Read a ghost of a Halloween scene! This snippet appeared in a now-very-dead version of “A Dangerous Kind of Lady” (Arabella’s story). Never to be published again!
One of the gazillion versions of Arabella’s story (Arabella is difficult!) takes place over Halloween — but this version was cut. It was the cut that killed Halloween.
Back then, people played games like apple bobbing and snap-apple (see the main image), and young women played fortune-telling games to learn about their future husband.
You know the sort of thing: they’d throw an apple peel over their shoulder, and the shape it landed in would indicate the initial of their future spouse. Or they’d name apple pips and stick them onto their face, and the last one to fall off would be the man they would marry.
They also used hazelnuts: throw two hazelnuts onto a grill over the fire to foretell the future of the couple. If the nuts nestled close to each other and glowed, then the couple would be happy together. If the nuts popped and leaped apart, well…
In this deleted scene from a defunct version of “A Dangerous Kind of Lady,” it is Halloween and a group of young women are playing fortune telling games. Arabella and Guy Roth, Lord Hardbury, are pretending to be engaged.
Remember, this takes place BEFORE the events of A Wicked Kind of Husband, so Cassandra is married to Joshua DeWitt but has not yet properly met him.
This has not been edited, and, well, there are reasons it was deleted!
Deleted scene starts here
Eventually, Lucy grew tired of the game, for no matter how often or vigorously she hurled the apple peel, she kept getting “C”.
“The only man’s name that begins with C is Charles,” Lucy grumbled. “And I refuse to marry a man with the same name as my dead father and brother.”
“Many men’s names begin with C,” Cassandra pointed out calmly. “Or perhaps it refers to his title.”
“Perhaps you will become the mistress of the Duke of Cumberland,” Arabella suggested helpfully, which earned her a scalding look from Cassandra and a hoot of laughter from Lucy, who found this notion marvelous, until Cassandra pointed out that Cumberland was accused of murdering his valet, had a disfiguring scar, and, unfortunately for aspiring mistresses, was said to be very much in love with his wife.
Lucy then hit on the idea that the fortune-telling would be more effective, surely, if instead of throwing the peel to identify a future lover, they instead threw it with the aim of hitting the gentlemen in the face.
“Just pretend you haven’t noticed,” Arabella said to Cassandra.
“Everyone seems to think that because I am married, I am qualified to be a chaperone.”
“Lucy needs a zookeeper, not a chaperone.”
[They get the hazelnuts for further fortune-telling.]
“Go on,” Lucy said, holding out two hazelnuts to Arabella. “These nuts are you and Lord Hardbury. Let’s see how you burn.”
“This is absurd,” Arabella said—she did not need to throw a pair of hazelnuts into the fire to know that she and Guy were doomed—but she took the nuts anyway.
“At least it might give us a clue,” Cassandra murmured in her ear. “Since you have persistently evaded all my efforts to learn how this engagement came about.”
At Lucy’s badgering, Cassandra also took two hazelnuts, also reluctantly. Given that Cassandra had been married nearly two years to a man who remained a stranger, her nuts would be no more useful than Arabella’s.
“They’re only nuts,” Cassandra said, rolling the pair of hazelnuts in her hands. “It’s a silly superstition. It means nothing.”
Cassandra took a deep breath, muttered, “I don’t know why I bother,” and then, with everyone staring, wide-eyed and breathless, she dropped her nuts onto the grill over the fire. They sat still a moment, taking in the heat, and then one popped up, cracked, and rolled firmly away from its mate, which responded by popping and rolling in the opposite direction.
Most of the girls stayed politely quiet, sensing it was better not to comment on the mysteries of Mrs. DeWitt’s marriage to a man none of them had ever seen, but Lucy crowed and chirped.
“No surprises there,” Cassandra said, ignoring her younger sister. She forced a smile. “Your turn, Arabella.”
To help take the attention off Cassandra, Arabella cupped her hands around her hazelnuts and made a show of rolling them in her palm and blowing on them, as though they were a pair of dice.
Everyone was waiting, anticipating. After all, Arabella’s engagement to Lord Hardbury was the most exciting thing to have happened in the parish in recent months.
She dropped the nuts onto the grid, expecting them to pop and crack and roll apart from each other. But they did not. They stayed close together, nestled into each other, and glowed.
Everyone applauded and cheered. Cassandra leaned close to Arabella, and whispered, “I don’t believe it. Not that you stay together, but we can all hear the crack and hiss when you two are together.”
Before Arabella could react to this startling observation, Lucy was whirling about, looking to where Guy sprawled on the settee, watching them through half-closed eyes.
“Lord Hardbury!” she cried, drawing the attention of the whole room. “Congratulations, Lord Hardbury. Your nuts are burning!”
Guy’s only response to this news was to raise an eyebrow. “And is this a good thing?”
“Oh yes,” Lucy said. “The DeWitts’ nuts popped and cracked.”
“My sympathies to Mr. DeWitt.”