Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

Not that Alistair remembered. He only pretended to. He’d assembled the general picture from others’ remarks. He wasn’t sure it was all true. Or if it was, it might be greatly exaggerated. He was sure Gordy knew or at least suspected that something had gone awry with Alistair’s brain box, but they never spoke of it.

“My father could have let me continue serving King and country,” Alistair said. “Then he could not complain of my frittering away my life in idleness.”

“But a gentleman is supposed to be idle.”

“Not this one,” Alistair said. “Not any longer. I must find a way to earn my keep by the first of May.”

“Six months,” Gordmor murmured. “That should be time enough.”

“It had better be. If I haven’t found an occupation by then, I must woo and win an heiress. If I fail to do either of these—he punishes my younger brothers!”

This had been Lord Hargate’s coup de grâce.

The earldom and all its other titles, honors, and privileges, along with most of the family properties, would go to Alistair’s oldest brother Benedict when their father died. Great estates were usually entailed this way, to keep them intact over generations. But this only shifted the younger sons’ upkeep from father to eldest son. To spare Benedict this burden, his lordship had acquired certain properties, intended to be wedding gifts for his boys.

Today he’d threatened to sell one or both of the younger men’s properties and arrange an annuity for Alistair from the proceeds, if Alistair failed to find an occupation—or a well-dowered bride—in the stated time.

“Only your inscrutable father could devise such a scheme,” Gordmor said. “I think there is something Oriental about his mind.”

“You mean Machiavellian,” Alistair said.

“I daresay it is uncomfortable to have so forceful a character for a parent,” Gordmor said. “Yet I can’t help admiring him. He’s a brilliant politician, as all in Parliament know—and tremble, knowing. And even you must admit his strategy is excellent. He struck precisely in your tender spot: those great louts you think of as your baby brothers.”

“Tender spots have nothing to do with it,” Alistair said. “My brothers annoy me excessively. But I cannot let them be robbed to support me.”

“Still, you must admit your father succeeded in unnerving you, which is no small accomplishment. I recall that when the surgeon proposed to saw off your leg, you said, ‘What a pity. We had grown so attached.’ There was I, blubbering and raving by turns, and you, trampled nearly to pulp, as cool as the Iron Duke himself.”

The comparison was absurd. The Duke of Wellington had led his armies time and again to victory. All Alistair had accomplished was to endure long enough to be rescued.

As to his cool demeanor, if he’d taken it all so calmly, why wasn’t it plain and clear in his head? Why did the scene remain shrouded, out of his reach?

He turned his back to the window and regarded the man who’d not only saved his life but made sure he kept all his limbs. “You lacked my training, Gordy,” he said. “You’d only the one older sister, where I had two older brothers to beat and torment me from the time I could walk.”

“My sister finds other ways to torment me,” Gordmor said. He shrugged into his coat and gave his reflection a final scrutiny. He was fair-haired, slightly shorter than Alistair’s six-plus feet, and a degree burlier in build.

“My tailor does his best with the material at hand,” Gordmor said. “Yet spend what I will and do what I will, I always contrive to be a shade less elegant than you.”

Alistair’s leg was twitching for rest. He left his post at the window and limped to the nearest chair. “It’s merely that war wounds are fashionable these days.”

“No, it’s you. You even limp with address.”

“If one must limp, one ought to do it well.”

Gordmor only smiled.

“At any rate, I must do you credit,” Alistair told his friend. “If not for you, I should be lying very still at this moment.”

“Not still,” said his lordship. “Decomposing. I believe it is an active process.” He moved to a small cabinet and took out a decanter and glasses.

“I thought we were going out,” Alistair said.

“Presently.” Gordmor poured. “But first I want to talk to you about a canal.”

One

Derbyshire, Monday 16 February 1818

MIRABEL Oldridge left the stables and started up the gravel path toward Oldridge Hall. As she was turning into the garden, the footman Joseph burst out of the shrubbery and into the footpath.

Though Miss Oldridge had recently passed her thirty-first birthday, she didn’t look it. At the moment—her red-gold hair windblown, her creamy cheeks rosy, and her blue eyes sparkling from exercise—she appeared quite young.

Nonetheless, to all intents and purposes she was the senior member of the family, and it was to Miss Oldridge, not her father, the servants turned when difficulties arose. This perhaps was because her parent so often caused the difficulties.

Joseph’s abrupt appearance and breathless state told her there was a difficulty even before he spoke, which he did in a rush and ungrammatically.

“If you please, miss,” he said, “there’s a gentleman which he came to see Mr. Oldridge. Also which he has an appointment, he says. Which he does, Mr. Benton says, as master’s book were open, and Mr. Benton seen it plain as day and in the master’s own hand.”

If Benton the butler said the diary entry existed, it must, impossible as this seemed.

Mr. Oldridge never made appointments with anybody. His neighbors knew they must arrange social visits with Mirabel if they wished to see her father. Those who came on estate business understood they must deal with Mr. Oldridge’s agent Higgins or Mirabel, who supervised the agent.

“Will the gentleman not see Higgins instead?”

“Mr. Benton says it isn’t proper, miss, Mr. Higgins being beneath the gentleman’s notice. A Mr. Carsington, which his father is the Earl of someplace. Mr. Benton said what it was. A something-gate, only it weren’t Billingsgate nor none of them other London ones.”

“Carsington?” Mirabel said. “That is the Earl of Hargate’s family name.” It was an old Derbyshire family, but not one with which she was on visiting terms.

“Yes, that’s it, miss. Besides which this is the gentleman what was trampled so heroic at Waterloo, which is why we put him in the drawing room where Mr. Benton says with respect, miss, but it won’t do to leave him cooling his heels like he was nobody in particular.”

Mirabel glanced down at herself. It had rained off and on all morning. Globs of mud clung to her damp riding dress and, thanks to the walk to and from the stables, thickly caked her boots. Her hair and the hairpins had long since parted ways, and she’d rather not contemplate the state of her bonnet.

She debated what to do. It seemed disrespectful to appear in all her dirt. On the other hand, putting herself right would take ages, and the gentleman—the famous Waterloo hero—had already been kept waiting longer than was courteous.

She picked up her skirts and ran to the house.

DERBYSHIRE was not where Alistair wanted to be at present. Rural life held no charms for him. He preferred civilization, which meant London.

Oldridge Hall lay far from civilization, in a godforsaken corner of Derbyshire’s godforsaken Peak.

Gordmor had aptly, if hoarsely, described the charms of the Peak from his sickbed: “Tourists gawking at picturesque views and the picturesque rustics. Hypochondriacs guzzling mineral waters and splashing in mineral baths. Ghastly roads. No theater, no opera, no clubs. Nothing on earth to do but gape at the view—mountains, valleys, rocks, streams, cows, and sheep—or at rustics, tourists, and invalids.”

In mid-February the area lacked even that degree of animation. The landscape was bleak shades of brown and grey, the weather bitterly cold and wet.

But Gordmor’s—and thus Alistair’s—problem lay here, and could not wa

it until summer to be solved.

Oldridge Hall was a handsome enough old manor house, greatly enlarged over the years. It was, however, most inconveniently situated at the end of a long stretch of what was humorously called “road” hereabouts: a narrow, rutted track where dust prevailed in dry weather and mud in wet.

Alistair had thought Gordmor exaggerated in describing the condition of the roads. In fact, his lordship had understated the case. Alistair could imagine no area in England more desperately in need of a canal.

Having examined the drawing room’s collection of pictures—which included several superlative paintings of Egyptian scenes—and studied the carpet pattern, Alistair walked to the French doors and looked out. The glass doors gave out onto a terrace, which gave way to a profuse arrangement of gardens. Beyond these lay rolling parkland and, farther on, the picturesque hills and dales.

He did not notice any of these landscape features. All he saw was the girl.

She was racing up the terrace stairs, skirts bunched up to her knees, bonnet askew, and a wild mass of hair the color of sunrise dancing about her face.

Even while he was taking in the hair—a whirling fire-ball when a gust of wind caught it—she darted across the terrace. Alistair had an unobstructed view of trim ankles and well-shaped calves before she let the hem drop to cover them.

He opened the door, and she irrupted into the drawing room in a whirl of rain and mud, taking no more heed of her bedraggled state than a dog would.

She smiled.

Her mouth was wide, and so the smile seemed to go on forever, and round and round, encircling him. Her eyes were blue, twilight blue, and for a moment she seemed to be the beginning and end of everything, from the sunrise halo of hair to the dusky blue of her eyes.