Miss Wonderful

  “You have calculated the number of days correctly,” Gordy said. “I rejoice to find your brain damage has not affected the simple arithmetic functions.”

  “Brain damage.” It took Alistair no time at all to put two and two together. “I see,” he said calmly, though his voice dropped a full octave. “What other interesting news was Miss Oldridge so good as to communicate?”

  THE two men adjourned to Alistair’s private parlor. There Gordy handed him the latest urgent missive from Oldridge Hall.

  Alistair read it while his lordship ate a much-belated breakfast.

  Though Mr. Oldridge had signed the letter, the loopy swirls covering both sides of the paper were no more his than was the prose style. Alistair was certain both writing and contents were solely Miss Oldridge’s.

  Judging by the penmanship alone, one would guess her nature to be fanciful and her brain to be as feathery light and undisciplined as her hair.

  The penmanship was sadly deceptive. Miss Oldridge’s nature was candid to a shocking degree, down-to-earth, practical…and fiercely passionate. The brain under that fiery cloud of wild, silken hair was as soft and fuzzy as the average rapier.

  She translated Dr. Woodfrey’s “fatigue of the nerves” as “nervous collapse.” The bump on the head became a brain injury. Citing Alistair’s sunken, shadowed eyes, she hinted at his sinking into a decline. She compared his sleeplessness to Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking and Hamlet’s restlessness—implying, in short, that Alistair was declining into insanity. Adding insult to injury, she made good use of his implying Dr. Woodfrey was an incompetent country quack. She recommended Mr. Carsington be examined in London by “medical practitioners better versed in diseases of the mind.”

  She modestly declared herself no expert in these cases. Perhaps she was mistaken. Indeed, she hoped she was, for Lord Gordmor’s sake. Naturally, he knew best, but she would hesitate to leave her business affairs in the hands of a man who was not right in the head.

  Long after Alistair had read it, twice—first in outraged disbelief and then with a grudging admiration—he continued to gaze at the series of whirls and swirls with which she’d covered the pages. Had he been alone, he would have traced those loops and twirls with his finger.

  He had enough self-command not to do that, but not enough to remember to return the letter to Gordy. Instead, Alistair folded it up and tucked it inside his waistcoat next to his heart.

  By the time he realized what he’d done, it was too late. He found Gordy regarding him quizzically over the rim of his ale tankard.

  “Doubtless Oldridge—or his daughter—exaggerates the case,” said his lordship. “Still, you must have a competent London physician look at you. The fall into the mountain stream cannot have done you any good, and—not to put too fine a point on it—we both know your brain box was not in perfect order after Waterloo.”

  “I had a fever then,” Alistair said tightly. “I was delirious. The two conditions often go together.”

  “But when the fever passed, you didn’t remember the battle,” his friend said. “You didn’t know how you’d hurt your leg. You didn’t remember fighting. You wouldn’t have believed me if I hadn’t brought in all those fellows to talk about what you did.”

  “You knew,” Alistair said.

  “Of course I knew,” Gordy said. “I’ve known you since we were children. I know when something’s wrong. Hasn’t it occurred to you that the recent bump on the head might have further damaged a place already fragile?”

  “I had amnesia,” Alistair said. Gordy looked dubious.

  “Amnesia,” Alistair repeated. He almost added you idiot, but he recalled it was Miss Oldridge who’d first put a name to the ailment, so he was as much an idiot as Gordy—and everyone else who’d noticed and failed to mention it—for not grasping the obvious.

  “Amnesia,” Gordy said.

  “Yes. The recent bump on the head restored my memory.”

  “But you look ill, Car. Almost as bad as you did when Zorah and I carried you out of the surgeon’s tent.”

  “That’s because of the insomnia,” Alistair said.

  “I see. Amnesia and insomnia. Anything else?”

  “I’m not insane,” Alistair said.

  “I did not say you were. Nonetheless—”

  “Mental disease wouldn’t have occurred to you if Miss Oldridge’s letter didn’t suggest it,” Alistair said impatiently. “She’s manipulating you, don’t you see? She’s trying to get rid of me.”

  Gordy’s pale eyebrows climbed upward. “Really? This is novel. More often than not, one is obliged to peel the women off you. Even Judith Gilford would have taken you back—especially after Waterloo—if only you had gone back to her and groveled a little.”

  “I used her abominably,” Alistair muttered. “I am ashamed to think of it.”

  “Car, we both know she was impossible.”

  “That is no excuse for betraying her with another woman—and worse, humiliating her by doing so publicly,” Alistair said. “Small wonder Miss Oldridge doesn’t trust me to represent her interests fairly.”

  Lord Gordmor set down his tankard. “I beg your pardon. I am not sure I heard aright. Her interests?”

  “Everyone’s interests,” Alistair said. “She speaks for the others on Longledge Hill, because they are too overawed by my father and my so-called heroics to speak for themselves.”

  After a short, stunned silence, his lordship spoke: “In other words, Miss Oldridge is the only one who has raised any objections to the canal. Our only opposition is a woman. Who cannot vote. Who controls not a single seat in the House of Commons.”

  “She isn’t the only opposition,” Alistair said. “She is the only one who dares to voice her objections.”

  “My dear fellow, it is not our job to encourage the timid to speak up,” Gordmor said patiently. “It is our job to build a canal. At present, our only opposition is a woman—which is the same as no opposition at all. We must strike while the iron is hot.”

  “We aren’t ready to strike,” Alistair said. “For two weeks I’ve been shut away. That old hen Woodfrey forbade me to see anyone or even read a letter. I haven’t so much as begun discussing the canal with the landowners.”

  “You don’t need to discuss it.”

  “Gordy, these people are not the enemy. We need to come to an agreement, not mow them down.”

  Lord Gordmor rose. “You are my dearest friend in all the world, Car, but I cannot let your conscience or brain injury or whatever it is ruin a great opportunity. Too much is at stake. If you were more composed in your mind, you would realize it. I wish I could wait for you to become composed, but I cannot. I am going out now to place a notice in the papers for the canal committee meeting.”

  “Now?” Alistair said, aghast. “For when?”

  “A week from Wednesday. The local announcement will appear in Wednesday’s Derby Mercury. That will prevent anyone’s complaining of insufficient notice—though all of Derbyshire knows of our plans by now. I can only pray Wednesday is not too late.”

  Fifteen

  MIRABEL’S mother was not buried in the Longledge churchyard but in the family’s mausoleum.

  Built early in the previous century, the circular, Palladian-style structure stood on a rise at some distance from the house, past the bridge spanning a man-made river created at about the same time.

  Two hours after leaving Matlock Bath, Mirabel stood there, drinking in the view whose beauty never failed to bring her a degree of peace, no matter how bleak or impossible her life might seem at the time.

  “Oh, Mama, what on earth am I to do?” she said.

  No answer was forthcoming. Mirabel had not spoken aloud expecting one. She’d spoken only because there was no one alive to whom she could fully open her heart.

  She continued walking from one pillar to the next while telling her mother—and any other entombed ancestors who cared to listen—all about the last few weeks.

  The March wind b
lew strong this day, and its whistles and moans as it swept round and through the edifice easily drowned out her voice as well as the hoofbeats upon the bridge below.

  At one point, she caught a faint whinny, but the wind blew it away, and she assumed it was Sophy, who was in one of her moods. Today the mare had taken a dislike to the bridge and could barely be got across it. Once across, she refused to go anywhere but downhill and would not take her mistress up toward the mausoleum.

  Every now and again, Sophy developed one of these inexplicable aversions. In no humor for a war of wills with an animal many times her size and weight, Mirabel simply gave in. She tethered the mare near the bridge and walked the rest of the way.

  At the moment, she stood on the other side of the building, gazing at the place where Lord Gordmor’s canal would cut through the landscape. Consequently, she didn’t see the tall figure dismount, tether his horse near Sophy, and begin limping determinedly up the hill.

  Mirabel was still staring in frustration at the invisible canal when she heard the footsteps upon the stone floor. She turned that way, and felt her heart leap, most painfully.

  She lifted her chin and donned her haughtiest, coldest expression. “Mr. Carsington,” she said curtly.

  “You wicked, wicked girl,” he said.

  His gold eyes sparked, and his color was up. The air thickened and crackled as though a storm brewed nearby.

  She knew he was the storm and what she felt was the force of his anger. It was as palpable as the charm that made even practiced courtesans fall helplessly in love with him. She wanted to back away, out of range of that compelling force, but pride wouldn’t let her retreat.

  She lifted her chin a degree higher. “It is nothing to me what you think of me,” she said. “You are nothing to me at all.”

  “You are the worst of liars.” He advanced.

  She was an instant too slow to react, and he caught her and pulled her into his arms. She twisted and ducked her head. If he kissed her, she would go to pieces.

  He didn’t kiss her. He only crushed her to him and held her while he rumbled into her bonnet, “Woodfrey’s a quack, is he? I walk in my sleep and talk to myself, do I? I ought to be examined by practitioners familiar with diseases of the mind, ought I? And you would not put your business affairs in the hands of a man who was not right in the head. Oh, no, indeed. But then, you will not put your affairs in anyone’s hands. Your body is another matter, I believe.”

  Mirabel could have fought until he let her go. He was too chivalrous not to let go if she struggled. But she didn’t want to be let go.

  He’d been stealing her heart, bit by bit, since the day she’d met him. Soon she’d have no part left to call her own. She knew that this time the heartache would be worse, much worse than what she’d endured when she’d given up William. Yet she’d bear it in order to have this moment.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled against his coat.

  Mr. Carsington had no difficulty hearing the apology, apparently, for he detached her from his coat and stepped back a pace to hold her at arm’s length and look at her.

  “The letter to Gordmor was monstrous underhand, Mirabel. If I didn’t know you better, it would make me think you had seduced me on purpose to make me insane.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “What I told you then was the truth, I vow.”

  “You said you had strong feelings for me.”

  “Yes, and what good do they do anybody?” she cried. “They won’t make that troublesome canal of yours vanish, will they? And there is where it will go.” She nodded in the direction of the canal route through the landscape. “You will spoil Mama’s view—and all her work as well as mine—and every time I come here I will see it and it will h-hurt me.”

  Her eyes filled, and her throat tightened.

  “Your mother’s work,” he repeated after a moment. Mirabel nodded. The intensity of her grief took her by surprise, and she couldn’t yet trust herself to speak. She had not cried in front of anyone since her mother died. Tears should be private. And anyway, they made men cross or uneasy or confused or, more usually, all three at once.

  He let go of her and moved away. He stood for a time looking where she’d indicated. Then he came back and took her hand.

  “The landscape design is hers, I take it?” he said.

  He had given Mirabel the moment she needed to regain her composure.

  “My mother was an artist,” she said, her voice steady now. “In other circumstances, if she’d been a man, she might have become another Capability Brown.”

  SHE didn’t need to say more.

  Alistair had understood from the moment she spoke of the canal’s spoiling her mother’s view. But once begun, Mirabel continued smoothly enough. Talking seemed to calm her.

  She told the story, both hers and that of the land. In her mind, evidently, these were one and the same thing.

  She told him how the estate had evolved over the years, and how the greatest change occurred nearly a century ago, when the mausoleum was built and the grounds redesigned. It was an attempt at the naturalistic style of which Lancelot “Capability” Brown had been the master.

  The result, however, had never been entirely satisfactory, and over time, various elements had been let to deteriorate either because they were undesirable or had proved impractical.

  It was Alicia Oldridge who had begun transforming the place, over the course of the nearly twenty years she had been married. She had died without completing her plans. Mirabel knew every detail, however. Her mother had shared her ideas and enthusiasm from the time her daughter was old enough to comprehend them.

  “She made this view,” the daughter was saying now. “There used to be a summerhouse halfway down the hill, above the bridge. She had it moved and tucked away among those trees, so that you come across it unexpectedly when you follow the winding path along the river.”

  She pointed to another place, where she had made changes according to her mother’s plans. She described so vividly what had been there before that Alistair could see clearly, in his mind’s eye, both the extent of the transformation and its artistry and subtlety.

  When she had taken him fully round the colonnade encircling the mausoleum and given him the history of the corresponding views, she fell silent.

  Something in the quiet, and in her stance, made him wonder if she was regretting the revelations.

  He studied her profile. Then he bent his head slightly, trying discreetly for a better look.

  She did not seem aware of him. Though her gaze was fixed upon a distant spot, he doubted she saw that, either. Her eyes held the faraway expression he’d observed more than once in her father’s. She looked at the distant place exactly as Mr. Oldridge had gazed at the chandelier on the evening when Alistair first tried to enlist him on the side of the canal.

  Then, slowly, the corner of her mouth began to turn up a very, very little.

  Alistair directed his own gaze straight ahead. “I should give anything,” he said, “to know what is going through that busy mind of yours.”

  “I was trying to think of ways to get rid of you, but my brain won’t cooperate,” she said. “Or my heart. Or whatever it is. I try to think, but then I see you…naked.”

  His head swiveled so sharply it was a wonder it didn’t fly clean off his neck. “You what?”

  “You,” she said. “Naked.”

  For a time, he had done very well, not thinking of her naked. This day he had only held her in his arms, and not for so very long, either. Not nearly long enough.

  He had not kissed her or attempted to remove so much as a glove, though he would give anything to taste her mouth again, to feel her hands on him. She had only to touch his face and the world changed, came right.

  Yet somehow he’d resisted desire, and so he’d flattered himself that he was maturing after all. This time he would not be so unspeakably stupid as before.

  But she no sooner said the fatal words than he saw her sta
nding upon the bed with her skirts hiked up to her thighs, revealing…oh, no, the tiny, lopsided, upside down heart at the crook of her knee…and then she was down upon the bed…the perfect breasts tipped with sweet, pink buds…the feather-soft curls between her pretty legs.

  He remembered the scent and taste of her skin. He remembered the trust, the tenderness, the passion.

  He squared his shoulders and set his jaw. “When we are wed, you may see me naked all you like,” he said. “Until then, it would be best not to refer to the subject.”

  “We are not going to be wed,” she said.

  “Yes, we are, though it may take some time.” He turned her toward him, careful to keep his hands only lightly upon her shoulders. “You must not take off your clothes in front of any other man, Mirabel.”

  “Certainly not,” she said. “It isn’t the sort of thing I make a practice of. It is only you—”

  “That is precisely what I am saying,” he said. “Only me. That is the point—one of the points—of being married.”

  “It did not seem to be a very important point for Lady Thurlow,” she said.

  Curse her aunt! The Thurlow affair was not public knowledge. How had she found out? And what was she thinking, to communicate such knowledge to an innocent?

  “You may not cast my youthful indiscretions in my face,” he said. “My father performs that service admirably. Furthermore, I am mending my ways. If I were not, I should take advantage of this moment. We’re alone. No one is watching.”

  They were alone. No one was watching. And he didn’t want to reform. He wanted to be worse than he’d ever been before. He wanted to snatch any opportunity offered, to do whatever was necessary to have her, and honor be damned.

  The distance between them was so great, and so very small. The very air between them vibrated.

  He closed the space in a single stride, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her.

  And she kissed him back, surrendering instantly, her soft mouth yielding to the first light pressure of his. Her hands came up, cupping his face, holding him—as though she needed to, as though he wasn’t already bound to her.