“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.