The floor quivered with the pounding of masculine feet as the gentlemen grabbed up their guns and thudded for the doors, ready to repel an armada of trees.
“Every able-bodied man to his post! No shirkers!” barked a ruddy-faced gentleman in a too tightly buttoned coat, the master of the local hunt if the stentorian quality of his voice was anything to go by. He gave Musgrave a shove that sent the younger man stumbling several feet forward. “No lagging, man! To the tree!”
“The tree!” echoed the horde behind him, and Musgrave was swept up in the mob, pouring out through the double doors, past the offended statuary, down the marble hall, out the wide-flung doors and down the garden steps, where torches had been set out to light their way, and the men whooped and shot into the air for the sheer glee of it in the cold night air.
With all the men gone, the gallery felt much larger. Large and empty and suddenly cold. Arabella wrapped her shawl more firmly about her shoulders, regretting that it was only a wispy thing of silk and fringe, designed for fashion rather than warmth. Some of the ladies remained, chattering in small groups, but the majority appeared to have retired for the night, ceding the remainder of the evening to the gentlemen and their pursuits.
“ — will have to be carried upstairs again,” one matron sighed to another. “Singing vulgar songs and still wearing his boots.”
“It’s that cider,” said her companion, pronouncing the word with distaste. “I can’t think why the duchess allows it.”
“It is Epiphany Eve,” said the first, apologetically. “It’s a tradition.”
“It’s pagan, that’s what it is!” snapped the second, whom Arabella belatedly recognized as Mrs. Carruthers. “Nothing more than an excuse for the men to enjoy low drink and vulgar company. I can’t think what they see in it.”
“Boys will be boys,” said the first, a little ruefully. “And they do like their cider.”
“Disgraceful,” said Mrs. Carruthers.
Rolling her eyes, Catherine assumed an expression of intense boredom, every particle of her body language pronouncing her entire indifference to the conversation, the ballroom, and everyone in it.
Arabella ignored Turnip’s instruction to find Lady Henrietta. Lady Henrietta had retreated with Lady Charlotte into a curtained alcove, and Arabella could hear giggles and exclamations through the blue silk. They wouldn’t thank her for intruding.
She would be perfectly safe in her own room, particularly now that all the men had been chivvied out of the house by the duchess. The only men who had been excused were the footmen, silent and statue-like in their white wigs and green and gold livery.
Two were stationed at the foot of the stairs, like human gateposts. Arabella passed between them as she made her way up the silent stairs. Funny how empty a house, even a grand mansion such as this, could feel with half the population removed from it. The duchess scorned the more economical practice of leaving candles on a table by the stairs for the guests to light their way upstairs; candles had been lit in sconces at intervals along the walls, creating patches of light and shadow that fell in striations along the stairs.
If she was right, the list, this ridiculous list about which everyone was so concerned, was in the pocket of her gray school dress.
It had been such a small detail, such a minimal moment in a hectic night, someone — she couldn’t even remember who now, whether it had been Miss Climpson or Lizzy or Sally — thrusting a piece of paper at her, something fallen out of the notebook. She had only remembered it when she reached for a pocket that wasn’t there and experienced the sudden, tactile memory of crumpling a piece of paper into another pocket on another night.
It might not be the list. It might very well just be someone’s French exercises or a laundry list, like the sheaf of paper Jane’s foolish heroine discovered, but Arabella’s steps quickened nonetheless, until she was practically running along the last stretch of hallway.
She let herself into her room, closing the door firmly behind her. Rose had left candles burning. Arabella’s nightdress was laid out across the foot of the bed and her tooth powder had been set out on the dressing table along with a basin and ewer. A proper lady’s maid would have waited up for her, but Rose had always been somewhat lackadaisical in her attentions, deeming Arabella too unimportant to complain.
In this instance, Arabella was glad of it.
The gray dress wasn’t in the wardrobe with her other gowns. Arabella tracked it down at the bottom of her trunk, along with two others of which Rose disapproved, tucked out of sight where Arabella wouldn’t be tempted to wear them.
Lifting her school dress from the trunk, Arabella surveyed it critically. It did look nearly too dilapidated to wear, with an ink stain on the skirt and something sticky — mince? — on the bodice. The fabric was a mass of wrinkles, the skirt distended by a strange lump on one side.
It made a very satisfying crinkling sound as Arabella slowly rose to her feet, lifting the dress up as she went.
A slow tingle of excitement began to spread from Arabella’s fingers to her palms, making the skin on her back prickle, catching at the breath in her throat. It was still there, whatever it was that she had put into her pocket on that ridiculous, hurly-burly whirlwind of a night. That didn’t mean that it was what she thought it might be, Arabella told herself as she draped the dress over the back of a chair, groping for the pocket. Paper crackled beneath her fingers.
A single sheet, just as Lord Pinchingdale had said, written front and back.
Placing the paper flat on her dressing table, Arabella smoothed out the worst of the wrinkles. It was closely written, in a small, neat hand. The first line read “Boisvallon, Abbeville, 150 L.,” followed by, on the next line, “La Rose, Pas de Calais, 400 L.,” and so on down the line. It looked a bit like a laundry list, but a laundry list like none Arabella had ever seen. The pattern repeated, straight down the page. Name, place, number. It took Arabella a moment to figure out what the number signified, not a pound sign, but an L.
Louis. Louis d’or, the old French currency. No wonder it looked like an account; it was one. Some foolish soul in the War Office had taken it upon himself to write up a rendering of the amounts being paid to foreign agents, and had, ever so helpfully, included their stations. There had to be at least a hundred names on the list, closely written, front and back, some proper names, others, like La Prime-Rose and Le Mouron, both flowers, quite obviously pseudonyms. Arabella recognized some of the place names, but not all; from the look of the list, it seemed like the Royalist web had a strand in every village in France.
No wonder someone wanted this so badly. Publish the list and the entire English network from the coast to Paris would be in tatters.
It was rather alarming to think that the fate of the French monarchy might well have rested on Rose’s reluctance to press Arabella’s gray gown. Whoever had searched her room, not once but twice, had never thought to check the side pocket of a discarded dress.
Which meant, reasoned Arabella, that whoever it was must have seen her take possession of the notebook, but hadn’t seen her put the loose page in her pocket. That ruled out Signor Marconi, Sally, Lizzy, Agnes, Miss Climpson, and Turnip.
Who else knew she had the notebook? And how? It had to have been someone outside the drawing room, someone who had seen her walk away with the notebook, but without witnessing the actual events inside the room.
There was a scraping noise behind her as someone opened the door to the room, the wood of the door pushing against the nap of the Ax-minster carpet. Of course, Rose would choose now to help her undress. Arabella slapped a book down over the dangerous bit of paper.
“It’s all right, Rose,” she said, keeping a hand on top of the book as she straightened. “I don’t need — ”