly blended with the fabric. “Whoever it was wrote in French again. Il faut que...”
It is necessary that... Arabella tentatively tapped him on the arm. “Il faut que what?”
His breath steamed in the air as he peered at the ribbon. “Something about a deal. It is necessary that the deal be struck at once. The authorities...”
Arabella leaned over his shoulder, intrigued despite herself. “Which authorities?”
Mr. Fitzhugh shook his head in frustration. “The writing’s gone blurry. Something suspicieux.” He scrolled along the slippery length of the ribbon. “The authorities are suspicious — ”
“And this,” announced a faintly foreign voice, “is Saint Anne’s Chantry.”
Arabella’s head jerked up like a puppet on a string. Her eyes met Mr. Fitzhugh’s. In unspoken accord, they spun around, blocking the pudding with their backs.
Arabella banged into Mr. Fitzhugh’s side. Her elbow connected with a rib.
Mr. Fitzhugh smiled manfully and gasped out, “Cheval — um-er! Enjoying the ruins, eh, what?”
“Not nearly so much as you,” commented the chevalier blandly, amusement dancing in his hazel eyes. “You seem to have got ahead of me, Fitzhugh.”
Arabella hastily righted her bonnet. “Fascinating chapel, isn’t it?” she said brightly, her voice a full octave above its normal range. “So many funeral monuments!”
“Yes, indeed,” said Jane, wrinkling her brows at her. “One does enjoy a good funeral monument. Always amusing to be reminded of one’s own mortality.”
“Memento mori and all that!” contributed Mr. Fitzhugh, resting his elbows on Sir Edward Hungerford’s marble arm in an attempt to block any view of the pudding.
“Are these all funeral monuments?” Jane asked, looking around curiously.
“Yes, indeed.” The chevalier must have been the sort of boy who put frogs in people’s beds. His eyes were bright with mischief. “Each one a marker of the mortal remains of your not-so-distant ancestors.”
“Well, then,” said Mr. Fitzhugh heartily, leaning so far back that he was practically lying across Sir Edward Hungerford’s lap. “No point in dwelling here among the dead. Shall we go back to the picnic?”
The chevalier showed no sign of moving. “Have you no interest in the fate of your ancestors, Mr. Fitzhugh? Look at this plaque. It dates to sixteen forty-eight. That was during your civil war, was it not?”
“Don’t know about you,” said Mr. Fitzhugh loudly, “but there’s a pie with my name on it out there.”
“It was not a good era for heads, your civil war,” said the chevalier.
“Civil wars seldom are,” agreed Jane.
“All these chaps seem to have their heads on straight. At least the ones on the walls,” said Mr. Fitzhugh in an attempt to redirect the attention of the chevalier. Arabella could feel him shift on his feet as he surreptitiously stretched out his arm, groping for the pudding.
“Well, they would, wouldn’t they?” said the chevalier, raising an eyebrow at Mr. Fitzhugh. Mr. Fitzhugh froze. Arabella was reminded of a children’s game, one called statues, where the players could only move when the primary actor’s back was turned. “One wouldn’t want to be preserved for posterity without one’s most identifiable feature. Like the Duke of Monmouth.”
“The duke of who?” asked Jane innocently.
Arabella gave her a hard look. Jane had written her own, rather mocking, history of Britain. She knew very well who the Duke of Monmouth was. But she would have her fun.
To Arabella’s surprise, it was Mr. Fitzhugh who answered. “Duke of Monmouth. He was a, um, er, child of Charles II.” He tactfully omitted the word bastard. “Got his head lopped off for treason.”
“But they didn’t do it right,” contributed the chevalier, in thrilling tones. “It took five blows of the ax to sever Monmouth’s head. And that — ”
Mr. Fitzhugh looked anxiously at the ladies. “Don’t know if — ,” he began.
“Is when they remembered that they had forgotten to paint his portrait,” the chevalier finished innocently.
“Oh,” said Mr. Fitzhugh. “Right.”
“You can see how that would be a problem,” said the Chevalier.
“History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in,” pronounced Jane. “I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me.”
“How so?” asked the chevalier. Arabella wondered if he suspected that Jane was bamming him.
Jane waved a hand. “The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all. It is very tiresome.”
“That sounds like something out of a book,” said the chevalier. “Not Dr. Johnson, surely?”
Jane was at her most demure. “No, although no doubt someday someone will lay claim to it on his behalf. I have recently been informed with great authority that Dr. Johnson was the author of Camilla.”
“Nonsense,” said the chevalier blandly. “I have it on even better authority that both Camilla and Evelina were the works of Voltaire. Operating under a pseudonym, of course.”