Miss Wonderful

by Loretta Chase

“I’m sorry I gave you a fright,” he said.

  “Fright,” she repeated, still gazing at her hands as though she didn’t know what they were. “Yes.” She felt a wild urge to laugh and another to sob and another to fly from the room. She sat down heavily in the chair by the bed and buried her face in her hands. “Give me a moment,” she mumbled. To her dismay, tears welled. What was wrong with her? She never cried. Was she hysterical?

  “You have enough to worry about without worrying about me,” he said. “It’s a wonder you don’t collapse from the weight of your responsibilities. I am sorry to add to it.”

  “Oh, you are nothing.” She waved a hand to dismiss the notion but did not trust herself enough to lift her head.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I am the Earl of Hargate’s son, and a famous dratted hero besides, and now you are saddled with my care. If I should accidentally do myself a fatal injury, you will be blamed for not taking proper care of me—or even for hastening my demise, perhaps. Small wonder you can’t sleep. I shouldn’t care to be in your shoes—er—slippers, for the world.”

  Mirabel looked up then and found him regarding her with a troubled expression.

  “Not that I have any idea what it’s like,” he added. “I’ve never had to be responsible for anybody. Nothing—nobody—has ever depended on me. It makes one feel rather pointless. Well, not altogether. Certain people rely upon me to set an example in the way of neckcloth arrangements.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. “Oh, more than that, I’ll warrant,” she said. “Your waistcoats are paragons, beautiful without being showy. You have the knack for not overdoing, which is exceedingly rare among dandies. Beau Brummell was one of the few who possessed it. So great a gift is also a great responsibility.”

  “Yes, well, there you have it. My great responsibility is to look beautiful.”

  And he carried it out to perfection, Mirabel thought. Even now, with his hair tousled and night shirt rumpled, he seemed a work of art to her. It took enormous will to keep her eyes from straying lower than his bared neck, to the crooked V of the shirt opening.

  She told herself not to think about it, either: the hard muscle of his upper torso, and how soft and fragile she’d felt…how she’d longed to touch him…how she’d relished the feel of his long hands curling over her hips, sliding upward….

  She turned away and stared hard in the direction of the fire, which had dwindled to glowing embers.

  “You asked about Zorah.” His voice had dropped so low it seemed to vibrate inside her.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mirabel said. “It’s none of my business. She’s one of the seven or eight, I suppose.”

  “No, a camp follower,” he said, frowning. “She was at Waterloo. When they found me. I…” He paused. “I couldn’t remember.”

  ALISTAIR had never said it aloud before, in plain words, and almost wished he hadn’t now. But it was very late, and the household was asleep, and he seemed to be still half-dreaming.

  He’d come out of a nightmare to a warm armful of woman. He’d come to consciousness inhaling her scent while her hair tickled his cheek.

  In the next moment he was being swept this way and that in emotional crosscurrents.

  She was, he’d recollected, the wrong woman—the one he mustn’t have—and he wondered if this was some hellish trial he must endure to pay for his youthful misdeeds.

  And then, watching her struggle not to weep—with exhaustion, no doubt—he’d remembered he was a trial to her, one more burden in an already overburdened life.

  He could not pretend, not to her.

  “I don’t—didn’t—remember,” he repeated. “It’s driven me wild. It was not even three years ago. A battle, perhaps the most famous since Trafalgar—I was there—and I can’t—couldn’t—remember.”

  “Good heavens,” she said, “that is the last thing on earth I would have…” She frowned. “Amnesia. So that is what Papa—” She broke off and looked up at him. “You were very much knocked about. It is perfectly understandable. And then, yesterday, when you fell into the Briar Brook—”

  “On my head,” he said wryly.

  “It must have jarred the memories loose.”

  “It’s still only bits and pieces,” he said. “The battle itself remains hazy—an infernal din amid clouds of smoke. Perhaps that’s how it was. Every so often the smoke clears, and I have a moment of clarity. But not the important moments, the times when…” He hesitated. “The heroic feats you read about. I still can’t remember those. Only the aftermath, when the din has stopped and the smoke has cleared and the quiet seems unearthly. I come to, and it’s dark. I’m pinned down. And there’s a smell, indescribably vile.”

  Alistair paused and shut his eyes. She didn’t need to hear about this. What was the matter with him?

  He’d said far too much and was on the brink of revealing more: about the dream that had felt so real, true, familiar. Those endless hours spent trapped under a corpse, in the muck, suffocating in that stench.

  “So many hurt,” she said softly. “So many dead. Two soldiers died on top of you. There were wounded and dead everywhere. I’ve sat by deathbeds, but I cannot imagine what a battlefield must be like.”

  A charnel house. A hellish mire. He’d thought they would never find him, that they’d already given up on him. He didn’t know how long he’d lain there. It seemed like years passed while he was sinking into the ooze, rotting to death by slow degrees.

  “Don’t try to imagine it,” he said.

  She met his gaze. “To us at home, war is made out to be grand and glorious. But I don’t see how it could be anything but filthy and horrible beyond imagining.” He heard her breath catch as she added, “And heartbreaking.”

  Someone dear to her must have died there, he thought. That would help explain why she buried herself in this out-of-the-way place.

  “You lost a loved one?” he said. “At Waterloo?”

  “A loved one?” She shook her head. “It is the end of so many young lives that makes me sick at heart.”

  He decided not to probe further. “Lives lost, yes—that’s the hard price,” he said. “But there’s honor in fighting and dying that way. It is a great chance for a man to do something truly worthwhile. And a battle is glorious, in a way. Especially such a battle, against a monster like Napoleon. It is the nearest one can come to being like the knights in legend, slaying dragons and ogres and evil magicians.”

  As soon as he said it, he regretted it. He sounded like a boy prating of fairy tales.

  Miss Oldridge was looking at him, her expression impossible to read.

  He’d revealed far too much. He searched for some witty, ironic remark, but before his sluggish brain could respond, she spoke.

  “You are so complicated,” she said. “No sooner do I believe I’ve sorted you out than you do or say something to overthrow my neat theories.”

  “You have theories about me?” he said lightly, snatching at the chance to redirect the conversation. “Can it be, Miss Oldridge, that there is time in your busy, responsible life for thoughts of me?”

  “I make the time,” she said, “much as the Duke of Wellington made time to think about Napoleon.”

  It was a douse of cold water, and Alistair told himself he needed it and ought to be grateful to her for stopping him before he opened his heart to her.

  He was her enemy, because of Gordy’s canal. She did not forget it. He should not, either.

  He should remember what he’d come here for.

  He should never forget that not only his best friend’s but his brothers’ future depended on it, and it was his last chance to redeem himself in his father’s eyes.

  “I haven’t come to conquer the Peak and make its inhabitants my subjects,” he said. “I am not your enemy. Furthermore, I must tell you that on any number of grounds I must take issue with your comparing me to Bonaparte. Have you any idea what the man wore to his coronation? A toga!”

  She smiled and shook her
head. “It would be so much easier if you were more monsterlike. I wish you could contrive to be more disagreeable, or boring, at least.”

  He wanted to ask how unmonsterlike, how undisagreeable she found him. He wanted to know how he could make it harder for her to hate him. But he’d already said too much, felt too much. He’d already gone farther than was sensible in the circumstances, the curst circumstances.

  If only…

  No. None of those worthless if onlys.

  “Given a choice, I’d rather be thought loathsome,” he said. “I can think of few worse fates than being deemed boring. An incorrectly starched neckcloth, perhaps. Hessians worn with breeches. Waistcoat buttons left undone with a plain shirt.” He shuddered theatrically.

  She laughed softly and rose. “How can I hate a man who does not take himself seriously?”

  She did not hate him.

  His heart gave a thump of relief, but he played his part. With a shocked look he said, “Miss Oldridge, I assure you I could not be more serious, especially about the matter of wearing one’s upper waistcoat buttons undone with a plain shirt—or wearing them fully buttoned with a frilled one.”

  …unless she was the one who did the unbuttoning, he could have added. Then he wouldn’t care what kind of shirt he wore.

  He remembered the hurried thudding of her heart against his chest, and his own heart banging against his ribs.

  He remembered the sweet curve of her hips under his hands.

  He remembered the warm fragrance of her skin.

  No, he must forget these things. Otherwise, he would make more mistakes, do something irreparably stupid.

  Remember Gordy instead, he told himself. Remember the man who refused to believe, as everyone else did, that you were dead, the man who, near dead himself with fatigue, searched the filthy, reeking battlefield for you.

  He told himself to remember his younger brothers, who would be robbed to support their feckless brother.

  He told himself to remember their sire, whose third son had disappointed him time and time again.

  He came out of these unhappy reflections to find his tormentor anxiously searching his countenance. He wondered how long he’d been silent, fighting with himself.

  She rose and said, “I have kept you up talking too long. If you are ill tomorrow, it will be my fault, and Crewe will never trust me again. I solemnly promised not to do you any harm.”

  “You did me no harm,” Alistair said. “The opposite, rather. I’m grateful to be rescued from that dream.” He could not resist adding, “Thank you for jumping on me.”

  “Pray don’t mention it,” she said, heading for the door. “The pleasure was mine, Mr. Carsington.”

  ONLY a few ill-natured persons believed Mirabel would go so far as to push Lord Hargate’s son into the Briar Brook. This did not mean the rest were not exchanging other theories, very like the sort of damaging gossip Captain Hughes had predicted.

  The vicar’s wife, Mrs. Dunnet, who was partial to Mirabel, paid a call on Monday. In the drawing room, over tea and cakes, she tactfully made Mirabel and Mrs. Entwhistle aware of the local mood, as ascertained from conversations heard after church the previous day and in the course of this morning’s calls.

  “I am sure Mr. Dunnet has preached more than once about idle rumors and bearing false witness,” the vicar’s wife said. “The trouble is, most of his listeners assume his words apply to everyone else but them.”

  “I daresay most of the talk reflects discontent and vexation rather than true malice,” said Mrs. Entwhistle. “And we mustn’t forget Caleb Finch’s friends. They’ve never forgiven Mirabel for dismissing him.”

  At the mention of her former bailiff, Mirabel got up from her chair and walked to the French doors. The day was overcast. That was like Caleb Finch, she thought. She had not seen him in years, yet he hung over her world and darkened it.

  She had only herself to blame.

  She should have brought charges against him; she knew that now. But at the time she’d been scarcely twenty years old, unsure of her evidence, unsure of herself, and sadly naive about business.

  As well, William had arrived in the midst of it, and she’d been trying to make him understand why the wedding must be put off, why she couldn’t go away with him, not then, while the estate was falling to pieces.

  “My dear.”

  Mirabel turned at the sound of her governess’s voice and mustered a smile. “How I should like to forget Caleb Finch. Is he back again?”

  How she wished she’d had the courage years ago to bring him before the law. He might have been transported—along with some of the friends who’d connived with him to take advantage of her father.

  “He is not in Longledge,” said Mrs. Entwhistle.

  “He could hardly wish to show his face here,” said Mrs. Dunnet. “I have not heard him mentioned this age. Even his friends don’t speak openly of him.”

  “Caleb Finch’s allies are a minor irritation,” Mrs. Entwhistle said. “My great concern is the respectable people of Longledge. If we do not soon quiet them, your reputation will be in tatters.”

  Mirabel wished she didn’t need to worry about her reputation and the effect of rumors on it. But she couldn’t afford any smirch on her character. She would lose all the influence she had worked so hard to win. No one would pay any attention to her objections to the canal.

  “I am not at all sure how one goes about stopping such talk,” she said. “Denial only makes matters worse.”

  “One needs to understand the causes,” said Mrs. Entwhistle. “I believe we may blame envy.”

  “Envy?” Mirabel returned to her chair. Mrs. Entwhistle had a remarkable grasp of human nature.

  “You have a celebrated person under your roof,” that lady explained. “But at present, your neighbors are forbidden to visit him. Everyone, naturally, wants to be made an exception to the rule. They see that Captain Hughes is an exception, as am I, and do not understand why they should not be as well.”

  “I will not turn you out, or turn Captain Hughes away, merely so as to offend nobody,” Mirabel said. “They will only find something else to be vexed about.”

  “You need not turn anybody out,” said Mrs. Entwhistle. “It is simple enough to quiet such talk.”

  Mrs. Dunnet laughed. “It cannot be so simple as all that, or else I am very stupid. Nothing I said availed.”

  “It is only that people long for excitement,” Mrs. Entwhistle said. “They wish to learn whether mysterious new injuries appear daily, or whether Mr. Carsington evidences symptoms of poisoning—or whether he is even alive.” The widow’s dark eyes twinkled. “The devil makes talk for idle tongues, and why not? It is February, this is a small community, and people have no other entertainment. If I were you, I should entertain them, Mirabel.”

  “I hope you are not proposing I poison my guest in order to keep my neighbors amused,” Mirabel said.

  “I propose that you rearrange your schedule for today,” her former governess said. “Put business aside and spend the time visiting your neighbors instead. Be sure to give them every possible detail about your exalted guest. Also—and this is most important, Mirabel—you must beseech their advice regarding his care.”

  The vicar’s wife turned an admiring gaze upon the plump, beruffled widow. “How astute you are,” Mrs. Dunnet said. “That will be worth a hundred sermons, though you must never tell Mr. Dunnet I said so.”

  MIRABEL’S Aunt Clothilde had sent Mrs. Entwhistle to Oldridge Hall fifteen years ago. She was intended to be more of a companion than a teacher for the motherless girl, since by that time Mirabel’s education was essentially complete. The governess had found a household devastated and demoralized by the death of its beloved mistress. In short order she rebuilt morale and, as Captain Hughes put it, “Got ’em all shipshape again.”

  In doing so, she had given Mirabel the kind of education her mother might have done, one that extended far beyond the schoolroom. Mirabel had profitably e
mployed this knowledge a few years later, when she had to give up her romantic dreams and return home from London to prevent another shipwreck.

  This was why Mirabel didn’t question Mrs. Entwhistle’s counsel but promptly followed it.

  As a result, Mirabel spent all of Monday, well into the evening, listening to various ladies’ tender expressions of pity for Mr. Carsington’s sufferings. She accepted with a straight face and humble gratitude their medical receipts guaranteed to cure everything from chapped lips to deafness.

  She listened to advice about forestalling lung fever and stoically bore their reminiscences of the great influenza outbreak of ’03, which had killed her mother. She waited while they wrote notes to the patient and promised to deliver them to him as soon as Dr. Woodfrey deemed his brain strong enough for reading. She went home at last in a carriage loaded with jellies, conserves, syrups, and enough Balm of Gilead Oil to cover Prussia.

  She arrived shortly after dinner and found Mrs. Entwhistle in the library conversing with Captain Hughes. Papa, she was informed, had gone upstairs to keep Mr. Carsington company.

  “I had fully intended to have my tea upstairs with the patient,” Mrs. Entwhistle said. “But when Captain Hughes told us during dinner that Mr. Carsington seemed to be in low spirits today, your father insisted on visiting him. He said he knew exactly the thing to alleviate the trouble.”

  Mirabel recalled her father’s confused idea that laudanum was somehow the answer to Mr. Carsington’s mysterious problems.

  She did not know for sure that laudanum would do him any harm. On the other hand, she couldn’t be sure it would do him any good, and she most certainly had no idea whether her father had any inkling of proper dosage.

  Mirabel ran out of the library and up the stairs.

  Ten

  HEART pounding, Mirabel burst into the room, ran to the bed—and stopped short.

  Mr. Carsington was not in the bed, drugged unconscious or otherwise.

  She looked about her and found three pairs of eyes regarding her with varying degrees of perplexity.