Turnip grinned back at her. “Deuced fond of puddings. Always have been. Never know what use they can be put to next.”
Lord Pinchingdale raised his eyes to the heavens. “What did you use on Danforth? A mince pie?”
“ ’Course not,” said Turnip with great dignity. “That would be silly.”
Curling himself into a fetal position, his eyes tightly shut, Danforth was making faint moaning noises. Catherine was lying so perfectly still that Arabella suspected she was faking it. She’d had a good deal of practice, after all.
Lord Pinchingdale contemplated them both with distaste. “Needless to say, we can’t just leave them here. Catherine will have to be delivered to her father’s custody. I imagine he’ll want to keep it quiet.”
“What about Danforth?”
“I imagine Wickham at the War Office will have one or two questions for him. I can take him into custody until then.” Lord Pinchingdale paced around the bodies, thinking aloud. “If we ask the duchess nicely, I imagine she won’t mind lending us a footman or two to keep guard. She won’t want any of this getting about any more than we do. If anyone asks, Danforth remembered a familial obligation and decided to go home early.”
“And Catherine?” asked Arabella quietly.
“That is for her parents to decide. Thank goodness. Although,” Lord Pinchingdale added drily, “I doubt she will ever look at pudding in quite the same way.”
“Neither will I,” said Arabella fervently, looking at the muslin-wrapped ball on the floor.
She looked up to find Turnip looking at her.
“Wouldn’t have met you but for pudding,” he said in a low voice.
“You would still have met me,” said Arabella. “You just wouldn’t have remembered me.”
Lord Pinchingdale had taken Danforth by the shoulders and was beginning to haul him across the carpet. “Fitzhugh, if you’d help me with — ”
Pinchingdale looked up and something in his friend’s face caused him to drop Danforth’s shoulders and beat a hasty retreat towards the door, leaving both Catherine and Danforth sprawled across the floor. Both were either still unconscious, or doing a fairly good job of pretending to be so.
“Never mind,” Pinchingdale called over his shoulder. “I’ll get Dorrington to help me. I’ll be back in ten minutes, Fitzhugh. Ten minutes.”
Turnip’s eyes narrowed. Dashing to the door, he opened it and peered both ways down the hallway. Pulling the door firmly shut, he turned the key in the lock.
The click sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet room.
“There,” he said, with great satisfaction, pocketing the key. “It’s a sad day when a chap can’t declare his love without half of Norfolk barging in.”
“Is that what this is?” Arabella asked, her heart in her throat. “Love?”
“Well, it’s certainly not a toothache.” It seemed belatedly to occur to Turnip that he might have somehow botched it. Stumbling over his feet and his words, he said, “Wouldn’t want you to feel obligated, if you don’t return the emotion, that is. Shouldn’t have said anything, but I thought — that is — ”
“I wasn’t sure if you were saying it just to stop Catherine.” Arabella knew she was being shameless, fishing like that, but she wanted the reassurance.
The expression of pure horror on Turnip’s face was all the reassurance she needed. That was one of the loveliest things about Turnip, she thought vaguely. One never had to worry about lies or dissembling. Everything he thought or felt was written all over his face in a very large hand.
“Good Gad, no! That day I knocked you over — you remember? Best day of my life. Didn’t know it then, of course. If I had, I would probably have thrown a sack over your head and dragged you home with me. Only you might not have liked that.”
Arabella considered the prospect. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
“The sack, I mean,” said Turnip.
“Um, yes.” Fair enough. “I think we can forgo the sack.”
Turnip clasped and unclasped his hands behind his back. “What I’m trying to say is, it’s yours, you know. My heart. If you want it.”
Arabella felt a great big silly smile spreading across her face. She stepped boldly up to him. “Is it my Christmas gift?”
Turnip rested his cheek briefly against her hair. “Wish I could wrap it in pretty words for you, all shiny and tied up in bows.”
Arabella put her fingers to his lips to stop the words. “I like it just the way it is. I like you just the way you are.”
Turnip kissed her fingers.
Arabella looked at him and thought of all the flowery things one would say if this were a romance in a book. She had read such speeches — long, elegant monologues rich with classical allusions and clever turns of phrase. They all felt all wrong somehow, not because the emotion wasn’t there, but because it was.
Next to the sheer vastness of her love, verbal frills felt superfluous. Silly, even, like trying to deck out a mountain range in lace trim.
So she made Turnip no flowery speeches.
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?”
Chapter 29
Four 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.