The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas by Lauren Willig Read Free Book Online Page A

half-French extraction who had spent her youth with cousins named Wooliston. Now that he knew who she was, Turnip could see the resemblance in the younger sister.
    Ha! Who would have thought to find Selwick’s cousin by marriage bosom friends with his own little sister. Small world, that, he thought profoundly. He’d have to let Selwick know and they could have a good chuckle over it.
    â€œThe Purple who?” said Miss Dempsey faintly.
    Sally tossed back her blond braids. “The Purple Gentian. A terribly dashing spy.”
    â€œNot only dashing but terribly dashing, eh, Sal?” Turnip chuckled.
    Sally went slightly red about the ears. “Well, a spy in any event,” she said in a dismissive tone, addressing herself solely to Miss Dempsey.
    â€œAn English one,” Agnes Wooliston added hastily, just in case anyone might get the wrong idea. “Not French. He married my cousin Amy last year, so we all know a terrible lot about spies now.”
    This was obviously a source of both admiration and contention.
    Sally shrugged, doing her best to look unimpressed. “There were rumors going about that Reginald might be the Pink Carnation, you know.”
    Agnes, with all the distinction afforded by a genuine spy-in-law, gave Sally a faintly pitying look. “But he’s not.”
    Sally scrunched her shoulder. “Well, no.”
    His sister gave Turnip a look that made it abundantly clear that she considered it nothing short of a breach of his fraternal obligations to have been so remiss as to fail to have been the Pink Carnation.
    â€œAnd a good thing, too!” said Turnip with feeling. “Some of those French spies can be deuced pushy.”
    There had been the Marquise de Montval who had invited him for what he believed to be a coffee and a spot of assignation and then presented him with a pistol and three French thugs, all of whom seemed to be named Jean-Luc, all because she mistakenly took him for the Pink Carnation.
    It was enough to put a chap right off dalliance. And coffee.
    Since then, Turnip had confined his amorous attentions to English ladies. They might lack that je ne sais whatever it was, but at least one knew exactly where one sat.
    Turning to the English lady currently seated beside him, Turnip said, “You probably know the Purple Gentian. Lord Richard Selwick. Jolly good chap, Selwick. He made rather a thing of smuggling comtes and ducs and whatnot right out from under the Frenchies’ noses. Brought back some spiffing good brandy, too.” Turnip shook his head in regret. “Deuce of a pity he had to retire.”
    It was his liaison with young Miss Wooliston’s cousin that had forced the Purple Gentian’s retirement, but Turnip tactfully refrained from reminding her of that bit. Deuced silly of Selwick to go about gallivanting beneath Bonaparte’s nose like that, but Turnip supposed that was what love did to one. Cupid’s arrows, and all that. He heard they struck a devilishly hard blow.
    â€œGoodness,” said Miss Dempsey. “You all live such interesting lives.”
    The three girls preened. So, he had to confess, did Turnip. But just a little bit.
    â€œOh, well,” he said modestly. “Can’t take credit for one’s friends. Smashing good chaps, all of them.”
    â€œNo,” said Sally, and there was a gleam in her bright blue eyes that struck her older brother as decidedly dangerous. “One can’t take their credit. But one can seize the chance to act oneself when the opportunity arises.”
    â€œEven,” chimed in Lizzy Reid, obviously catching his sister’s drift and running with it, “when the opportunity arises in so unlikely a vessel as a pudding.”
    Agnes looked at both of her friends. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
    As far as Turnip was concerned, there was far too much thinking going on among the junior set.
    Miss Dempsey looked at the three girls