“Not in the slightest,” said Mr. Fitzhugh airily, although the nonchalant sentiment was slightly marred by the chattering of his teeth. Reaching under his sweater, he extracted a silver flask and took a bracing swig. “Good for the constitution and all that. Nothing like a good English December.”

“Yes, but not all night,” retorted Arabella. If Mr. Fitzhugh had been outside all this time, then... “It might have been your light I saw. Maybe Catherine really was in the convenience.”

Lowering the flask, Mr. Fitzhugh wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Catherine?”

“Catherine Carruthers.” Of course, there was no reason for Catherine to have piled pillows in her place if all she intended was a quick trip to the necessary. “She wasn’t in her bed. Your sister thought — ”

“That’s your mistake, right there,” said Mr. Fitzhugh helpfully. “Letting Sally think. Comes up with some deuced odd notions that way.”

“Sally comes up with odd notions?” said Arabella.

Mr. Fitzhugh had the grace to blush. Or perhaps it was just windburn. “Just wanted to make sure you were safe. And there was a chap lurking about here earlier in the evening. I saw him last night, too. Went around the other side.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just your Gerkin?”

“Not a chance of it. Gerkin and I have a signal.”

Arabella had a fairly good idea of what that signal might be. “Two flashes of light, a pause, then another flash?”

Mr. Fitzhugh shook his head. “Too obvious. Someone might see the light. Sort of thing schoolgirls would do. No. Our secret signal is the mating call of the two-billed thrush.”

“How can a bird have two bills?”

“That’s the genius of it!” Mr. Fitzhugh bounced on his heels, all boyish enthusiasm. “They can’t. Made it up ourselves.”

“Then how can — never mind.” If it wasn’t his lantern, whose was it?

Arabella was about to voice that important point when a familiar creaking sound arrested her attention.

“There’s someone coming!” Arabella flapped her hands at Mr. Fitzhugh. “Quick! Hide.”

“Your wish is my — ugh.” Arabella put a hand on his head and pushed. Flailing, Mr. Fitzhugh went down.

She very much hoped he would take the hint and stay down. It was going to be hard enough explaining to Miss Climpson or one of the other mistresses just what she was doing roaming the lower floors at nearly eleven at night without the added complication of the older brother of one of her pupils squatting in the flower bed. There was no good way to explain that. Arabella doubted Miss Climpson would believe that she was updating Mr. Fitzhugh on Sally’s progress in history.

Arabella yanked the curtains closed as she turned to face the doorway. They were thin curtains, designed for ornament more than use, but they at least provided the illusion of a barrier.

Arabella took a tentative step towards the door. “Miss Climpson?” she said, peering into the darkness beyond. She held up her candle. “Is that you?”

The footsteps came to an abrupt halt.

So did Arabella.

It wasn’t Miss Climpson. Not unless the headmistress had recently taken to wearing trousers.

“Oh,” said Arabella, as the candle flame danced between them. “You’re not Miss Climpson.”

Chapter 11

Turnip popped out of the flower bed just in time to see a dark figure loom up in the doorway in front of Miss Dempsey.

It might have been dark, but it was unmistakably male, which didn’t seem at all the thing in an academy for young ladies. As Turnip knew from Sally — and their parents, who had paid close attention to such points — the school was designated a male-free area after dark, with all male teachers and staff packed off back to their respective lodgings. The only man who was allowed to be on the grounds was the gardener, and it seemed highly unlikely he would be in the house when his job was to be active outside it.

As Miss Dempsey held up her candle, the man shied back, flinging up an arm to shield his eyes from the light or his face from view.

Miss Dempsey advanced on the newcomer. “What — ,” she began.

Whoever he was, he wasn’t in the mood to answer questions. Looking left, then right, the intruder summed up his options and charged for the window. There was one slight problem. Miss Dempsey was in his path.

She swerved. He swerved.

Unfortunately, they both swerved in the same direction.

Time to make his daring entrance and charge to the rescue, sweeping away all malefactors with a hey-ho and a heave-to. Turnip flung himself onto the sill, only to find himself tangled in the folds of a white linen curtain that someone had inconveniently drawn across the window. As Turnip struggled against a tangle of curtains, the intruder feinted to the side, trying to make a run around Miss Dempsey. His shoulder banged into her side, sending her flailing for balance, just as Turnip lost the battle with the curtain and went tumbling back into the flower bed. From his semi-prone position, he could see Miss Dempsey’s candlestick arc through the air, trailing a brief plume of flame like a falling star before winking into darkness.

From the black nothingness came a feminine cry of surprise and distress as Miss Dempsey landed with a thump flat on her rump on the drawing-room floor.

“Sorry,” mumbled the thief. His accent was pure Yorkshire. “Sorry. Sorry.”

Turnip groped for the edge of the window frame, banging his hand on the side of the window in the process.

The man in the room appeared to be having similar problems. There was a crashing noise as a small table went over, taking with it the intruder and several china knickknacks.

Turnip clawed away the curtain, shoving the window up high enough that he wouldn’t bang his head on the way through. He had just swung a foot up onto the ledge when a flurry of activity sounded in the hallway. The sound started low, the merest swish and rustle of fabric, like moths battering their wings against a window, and then gained in intensity, with hisses, whispers, and the slap of bare feet against the floor.

Like a cork exploding from a champagne bottle, someone else shot into the room.

“Don’t worry, Miss Dempsey! We’re here now!” cried an exuberant female voice.

Turnip froze, his foot propped at an uncomfortable angle on the window ledge.

“Each for each, that’s what we teach!” caroled another, calling out the school motto. Turnip knew that voice. He knew it far too well. “Ouch! That was my foot! Lizzy!”

“That wasn’t me, it was Agnes,” protested the first voice.

“Sorry,” said Agnes, in a small voice.

“Girls?” ventured Miss Dempsey, from somewhere on the floor. She sounded more than a little bit breathless. Turnip knew just how she felt.

“We’ve come to your rescue,” explained Sally. “We thought you might need us. Ouch!”

“Sorry,” said Lizzy, sounding anything but. “That was me this time. Well, it’s dark in here.”

“Does anyone see the villain?” demanded Sally. “There is a villain, isn’t there?”

The villain had very wisely decided to conduct his own exit. Turnip could hear a low scrabbling sound not far from the window, like someone crawling on his hands and knees.

“Quick!” exclaimed Sally. “He’s trying to escape!”

As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, Turnip could just vaguely make out his sister snatching up a notebook off the windowsill and rushing forward, wielding it like a club, only to go catapulting over the same table the intruder had knocked over before. The notebook spiraled through the air, spewing bits of paper, before landing thwack on the head of the burglar, who let out a loud curse.

“Oooh, there he goes!” squealed Lizzy, and blundered into Agnes, who reeled sideways and stepped on Sally, who was still on the floor in front of the table.

There was a flurry of feet and the sound of more crockery breaking and a good deal of gasping and stumbling and stubbing of toes and “mind the table!” during which Miss Dempsey made an attempt to call the group to order, Sally was stepped on again as she was trying to get up, Lizzy Reid tripped over the hem of her own robe, Sally and Lizzy banged heads, and Agnes exclaimed, in tones of wonder, “I think I’ve got him!”

“Quick, quick, tie him up,” urged Lizzy, jiggling up and down in place rather than risking the scattered furniture.

“Use my sash! Here!” Sally charged forward, a long strip of fabric dangling from her hand, and promptly tripped over the exact same table. Her disembodied voice rose eerily from the floor. “Who left that there?”

“Not me,” said Agnes quickly.

Taking advantage of her inattention, the intruder wrenched himself free from Agnes’s grasp, making a dash for the window.

“Not so fast!” yelled Lizzy, and flung herself chest-first at the intruder. He went down hard, landing with a gasp on the floor, Lizzy on top of him.

Turnip winced in sympathy. That had sounded jolly painful.

“You got him! You got him!” exclaimed Turnip’s sister, jumping up and down like a little girl on Christmas morning.

Lizzy planted her bottom firmly on the intruder’s back. “He’s not going anywhere,” she said smugly.

“Girls!” exclaimed Miss Dempsey, trying belatedly to exert some control over the situation. “Don’t — ”

Lizzy gave a little bounce and the intruder made a sound like a dying accordion as all the air rushed out of his lungs.

“ — squash him.”

“Sorry, Miss Dempsey,” said Sally. “Who has the candle?”

“I do,” pronounced a new voice.