Miss Wonderful

by Loretta Chase

  And so, after she had shed her damp clothes and dried off and donned a warm nightgown and robe, she went to her sitting room. There, comfortably ensconced in a soft chair before the fire, she wrote a letter to Lady Sherfield in London. If there was anything about Mr. Carsington Aunt Clothilde didn’t know, it wasn’t worth knowing.

  IT took Alistair the full two hours Miss Oldridge had predicted to traverse the “few miles” from Oldridge Hall to Wilkerson’s Hotel, where he was staying.

  He arrived soaked to the bone, a condition to which his leg objected in the most strenuous terms, refusing to assist him in any way in climbing the stairs.

  But he was used to the leg’s tantrums and made it to his bedchamber. There his manservant Crewe expressed his disapproval with a mildly censuring cough and the recommendation of a hot bath.

  “It’s too late to make the servants haul water up the stairs,” Alistair said.

  He dropped into a chair near the fire, set his foot on the fender, and started massaging his outraged leg. While doing so, he told his valet about the day’s vicissitudes, discreetly excluding his deranged reaction to Miss Oldridge.

  “I am sorry, sir, you had a lengthy journey in bad weather to no purpose,” Crewe said. “Perhaps I might fetch you a bottle of wine and something to eat?”

  “I’ve been more than amply fed,” Alistair said. “Mr. Oldridge appears to have two great passions: botany and dinner.”

  “Indeed, sir. The servants here all solemnly swear that he has never once been late to dinner, though he is late or absent in every other circumstance.”

  “I should have stayed here and listened to servants’ gossip,” Alistair said, staring into the fire. “As it was, I was ill-prepared for the encounter.” The glowing coals brought to mind Miss Oldridge’s hair, and the way the candlelight caught it, making it a soft gold at times, a fiery red at others. “His daughter…” He hesitated. “She holds amazingly strong opinions for one so young.”

  “A lady of uncommon character, they say, sir. She would have to be, to manage so large an estate and all her father’s business interests.”

  Alistair looked up from the fire to his servant’s face. “Miss Oldridge manages the property?”

  “She manages everything. I was told that her bailiff hardly dares draw a breath without her approval. Sir, are you ill? Perhaps I had better fetch that wine. Or a hot posset—indeed, you will not wish to risk a chill at this time, when you have so much to do.”

  Though he was not ill, Alistair let his valet go to concoct one of his possets.

  The master used the time to digest what he’d just heard.

  The ill-dressed, inquisitive girl with the fire-colored hair ran one of the largest estates in Derbyshire.

  “Well, someone must,” he muttered a while later, when he’d finally found a relatively clear perspective on the situation. “He doesn’t attend to anything else, that’s plain enough. As she told me: If it wasn’t botanical, he wouldn’t attend.”

  He became aware of Crewe hovering nearby with the hot drink. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “How old is she?” Alistair demanded. “Not a girl, I’m sure. No girl could possibly—Gad, why didn’t I see?” he shook his head and accepted the cup from his valet. “Did the gossips by any chance mention how old Miss Oldridge is?”

  “One and thirty,” said Crewe.

  The sip of posset Alistair had taken went down his windpipe. When he stopped choking and coughing, he laughed. He might as well. It was a fine joke on him.

  “One and thirty,” he repeated.

  “Last month, sir.”

  “I thought she was a girl,” Alistair said. “As anyone would. A slimmish lass, with a mass of coppery hair and great blue eyes and such a smile…” He looked down at the drink in his hand, his own smile fading. “God help us. The canal—everything—depends on her.”

  Three

  THE following morning, Mirabel and two servants set out under overcast skies to find Mr. Carsington’s body.

  They reached Matlock Bath without encountering any corpses, however, and learned from the postmistress that the gentleman had arrived safely the previous night and was staying in Wilkerson’s Hotel.

  The choice of hotel was surprising. Mirabel had thought he’d be staying up the hill, at the Old Bath Hotel, Matlock Bath’s grandest. Instead he’d chosen Wilkerson’s, which stood on the South Parade, exposed to all the dirt and noise of coaches coming and going.

  When they entered the village, though, the Parade was quiet. By this time the sun had grown bolder, making an occasional dart through the clouds to sparkle on the river and the whitewashed houses pressed against the hillside.

  Though the place was as familiar to Mirabel as her own property, she never grew tired of its beauty.

  Here the hills rose steeply from the Derwent River, the great limestone crag of the High Tor visible at every turn. It might have been a castle, with a garden wall along whose sides patches of greenery softened the grey rock.

  The spa itself was clean and pretty. Lodging places, shops, and museums clustered along a short stretch of the Museum Parade, and villas peeped out from the greenery on the surrounding hillsides. On the other side of the road, gardens sloped down toward the river. The road followed the river’s route, round the mountain rising behind the Heights of Abraham.

  It was an easy climb to the Heights, and Mirabel had done it in all seasons. Whenever her cares threatened to overwhelm her, she went there and let her surroundings soothe her.

  She had a great deal on her mind this day and experienced more than a little perturbation of spirit. But she hadn’t time to let nature calm her.

  Instead, having turned over her curricle to the groom and sent her maid Lucy to carry out some errands, Mirabel proceeded to the entrance of Wilkerson’s Hotel.

  Within, she asked for Mr. Carsington.

  Mr. Wilkerson hurried out to her. “I believe he’s still abed, Miss Oldridge,” he said.

  “Still abed?” she repeated. “But it must be noon.”

  “Just gone half-past eleven, miss,” said the innkeeper.

  Then she remembered: Members of the haut ton rarely rose before noon, usually on account of going to bed about the time dawn was cracking.

  Mr. Wilkerson offered to send a servant up to ascertain whether Mr. Carsington was ready to receive visitors.

  An image arose in Mirabel’s mind of Mr. Carsington pushing tousled gold-streaked brown hair out of his face and blinking sleepily up at…someone.

  “No, there is no need to disturb him,” she said quickly. “I shall be in the village for some hours. I must pay some calls. I can speak to him later in the day.”

  She noticed her hands were trembling. It must be hunger. She’d been so worried about finding Lord Hargate’s son in broken pieces that she’d been able to swallow only a sip of tea and a bite of toast for breakfast. “But first I should like a pot of tea,” she added, “and some toast.”

  She was swiftly conveyed to a private dining room, far from the bustle of the public dining room and tavern. Within minutes the tea and toast appeared.

  After she’d emptied plate and teapot, Mirabel’s spirits revived. When Mr. Wilkerson came in and asked if she’d like something more—eggs, perhaps, and a few rashers of bacon—she asked for his most detailed local map.

  He had any number of such maps, he assured her, as good a selection as one might find in any shop in London, including some handsome hand-tinted ones. He wished the Ordnance Survey map of Derbyshire had been done by now, but it hadn’t. “A pity it is, Miss Oldridge,” he said. “Very scientifically made, they are, those new maps.”

  She asked to see what he had, and he brought them to her. Several seemed detailed enough to suit her purposes, and she spread these out on the table, merely to compare. She did not plan a close study until she returned home.

  But Mirabel was in certain respects more like her father than she realized. Left to herself—with no interruptions, disturbanc
es, or servants’ calls for help—she could become as caught up in working out a riddle as he.

  As time passed, she shed by degrees her bonnet and cloak. More than two hours after she’d come, she was still bent over the maps, looking for a way out of her difficulty.

  ABOUT this time, Mr. Wilkerson was out in the court-yard, gossiping with a postilion. Consequently, he was unaware that Mr. Carsington had come downstairs and was on his way to the private parlor he’d reserved as his headquarters. Since Mr. Wilkerson was not there to inform him, and Mr. Carsington did not encounter a servant en route, he had no idea who was in the small dining room nearby.

  The door happening to be open, Alistair idly glanced inside as he was passing and discovered directly in his line of vision a small, round, distinctively feminine bottom.

  It was draped in green fabric whose fine quality his connoisseur’s eye could not fail to discern, even while this same eye was assessing the form beneath and calculating how many layers of cloth came between the dress and skin.

  All this was the work of an instant, no more. But she must have heard his footsteps pause. Or perhaps she heard him catch his breath—and snatch his wits back from where they were wandering and remind himself he’d better continue on his way: He could not afford to be distracted by a female, no matter how perfect her derrière.

  Whatever the cause, she lifted a head capped with a disheveled mass of coppery hair and turned a deep blue gaze over her shoulder at him…and smiled.

  It was she.

  “Miss Oldridge,” he said, his voice dropping so low that the two words sounded like “grrrr.”

  “Mr. Carsington.” She straightened and turned fully toward him. “I had not thought you would be up and about at this early hour.”

  Was she being sarcastic? “It is nearly two o’clock,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “Good heavens. Have I been here all this time?”

  “I haven’t the least idea now long you’ve been here,” he said.

  She threw a frowning glance at the map. “Well, I never meant to stay so long. That is, I meant to come back later, when you were awake.”

  “I am awake.”

  “Yes, and”—she eyed him up and down—“and looking very neat and elegant.”

  Alistair wished he could say the same for her. Someone had made a valiant attempt to tame her hair with a braid coiled and pinned on the crown of her head. But of course half the pins were on the floor and the table, and the coil was listing to starboard. His hands itched to get at it and put it right. He clenched them and forced himself to look elsewhere.

  Grimly he regarded the expensive dress. This green was even more unbecoming than the shade he’d first seen her wearing. The style—oh, it had no style at all. It was plain and dull and about as flattering as a flour sack.

  He turned his gaze to the maps.

  “I needed a new one,” she said. “We had a very fine map of the area, but my father drowned it in the Derwent River in November.”

  “I see.” He did, all too plainly. “What I don’t understand is why you or your father would need one. I was told that yours is one of the older families hereabouts. I should think you’d know the land quite well.”

  “My own property, yes, but Longledge Hill gets its name from its length, which is considerable,” she said. “It actually comprises several hills—far more territory than I or even my father could know intimately.” She turned back to the table and pointed to the map. “We have Captain Hughes on one side of us, and Sir Roger Tolbert on the other. Even though we visit frequently, I certainly do not know every stick and stone of their land. I was particularly curious about Lord Gordmor’s property, which is actually a good deal less, you see, than fifteen miles away.”

  “It comes to nearly twice that for carts and packhorses traveling deeply rutted and circuitous roads,” Alistair said. “If we could cut a canal in a straight line, it would extend not even ten miles. However, since rocky hills lie along that line, and our route must go round landowners’ out-buildings, timber yards, and such—we estimate fifteen miles of canal.”

  He moved to stand beside her at the table. “Is this why you needed a map? You wished to study our route more carefully? Is it possible you are having second thoughts about your opposition to our plans?”

  “No, I’m having second thoughts about Lord Gordmor,” she said without looking up.

  The fitful sunbeams from the dining room’s single window made a fiery froth of the wispy ringlets about her face. The braided coil sagged further toward her ear, which, being small and perfectly shell-shaped, made the imperfect hair arrangement—not to mention every stitch on her persons—all the more aggravating.

  “You had perhaps pictured him as one of those rapacious villains of industry who evict humble shepherds and cowherds from their huts and erect immense, smoking factories on what used to be grazing land?” Alistair said.

  “No, I had pictured him as being resourceful,” she said. “When a solution I devise proves unworkable, I look for another way to solve the problem. But having failed to interest us in his canal, Lord Gordmor has not, as I supposed he would do, exercised his imagination. Instead, he has kept to his original solution. The difference this time is, he’s sent in heavy artillery to blast us into submission.”

  Alistair would have understood immediately what she was saying if his mind had not been otherwise occupied.

  The braided coil not only continued to sag but was un-coiling as well. Though he hadn’t heard the pins drop, he was sure more were scattered over the map-covered table than a moment ago. Any minute now, her coiffure would tumble completely to pieces. He could barely keep his hands still.

  Thus distracted, he said, “Heavy artillery? You cannot think we will bring in our machinery and troops of canal cutters and bully our way through. You are aware, I hope, that we cannot build a canal without an Act of Parliament, and Parliament will not approve a canal proposal the landowners unanimously oppose.”

  “You are the heavy artillery,” she said. “In this part of Derbyshire, the Earl of Hargate is at least as important as the Duke of Devonshire. Your family has been here quite as long, and your father is held in exceptionally high esteem. Two of your brothers are paragons, and you are a famous hero. Lord Gordmor chose his partner very wisely, indeed—as well as a convenient time to contract influenza.”

  Alistair froze, almost literally. After a moment’s incredulous outrage, he settled into a cold fury. “Correct me if I have misapprehended, Miss Oldridge,” he said with bone-chilling politeness. “You believe Lord Gordmor or I—or perhaps the pair of us—decided to use my family’s position and my own notoriety to mow down the opposition? You think that is why I came? To what? Overawe the yokels? Perhaps even touch their hearts with the evidence of my great sacrifice on behalf of King and country?” At the reference to his troublesome leg, a bitter note crept into his voice.

  “Lord Gordmor has not a fraction of your impact upon local opinion,” she said. “He is not a Derbyshire man. His title is recent, bestowed only in the last half century. And he is not famous.” Her chin went up. “I do not see why you take offense. I merely state the simple facts of the case, which should be obvious to everybody—though I suppose no one else will say it to your face.”

  “You know nothing about Lord Gordmor,” Alistair said tightly. “If you did, you would be aware he would never be so dishonorable as to use me or my position to foist a wicked scheme upon anybody.”

  His leg was twitching angrily. It hated standing too long in one position. He stepped away from the table.

  “I said nothing about foisting wicked schemes,” she said. “Really, you seem to have a turn for the theatrical, Mr. Carsington.” Her brow wrinkled. “Or perhaps they’re rhetorical flourishes. ‘Overawe the yokels’ is apt, but ‘rapacious villains’ and ‘wicked scheme’ are off the mark. I do not think your canal is wicked. If a suitor is rejected, it does not follow that he is wicked, merely that he does not suit. Does your
leg pain you?”

  “Not in the least,” he said while a spasm shot through his hip.

  She, too, backed away from the table. “I know I’m supposed to take no notice,” she said. “But it is never proper to ignore someone’s discomfort. You move more stiffly than before. I collect your leg pains you. Perhaps you wish to walk about. Or sit. Or elevate it. I shouldn’t keep you here arguing with me, at any rate. I’m sure you have a great many important things to do.”

  Alistair had many, many important things to do. But she had thrown everything into a tumult, like her hair, and he was not ready to be dismissed. “Miss Oldridge, you know perfectly well that you are the most important thing I have to do,” he said, and instantly regretted it. Where were his vaunted powers of address? Good grief, where were his manners?

  He paced to the window and back, and to the window again. His leg treated him to several spasms. It was furious with him.

  She watched him, her expression troubled. “The long ride in the cold rain last night cannot have been good for your injury. I did not think of that until now. My great anxiety this morning was finding your broken body in a ditch. I had resigned myself to picking up the pieces. Why am I important?”

  Listening to her talk about searching for his broken corpse made Alistair forget what he meant to say. He recalled how she’d left a warm, luxurious house and ridden out in the darkness and freezing rain to bring him back. He could not imagine any other woman—save, perhaps, his mother—doing such a thing. But then, unlike most other women, Miss Oldridge was the responsible member of the family, the one in charge.

  The one upon whom his canal depended, he reminded himself.

  He should be making the most of this opportunity.

  He marshaled his ideas into order. “No one else will speak freely to me,” he said. “You said so a moment ago. I need to understand what the objections are to the canal.”