He undid the bonnet ribbons, and tossed the ugly thing aside, and dragged his fingers through the unruly copper-tinted curls. She knocked his hat off, and laughed against his mouth, and the husky, wicked sound echoed inside him. She was innocent in so many ways, yet she tasted and sounded like sin and made him drunk with longing.
He undid the fastenings of her hideous cloak and slid his hands over her bosom, down over the delicious little waist, down over the voluptuous curve of her hips and perfect derrière.
She moved under his hands, unself-consciously enjoying and seeking more, and driving him wild with frustration. Too many garments, too many obstacles. He reclaimed her mouth, kissing her deeply, ferociously, while he eased her back against a pillar.
He pushed the cloak off her shoulders. While it slid to the stone floor, he was undoing the fastenings of her bodice, then dragging it down. He broke the kiss to bury his face in her neck and drink in her scent. He trailed kisses along her shoulder and down to the edge of her chemise, to the smooth swell of her breasts, straining at the confining corset.
She held him there, her hands stroking through his hair. She kissed the top of his head, an unexpected tenderness in the midst of mindless passion. A wild rush of feeling tore through him, as though some inner dam had burst. He could not get enough of her, could not get close enough. He dragged up her skirts and petticoats—too much in the way—and his hand slid up her inner thigh to the opening of her silk drawers. She pushed against his hand. “Oh, please.” Her voice was a soft moan laced with laughter. “Oh, no. Oh, please, yes.”
He sank to his knees and kissed her in that soft, most feminine of secret places, and heard her suck in her breath and let it out on a sigh. “Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, that is wicked.”
Laughter, still, the faintest trace. And he laughed, too, inwardly, with a wicked joy, while he made love to her with his lips, his tongue, while he held her beautiful, trembling legs and felt her body convulse, wave after wave of shuddering pleasure. Pleasure raced through him, too, in waves of liquid heat. It flooded his brain, submerging the last bits of reason and principle, and roared through his blood to swirl dangerously in the pit of his belly.
He kissed the inside of her knee, where the funny, upside down heart was. Then, when she was still weak and helpless, trembling in the aftermath of euphoria, he rose, to make her his, because he must. He was hot and mad with need, his swollen rod straining toward her.
But as he reached for the first trouser button, a gust of wind shrieked and whistled through the colonnade, so sharp and sudden that it startled him to consciousness.
The wind screamed like an angry ghost, and he remembered where they were: her mother’s burial place.
A chill colder than the March wind went through him. He let her dress fall, and brought his hands to her shoulders, and leaning forward, rested his forehead against hers, and waited for his breath to come back and his thundering heart to slow.
When he could speak he said thickly, “My reform is not progressing as well as I thought. I was sure I could resist doing something scandalous with you against one of these columns.”
“I hoped you would not resist,” she said. “But I had no idea there was anything so scandalous as that.”
He lifted his head and met her dazed blue gaze.
“You like to flirt with danger, I see,” he said.
“No, not at all,” she said. “I am always so careful and sensible. But you make me so…” She looked away. “Happy. The word is inadequate. My heart lightens when you are by, and I feel like a girl again.”
His heart ached. All he wanted was to make her happy, and all he seemed to do was cause her trouble. His demented lust: Twice he’d come a heartbeat away from de-flowering her. His curst, crucial canal scheme: The great obstacle between them was his only hope for the economic independence that would let him offer for her honorably and proudly.
He mustered a smile. “You mean I make you foolish.”
She laughed. “Yes, that, too. And you are foolish to come here. You should have taken the bad-tasting medicine I administered before and let it cure you.”
“When you told me to conquer my passion, you mean.”
“I was trying to make it easier for us both,” she said. Belatedly she noticed her state of undress. She tugged at her bodice. “Oh, look what you’ve done. I wish my maid were half as quick as you. I cannot believe you have had only seven or eight romantic episodes. It is hard to believe you’ve done anything else your whole life but dress and undress women, you are so expert at it.”
At the moment, he wasn’t sure he possessed any other talent. But he said nothing, only turned her about and did up the fastenings. He found her cloak and bonnet. He draped the ugly cloak over her shoulders. He did not attempt to retrieve the many lost hairpins but arranged her hair as best he could with the few remaining and stuffed the lot into the hideous bonnet.
As soon as he was done, he wanted to take everything off again. “When we are wed,” he said, “the first thing I’ll do is burn every last stitch of the abomination you call a wardrobe.”
“We are not going to be wed,” she said. “I have a weakness for you. I am deeply infatuated. This may cause me to forget, temporarily, what modest behavior is supposed to be, but I cannot forget why you are here.”
“I don’t expect you to forget it,” he said. “I only ask you to try not to underestimate me. I know a solution exists.”
She shut her eyes and let out a weary sigh, then opened them again and said, “Do you think I haven’t tried to find one? I know Longledge far better than you, and I have searched and searched and turned the matter this way and that. If I thought a solution was possible, do you think I would have written that letter to Lord Gordmor?”
He recalled, then, why he’d come—or part of the reason, the rational part. He had to tell her. He couldn’t let her learn it first from the newspaper on Wednesday. “Mirabel, I wish you hadn’t written to him,” he began. “I wish you’d trusted me. Now you’ve left us no time at all.”
He hesitated. He’d come to warn her, but he’d forgotten about Gordy, what he owed him. It would seem like disloyalty. Yet Alistair had to warn her: It would be dishonorable, and the worst sort of betrayal, not to.
“No doubt your friend will make haste to hold his canal committee meeting,” she said, the previously sultry voice now brisk and businesslike. “If he is wise, he will send the notice express this day to the papers, to make sure it arrives in time for this Wednesday’s Derby Mercury.”
She already knew. Of course she would. Everyone said she had a good head for business. She understood how such matters were managed. She must know that parliamentary orders required the canal committee meeting announcement to appear in both the London Gazette and the local paper. Was that what she had been studying the other day? Was that what all those legal papers were about? Had she already begun planning how to throw legal obstacles in their way?
He told himself he must resist the temptation to interrogate her. Where she was concerned, Gordy must do his own spying. And she must do her own spying on Gordy.
How in blazes was a man to work out all the niceties of loyalties in such a case as this?
“He does not wish to lose a minute of time,” Alistair hedged. “All the same, you must trust me to see the matter dealt with fairly.”
“If you want the matter dealt with fairly, you must go back to London,” she said. “I had expected you would be on your way by now.”
“Yes, I know you had counted on my departing—or being taken back, rather, in a strait-waistcoat, no doubt.”
“You are under a great strain, though you won’t admit it,” she said. “You cannot look after my interests and Lord Gordmor’s at the same time. They are mutually exclusive. It is no wonder you dream incessantly of war, when you are fighting with yourself.”
She moved closer and took both his hands in hers. “I have looked after my own and my father’s affairs for more than ten years.
This is not the first crisis I have confronted. I am not helpless or stupid.”
“I know that,” he said. “Still, it doesn’t mean the man who loves you may not try to help you.”
“I fear it does,” she said. “I cannot fight properly when you are by. You make me deranged.”
“It is not a fraction of what you do to me,” he said, tangling his fingers with hers.
Gently she drew her hands away and folded them at her waist. “If you truly wish to give me a fighting chance, you must keep away from me. I can accomplish nothing productive while you are near. London would be best.”
“I refuse to run away, merely because the situation is difficult,” he said.
She huffed an impatient sigh. “If Lord Gordmor is truly the friend one supposes him to be, he will consider your well-being and insist upon your leaving. If he is so selfish as to keep you—or you persist in this hopeless—”
“For God’s sake, Mirabel,” he broke in. “You know my history. I always get into disastrous situations. Never once in my life have I had to get myself out of one. I am nine and twenty. And I am quite done with letting others fight my battles, while I go on my way feeling stupid and useless—until I stumble into the next difficulty.”
She studied his face briefly, walked away, and came back again. “I did not mean to treat you like a child,” she said. “You are not in the least childish. You should not feel stupid or useless. I don’t know why you do. We are all of us stumbling. Life is puzzling and difficult.”
“I mean to puzzle it out,” he said, “and find a solution for us.”
She smiled then, a sunburst of a smile. “You will make me believe you, against all reason. Very well. Stay or leave, as you choose, of course.”
“I am most certainly not leaving,” he said.
She nodded. “As you wish.” She stepped back a pace: Her chin went up, and her tone became coolly polite. “At present, you are Lord Gordmor’s representative. Kindly be so good as to convey a message to his lordship. You may tell him I speak on behalf of my father, who does not consent to his lordship’s putting a canal through this property. Tell him Mr. Oldridge is inalterably opposed to a canal in the Longledge environs and will fight him with every means at his disposal, both here and, if necessary, in London before Parliament. It would be well to warn his lordship, furthermore, that the Oldridge resources are by no means small. Will you do this for me, sir?”
The abrupt change, the cold, determined tone, took Alistair aback. But only for a moment. He was growing used to being clubbed from behind, and recovered his poise with the speed and agility that practice so often brings.
“Certainly, Miss Oldridge.” He bowed. “Will there be anything else?”
“Not at present,” she said. “If I think of anything, I will send for you.” She gave him a dismissive wave, which was hardly the good-bye he wanted.
But he’d already had more of her than he had any right to. He allowed himself one quick, longing glance at the column against which he’d introduced her to a pleasure far beyond her innocent imaginings.
Then he told himself that he’d more or less insisted on her treating him like an intelligent business representative, and that as Gordy’s representative he’d never expected or wanted special treatment. Moreover, he had already received a great deal more of the romantic variety than he ought.
If he wanted tender good-byes, he’d better earn the right, with marriage. He could not wed until he had the means to support her. This would not happen until he and Gordmor made a success of the mines, which depended on the canal.
In short, this would-be knight in shining armor had several dragons to slay before he could sweep the fair damsel up onto his charger and gallop away.
And so he bade her a polite good day and started away. He’d gone but a few steps when he abruptly turned back, clasped her arms, and gave her one quick, ferocious kiss.
Then, leaving her to totter back against the column, he limped down the hill.
He did not look back, but he smiled.
WHEN Alistair returned to Wilkerson’s, he found Lord Gordmor in the private dining parlor, keeping company with another tankard of ale.
Alistair ordered one for himself. After it had come and the servant departed, he delivered Miss Oldridge’s message.
Gordmor took the news calmly enough. “It is no worse than we expected,” he said. “Better, actually. When you set out from London, we supposed all the landowners were against us. Instead, our foe turns out to be only one of them.” He drank. “All the same, I must insist upon your returning to Town.”
“That is out of the question,” Alistair said.
“Your loyalties are divided,” his friend said. “I know you well enough to know where it must lead. You will try to accommodate opposing interests, which will only drive you mad. You look ill enough as it is. Your parents will wonder why I snatched you from the brink of death in Belgium only to let you be driven mad in Derbyshire. Furthermore, you are supposed to be the London representative. This was how we originally agreed to divide the work, if you recall.”
“My life is always complicated,” Alistair said. “It is time I learnt to manage it.”
“I should like to know what you propose to do this time,” Gordy said. “You have fallen in love with a woman who is determined to destroy us. Or am I mistaken? Perhaps you raced after Miss Oldridge in order to enlighten her regarding the relative merits of locks and aqueducts, or to explain the finer points of puddling.”
It was pointless to dissemble, even if Alistair knew how. Concealing his feelings about a woman, however, was the one form of pretending he’d never mastered.
“You are not mistaken,” he said. “I admit this presents a challenge, but it is one I’m resolved to meet.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet, but I am determined.”
“Car.”
“I’ll think of something,” Alistair said.
Gordy regarded him for a moment, then shrugged. “What am I thinking, to argue with a Carsington? Very well. As you wish. I have nothing to lose by it. You might lose your mind, but some men are more comfortable doing without one. On the other hand, in the unlikely event you do succeed, you will spare us a great deal of expense and vexation. The longer this business drags on, the more costly it becomes.”
Alistair understood his friend’s hurry. He would have been in a hurry as well, if love hadn’t slowed his mind.
He knew that every delay would give the landowners time to think of objections and raise the price of overcoming them. Beyond a doubt, Mirabel would help her neighbors in this mode of thinking.
“No matter what happens at Wednesday’s meeting, we must press ahead quickly,” Gordy said. “Otherwise, we’re in mortal danger of your lady love burying the parliamentary committee in a blizzard of petitions and counterpetitions.”
Alistair was well aware of this. He knew Mirabel had already communicated with lawyers. In London they’d descend like locusts upon Parliament, where they would spawn swarms of witnesses to testify. Meanwhile, the landowners would have time to discover scores of new accommodations they needed, and the price of property-taking would soar. And along the way, increasing numbers of palms would want greasing.
It would cost a fortune and take forever. He and Gordy hadn’t the fortune or the time.
Alistair had less than ten days to stop the woman he loved from ruining his friend, his brothers, and his last hope for himself.
ON Tuesday afternoon, Lord Gordmor’s agent Thomas Jackson arrived in Stoney Middleton, a village in the High Peak, about fifteen miles from Matlock Bath.
Jackson had served under his lordship during wartime and was rewarded in peacetime with his present position as the viscount’s representative on a number of fronts. He was as deeply devoted to Lord Gordmor as his lordship’s bailiff Caleb Finch was devoted to Caleb Finch. Jackson, however, thought the bailiff’s loyalties were of the same species as his own. He believed, for instance,
that Finch had recently come to the Peak solely to further his master’s interests in any and all ways possible.
This was Jackson’s first and fatal mistake.
That evening he met with Finch at the Star Inn and Post House, to enlist the bailiff’s help in promoting the canal scheme.
“His lordship wants the miners let off, to come to the meeting,” Jackson was explaining after they’d tucked away a hearty supper. “He’d like one or two of the more articulate fellows to say a few words for the canal—how their future livelihoods depend on it, and all the ones depending on them: wives, children, and aging parents.”
“Isn’t a one of them what you call arti-cu-late,” Caleb said. “And I don’t think there’s a one got a wife and wee ones and aging ma and pa.” He lifted his tankard and swallowed. “The old ones has been planted a good whiles by now, rest their pore souls,” he added piously. “Them and a lot of them pore wee babes as don’t get enough to eat nor no medicine when a sickness comes on ’em. But as the cause is just, there mightn’t be no harm in letting on like it was the way you say. All in the good cause.”
And all in a good cause—which was to say, in the cause of Caleb Finch—he went on to blame his lordship’s mine foreman for the present plight of the miners and their families. Caleb cited bad discipline, unsafe practices, poor maintenance, and inefficient methods, etc., etc.
This was because the mine foreman, to Finch’s disgust, had proved an honest, diligent fellow. He’d refused to understand Finch’s hints about one hand washing the other. He had, furthermore, let it be known that he’d heard some dark rumors about Finch’s past in Derbyshire.
It was crucial, therefore, that the foreman be swiftly dismissed and utterly discredited. Finch had dismissed him first thing Monday morning and promptly set about the business of character assassination. The foreman was still reeling from the blow. Finch knew that Jackson would carry the slander to Lord Gordmor before the victim recovered sufficiently for a counterattack.
But this was by no means the most important matter to lay before his lordship’s trusted agent.