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 — ”

She broke off at the unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked.

“Rose isn’t here,” said Catherine Carruthers and leveled her pistol at Arabella’s head.

Chapter 27

Crack.

The report of a gun echoed somewhere to Turnip’s right.

“Not yet, you idiot!” someone shouted, flown on champagne and brandy cakes. “Wait until you see the green of their leaves!”

The duchess’s male guests jostled into the forest clearing in a whooping, staggering, gleeful mass. The acrid smell of gun smoke warred with the sickly sweet scents of pomade, cologne, and hot-house fruits. A vast bonfire sent sparks flaring into the sky, turning the faces of the laughing, shouting men into something out of primitive history. They might have been their own ancestors, charging forward to cut down a Roman brigade, rather than a few tree spirits.

Free of feminine oversight, wigs had been discarded, cravats loosened, waistcoasts unbuttoned. Some had liberated champagne from the feast and were chugging directly out of the bottle; others refreshed themselves from flasks. A safe distance from the bonfire, the servants had set out a table, the delicate Irish linen covering the raw boards in stark contrast to the rough pottery casks that had been lined up in two rows on top of the table.

“Cider!” someone shouted, and everyone made a dash for the table, eager to get to the famed Norfolk cider that had been known to lay grown men low.

“Shall we get on?” said the Duke of Dovedale.

Turnip couldn’t have agreed more. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner he could get back to Arabella. She had to like him at least a little bit to kiss him back like that. She wasn’t a Penelope, to cast her kisses on the wind like bread unto the waters. Penelope. Turnip shook his head to himself, eliciting several funny looks from the people around him. How could she have thought he was carrying a torch for Penelope? He wasn’t holding even a very small candle.

Still, if she was jealous, that had to mean something. Rather encouraging, really. Turnip drew in a deep breath. Once they had finished with this ridiculous list, he could put his courage to the sticking point, corner Arabella on a balcony — he’d rather liked that balcony — and make a declaration she couldn’t mistake.

It didn’t matter that she didn’t have a dowry. He had income enough for two — well, for ten, really, if one totted up the numbers and all that, but he didn’t want ten, he just wanted Arabella. He could send her younger sisters to school and find her father a nicer spa and give that cranky sister a season and hire half a dozen paid companions to make demmed sure that Arabella never had to fetch another vinaigrette for Lady Osborne ever again.

Turnip circled warily around the tree. “I say, are we meant to shoot at the tree or away from it?”

For all that it was meant to be stuffed full of evil spirits, it still looked like a tree to him.

“At it, I should think,” opined Lord Freddy Staines, shining the already shiny stock of his pistol. It was as elaborately designed as a lady’s dresser set, polished to a fine sheen and chased with delicate curlicues of sterling silver. “How else are we to kill the evil spirits?”

Good point, that. Turnip nodded intelligently.

The Duke of Dovedale bared his teeth in an unconvincing imitation of a smile. “I’d say shooting at the tree would be a jolly dangerous idea.”

“Why?” demanded Lord Henry Innes, joining the group, a jug of cider in one hand, pistol in the other. “It ain’t going to shoot back.”

Turnip eyed Innes thoughtfully. If Innes were here, he couldn’t be in the house. Which meant, in a rather roundabout way, that now would be an excellent time to dispose of that list. From the size of that jug, Innes should be occupied for a good long while. He wasn’t going to be dragging anyone off behind bushes anytime soon.

Sir Francis Medmenham delicately reached out and turned Innes’s pistol away from the tree. “Ricochet,” he said succinctly. “I, for one, have no desire to breathe my last because of a bullet bouncing off a tree.”

Turnip didn’t wait to hear the rest of the argument.

“Just going for refreshments, don’t you know,” he said to no one in particular, and began to back away, past the bonfire, past the table with the cider jugs, past another table set out with a variety of hearty foods to sustain the tree-hunters on their midnight quest. No namby-pamby lady foods such as were served at the ball, but good, hearty meat pastries, cold meats, the smelliest of cheeses, and hefty loaves of fresh-baked bread. There was also, set out to one side, a neat pyramid of Christmas puddings, each adorned with its own sprig of mistletoe.

Hmm. Struck by inspiration, Turnip snatched up a pudding in passing before bolting back towards the house. It was, he decided, practically a sign. Anyone could bring flowers, but nothing said I love you like a slightly squished Christmas pudding.

It made Turnip feel warm inside just thinking about it. It was a pudding that had brought them together, after all. Amazing, the way the rest of one’s life could hinge on one little ball of suet and dried fruit.

Turnip looked down at the muslin-wrapped ball in his hand and grinned. He was sure they could find excellent use for that mistletoe trimming, too.