“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 favored 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 grays... It was the reason he no longer had grays and now drove bays. The grays had been so traumatized 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 gotten 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 3

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 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-colored eyes and hair-colored 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.

“Oooof!” 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.”