Miss Wonderful

by Loretta Chase

  He wrapped his arms about her, and drew her closer, and deepened the kiss. The intimacy of it, the first taste of him, made her shiver. It shut down her mind as well, and left her in a haze of feeling. She was aware of the tickle of his neckcloth and the faint mingled fragrances of starch and soap and something else, something far headier: the scent of his skin. She wanted to bury her face in his neck. She wanted to feel his skin against hers, everywhere.

  She pressed herself closer, tucking into the hard length of his body. His arms tightened about her, so strong, and she, who’d spent years relying only on her own strength, ached with the sweetness of it. To be held so, to want and be wanted—it hurt, and the hurt showed her how carefully, safely numb she’d been all these long years.

  She didn’t want to be safe now. Their kiss grew fiercer, much more wicked, and hazy pleasure thickened into intoxication. She dragged her hands through his hair and broke the kiss to press her mouth to the corner of his, the place where he hid his smiles. She drank in the scent of him, male and clean yet dark, too, and faintly dangerous, like the hint of danger in his bedchamber, the languor that seemed to hang in the air, the sultry atmosphere, hinting at sin.

  He turned his head and teased as she did, his mouth caressing her cheek, her jaw, her neck. Some sound escaped her, foreign. A sigh, a moan. She felt his hands slide downward to cup her bottom. She gasped at the intimacy, those long hands, touching her there—and then he was lifting her up, as smoothly and easily as if she were made of air. A moment later he’d deposited her, breathless, on the desk.

  He leaned in and kissed her, and she forgot she was shocked, forgot everything but him. Instinctively, she opened her legs so that he could get closer, and when he did, she wrapped her arms about his neck. He made a sound, something between a groan and a growl, and broke the kiss. For a moment he rested his forehead against hers.

  He drew a long, shaky breath, then lifted his head. He tangled his fingers in her hair and drew her head back and looked at her. He was breathing hard, and his eyes were very dark.

  “Now would be a good time to tell me to stop,” he growled.

  “Oh,” Mirabel said. It was hard to get out the one syllable, and it sounded thick and muffled, not her voice at all. “Yes. Thank you. I didn’t know. When.” Didn’t know. Didn’t care.

  “I thought not.” He dragged his fingers through her hair and smiled rather sadly, then let go and took a step back. “It is fortunate for you that I am mending my ways. And may I say that it is uphill work.”

  She wished he’d picked another time to mend his ways.

  He cleared his throat. “You took a great chance, leaving it to me to call a halt to the proceedings. Another few minutes, and I should have had all your buttons and strings undone—at which point I should be beyond caring about the consequences.”

  “Oh,” Mirabel said, and then, as his words sank in. “Oh.” Another few minutes. What would it have been like?

  “I should like to know what use it is to have a chaperon when she is never about when she is needed,” he said irritably. “If the lady were doing her job, this sort of thing would not happen.”

  “It isn’t as though I do this sort of thing all the time,” Mirabel said.

  “That is obvious,” he said.

  She slid down from the desk. “I’m sorry if my lack of skill annoys you. I should be much better at this if I had practice, but as you can imagine, the opportunities are rare.” She sighed. “Nonexistent, actually.”

  “That isn’t the issue! The issue is your ignorance about protecting your virtue. Someone should have taught you ages ago—”

  “I was taught,” she said. “But it was ages ago, and I barely remember, and anyway, I am not sure what the point is of protecting it anymore.”

  “The point?” he said. “The point?”

  “It does not seem very important,” she said. It seemed completely wrong at the moment, in fact. Perverse.

  “It doesn’t need a point.” He raked his fingers through his hair, adding to the wonderful disorder she’d made. “It is a moral principle. Part of the higher order of things. A matter of honor.”

  “Honor is so important to men,” she said. “Can you not look after it yourself, if it is so important? You should have fought me off the way you fought the French. You should not leave it all to me. I do not have seven or eight love affairs’ worth of experience in these things. It is most unjust to expect a woman of little experience to resist an attractive man of extensive experience.”

  “It is unjust,” he said between his teeth, “but that is the way it is. I cannot believe I am trying to explain the facts of life to a woman of one and thirty. Men are animals, Miss Oldridge. It is most unwise to leave such things to us. This is a perfect example. I had resolved, most firmly, to remain deaf, dumb, and blind to your attractions.”

  “My attract—”

  “I am here on crucial business,” he went on. “The most important of my life. You can have no inkling how much depends upon it. Yet every encounter with you serves only to drive it farther and farther from my mind. This must not continue. I cannot become entangled with you, no matter how much I want to.”

  “No matter how much you—”

  “When you are about, I forget why I am here and how much depends upon me,” he said. “The longer I am under this roof, the more addled I become. I cannot believe I went to the length of hunting you down this day. But yes, I can, as I can believe what followed. If I remain any longer, I shall turn into a dithering imbecile—and your reputation will be in shreds.”

  If he remained? Mirabel’s lust-drugged mind abruptly cleared. “You cannot be thinking of leaving,” she said. “I am sure Dr. Woodfrey did not give permission for that.”

  It was then she noticed the discarded cane lying on the floor. “Oh, I had forgotten your ankle,” she said. “You are not supposed to put any weight on it.” She was sure he wasn’t supposed to be picking up a woman who weighed rather more than air. If his ankle did not heal properly, it would be her fault. “I should have considered—”

  He picked up the cane. “Pray do not add me to your responsibilities,” he said. “You have more than enough. I have far too few. I reckon I can meet the challenge of being responsible for myself, if nothing else.” He limped to the desk and collected a handful of hairpins. “Here, let me do something useful. It will reduce the whispering in the servants’ hall if you do not emerge from this room looking as though your houseguest had ravished you.”

  AWARE he must leave before his limited willpower gave way, Alistair made quick work of Miss Oldridge’s hair. Then, ignoring her protests, he hastened to his chamber and ordered Crewe to start packing.

  Crewe didn’t argue. He only gave a sad little cough and donned a stoic expression. This was his way of saying, “You are wrong, tragically wrong.”

  Alistair ignored it.

  He could not ignore Captain Hughes, however, who marched in a short time later without so much as a by-your-leave, and briskly announced that Mr. Carsington would stay at his house.

  Alistair thanked him and politely declined.

  “I must urge you to reconsider,” said the captain. “If you return to Wilkerson’s, Miss Oldridge will worry herself sick.”

  “There is nothing to worry about,” Alistair said. “I only need to rest, which I can do as well in my hotel as here.” He doubted he would rest at all until he was far away from Mirabel Oldridge. If not for the canal, he would head straight back to London this instant.

  “She’s worried about Crewe,” Hughes said. “He sits up with you most of the night, she says, then attends you all day. At the hotel, he’ll have no help. There aren’t enough servants, and they are always busy. He’ll have to supervise Wilkerson’s cook closely as well, because she can’t be relied upon to prepare correctly the light dishes Dr. Woodfrey has prescribed. In short, Miss Oldridge asks you to consider your valet if you won’t consider yourself.”

  Alistair looked at Crewe, who we
nt on with the packing, pretending to be deaf.

  “Miss Oldridge blames herself for upsetting you,” the captain went on.

  “She did not upset me,” Alistair said. “I am entirely to blame.”

  Hughes rolled his eyes. “I cannot believe these dramatics—about a canal, no less! I couldn’t believe my ears when Miss Oldridge declared she’d go with Mrs. Entwhistle to Cromford, so that you’d remain here.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Alistair said. “I have no wish to drive the lady from her own home.”

  “I should hope not. She’ll spend the whole time fretting about everything here, and what is or isn’t being done in her absence, and what might go wrong, and a hundred other anxieties. Not to mention that Mrs. Entwhistle will be obliged to pack again and travel, when she’s scarcely arrived.”

  “Miss Oldridge oughtn’t have so much to worry about!” Alistair snapped. “I like Mr. Oldridge, but it is wrong for him to leave everything to her. If he must indulge his botanical passions, he should hire a proper steward to look after estate business. It is unreasonable to expect her to be both mistress of the house and lord of the manor. Have you seen her desk? Great heaps of letters in that beastly law hand—and judging by the expression on her face when I entered, it was about as plain to her as Chinese is to me.”

  Alistair wished he could forget what he’d seen during the moment he’d stood unnoticed in the study doorway, watching her. She was dragging one hand through her hair, covering the legal correspondence with hairpins. In the other she had a pen whose ink she’d spattered on her sleeve.

  But it was her face that troubled him most. She looked so weary and despairing. He wanted to scoop her up in his arms and carry her away—on his white charger, no doubt.

  “She’s clever and capable,” he said tightly, “but it is too much for one person. Even my father, who reads every confounded tradesman’s bill and can tell me to the farthing how much I have outspent each quarter’s allowance—even he leaves the better part of managing his properties to his agents. He has a secretary as well. Miss Oldridge does it all herself and receives no thanks or even acknowledgment. It is a wonder she hasn’t had every feminine feeling ground out of her by now. That only her wardrobe and hair suffer is a testament to what I consider a miraculous resilience.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” said Captain Hughes. “Maybe there’s no reason for you to know. But I can tell you that you don’t improve matters by running away to Wilkerson’s.”

  Eleven

  ALISTAIR might have withstood the other arguments, though they sent his conscience into spasms.

  What demolished his resistance was the You don’t know the half of it, and the captain’s tone, hinting at revelations to come.

  Alistair wished he could pretend his motive was practical: The more he knew about Miss Oldridge, the better equipped he would be to either win her support for the canal or weaken her influence over others.

  But that was a monstrous lie. The truth was, he wanted to know more about her in the same way he wanted more of her on every other count—because he was thoroughly, fatally, besotted.

  His case being fatal, he yielded to the captain and moved next door.

  Though not built on the grand scale of Oldridge Hall, Bramblehurst was not the country cottage one might envision as the residence of a half-pay captain. It was not, furthermore, a typically untidy bachelor abode. The place was scrubbed and polished to within an inch of its life. Captain Hughes obviously believed naval discipline applied as well on land as at sea.

  He adhered as strictly to Dr. Woodfrey’s rules as if they came direct from the Admiralty.

  He rigorously enforced the “no visitors” and “no mental exertion” rules, and made certain Alistair had the proper amount of exercise. He shared his guest’s restricted diet, much as he would have shared his officers’ privations during extended periods between ports. He was a congenial and thoughtful host, who neither intruded too much upon his guest’s solitude nor left Alistair too much on his own.

  Nonetheless, the nightmares worsened, night by night, revealing more of what had previously remained hidden in a dark corner of Alistair’s mind. Now he wasn’t sure which was worse: the gaping hole in his memory and the nagging anxiety that something was irreparably wrong there, or the moments of painfully vivid recollection that revealed a man he hardly recognized, one who was antithesis of all he’d supposed himself to be.

  He didn’t know how much to believe. Were these true memories, as they seemed? Or were they distortions, as dreams so often were?

  He kept these worries to himself, however, as he’d kept the missing piece of memory secret—with one exception—along with the uncertainty it produced about the health and wholeness of his mind.

  Every morning at breakfast, when the captain asked if he’d slept well, Alistair claimed he’d slept like a top.

  But on Friday when he gave the usual answer, Hughes shook his head. “I wonder how you can sleep so soundly with such dismal results,” he said. “Your eyes are sunk halfway into your skull, and it appears someone has blacked both your eyes. You’re not lying awake fretting about your canal, I hope.”

  “Certainly not,” Alistair said. “That accomplishes nothing.”

  “You shouldn’t weary your mind with trying to guess what Miss Oldridge will do, either,” said the captain. “You’ll imagine she’ll act according to rational rules of engagement, when in fact she’ll do nothing of the kind.”

  “Ah, well, women’s and men’s minds are different,” Alistair said.

  “The most desperate engagement I ever undertook at sea was child’s play compared to the smallest dispute with a woman,” the captain said. “They invent their own weapons, their own rules—and change ’em when the whim takes ’em. You’d think that a fellow who’s seen the world a dozen times over—a fellow a very few years short of the half-century mark—” Black eyebrows knit and an angry glitter in his eye, he plunged his fork into a slab of bacon. “You’d think that an old sailor would have learnt their ways by now, or at least learnt to steer clear.”

  “But if we steered clear, life would lose so much of its sweetness—and more than a little of its excitement,” Alistair said. As he looked back on the years since Waterloo, the womanless years, the time seemed dreary beyond describing. How had he lived through it? He was amazed he hadn’t hanged himself.

  They ate in silence for a time.

  Then the captain muttered, “But he must take some of the blame. Stuffy, preachy little pig’s rump. What possessed her to marry him, I’ll never know. She said he was settled. Settled.”

  Alistair’s jaw dropped. Hastily, he reassembled his composure. “Miss Oldridge has been married?” The union had been annulled, of course, else she wouldn’t be “Miss Oldridge.”

  She might not be a virgin, then, after all, which meant the rules had changed.

  As soon as he thought it, he was furious with himself. He could not believe he’d grown so deranged as to look for loopholes that would permit him to bed her.

  He found the captain regarding him gravely. “Not Miss O,” he said. “I was speaking—grumbling—about the other lady. Mrs. E. Talking to myself. We old bachelors do that sometimes.” He went on eating.

  “I see,” Alistair said. “The other lady.” The captain’s woman troubles were located in the person of Mrs. Entwhistle, not Miss Oldridge…who had never been married.

  Of course she hadn’t been. Hadn’t she told him she was inexperienced? She was untouched. And she had not been saving herself for him.

  “Miss Oldridge likes ’em lively,” Captain Hughes said after a moment. “Or at least she did. The fellow she was to be shackled to was a man of spirit. I was sure he’d carry all before him. Not the sort to take no for an answer. When she broke it off, he followed her here and insisted on staying until she got matters sorted out.”

  In response to Alistair’s questioning look, the captain explained. Following his wife’s death, Mr. Oldrid
ge had neglected his affairs sadly, and his estate began a swift descent downhill. Matters had reached a crisis shortly after Miss Oldridge became engaged in London. She broke it off and returned home. This was eleven years ago.

  “Mr. Oldridge’s affairs were in a wretched tangle,” the captain went on. “Anyone could see it would take years to sort out. I believe one or two matters are still in dispute, in the lawyers’ hands.”

  That would explain, Alistair thought, why she supervised her bailiff so closely.

  “But how was William Poynton to wait years in Derbyshire?” Captain Hughes said.

  “Poynton?” Alistair said. “William Poynton, the artist?”

  The captain nodded. “He was only starting out then. He’d been commissioned to paint a mural in some Venetian nobleman’s palazzo. A great opportunity. He couldn’t tell the signore to wait two or three or five years. Today he could. Not then.”

  Poynton was a highly regarded artist who traveled extensively abroad. Alistair remembered the marvelous Egyptian scenes hanging in the drawing room of Oldridge Hall. Poynton’s work, of course.

  “She had to save the estate, and he had to make his name,” the captain said. “Mrs. E claims he should have waited. After a year or two, she says, the girl would have been less fearful about leaving the place in charge of a new bailiff. That’s absurd, and so I’ve told her. Poynton could no more turn down the commission or bid his patron wait than I could decline a ship or tell the Admiralty Board it wasn’t convenient at the moment. When you’re at the bottom, and your superiors offer a step up the ladder, you don’t make conditions.”

  “But to give a woman up for the sake of professional advancement?” Alistair said. “He couldn’t have truly loved her.”

  The captain shook his head. “Poynton was mad in love with her. It was the talk of London. He came here after she’d broken off with him. All the world knew of it. But he cared nothing for what a pitiful spectacle he must appear to his sophisticated friends.”