Page 26 of Much Ado About Margaret
“I doubt it,” he told her, going to stand a polite distance from the servant, who was still visibly rattled. “But it should be searched top to bottom just to be certain.” Then he sighed heavily, crouching near the girl. “Did he promise you anything? What did he say to get you in this room?”
Fanny lowered her head, shivering.
“It’s all right,” said Miss Arden sweetly. “You’re not in trouble, Fanny. We just need to know how all of this happened. Have you heard about what occurred on the balcony?”
The girl seemed more responsive to Miss Arden’sapproach, so he kept silent. Watchful. Perhaps his experiences in the war were not suited to this particular kind of interrogation. Flies, honey, etc. “I h-heard the staff all running through the halls, and they were s-saying Miss Ann did something t-terrible. K-kissed a man who weren’t her husband.” She shook her head, curls coming loose from her cap, her watery eyes imploring as she shakily stood. Miss Arden went to help her. “I tried to shout, but he had jammed the veil in me mouth and tied it with one of the ribbons.”
“That is indeed how we discovered her,” Bridger confirmed. He stood and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to chase off the headache.
Fanny kept her eyes trained on Miss Arden, who stroked the girl’s back. “Is Miss Ann truly that ill?”
“She will be better when this is resolved,” Margaret assured her. “It would help us if you answered Mr. Darrow’s questions. Did his brother say anything that might shed light on all this shadow?”
“I’ll be in so much trouble,” Fanny lamented, dropping her chin. “He saw me going back to Miss Ann’s chambers with her things, and he stopped me and whispered all these pretty things, and when he kissed me, I just thought maybe…maybe with the masquerade and everything, that it wasn’t so bad to go with him, just for a moment, just for…”
Miss Arden’s brilliant blue eyes bore into the side of his face.
“Go on,” he said, toneless.
“Just for a moment,” Fanny continued, heaving. “I thought it might be my turn for luck, for love.”
Bridger groaned.
“It does happen! It does!” Fanny insisted. “It was him who said marriage and all, I was just fool enough to believe him.”
“Marriage?” Margaret echoed. “Awfully desperate of him.”
“That’s Pimm for you.” Bridger turned in a tight circle likea caged animal, then swung back toward the girl. She shivered, and he tried and failed to soften his expression. “My apologies, Fanny, that he filled your head with lies and nonsense, but your candor is most welcome. Did he say anything about where he might go? What he might do?”
“N-no,” said the girl. “Just made his false promises, gave me those kisses, tied me up, and went on his way.” She mashed the heel of her palm into her right eye. “Stupid. Stupid, stupid…”
“You should return to your mistress and make your apologies.” He sighed, striding back to the window, desirous of air.
“Before you go, Fanny, one more question: does this mean anything to you?” And here Miss Arden recited a snatch of poetry or some such. “ ‘Blue and gold, our plan unfolds. Find me at midnight.’ ”
The girl had no idea what Miss Arden was talking about, and neither did Bridger. The maid left, leaving them alone. He had left the small wooden box with his pipe, tobacco, and a tin of snuff on the sill, and then reached for the tin. “What was that?” he asked, studying her from the window. It was rude to smoke in a lady’s presence, but a pinch of snuff might be excused, given the extraordinary circumstances and the headache that was fit to make his head explode. Still, he gestured upward with the tin, asking, “Do you mind?”
Margaret pursed her lips in a thoughtful and altogether darling way, scrunching her nose, then shook her head, indicating he could continue. “I suppose I should tell you…”
“Absolutely you should.”
“Now that we are in agreement that Ann is innocent,” she pressed, sly.
“Mm.” Noncommittal. Bridger indulged in a pinch of snuff, the rush of the stuff bringing immediate relief and clarity.
“Now that we are in agreement,” Miss Arden insisted, watching him, almost snarling.
“Very well!” Bridger let her have that one. “It isincreasingly clear that Pimm was the brute on that balcony, and I’ve only ever known Ann to be a woman of sense and taste, and no woman of sense and taste would put her mouth near his.”
Margaret nodded, satisfied, and came to join him. Before he could react, she took her own pinch of snuff and popped it up her nostril. She inhaled, hard, and went cross-eyed, then reeled, tipping backward. Bridger caught her before she could teeter away. He couldn’t help but laugh at the brashness of it, and at her reaction.
Shaking her head, she rubbed delicately at her red nose. “Horrible! Exhilarating! Why on earth do you like this?”
“The exhilarating part,” he chuckled.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” she said with a crooked smile, coughing. “I begged and begged, but my father never allowed it, even if I only wanted to know how to describe it for my characters.”
That was…oddly impressive. He could just imagine Margaret driving her father half-mad, obsessed with capturing the vérité of experiencing a pinch of snuff.
