Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

Alistair was beginning to wish he’d let her choke on the bonnet ribbons. He said, “Miss Oldridge, I have a letter from your father, in which he expresses not only a strong interest in my project, but a clear grasp of its implications. I find it difficult to believe that the man who wrote this letter will heed nothing I say.”

That stopped her in her tracks. She turned fully toward him, blue eyes wide. “My father has written to you?”

“He replied to my letter immediately.”

There was a longish pause before she said, “It is about a project, you said. But not connected to botany.”

“A dull matter of business,” he said. “A canal.”

She paled a little, then her animated face hardened into a polite mask. “Lord Gordmor’s canal.”

“You have heard about it, then.”

“Who has not?”

“Yes, well, there seems to be some misunderstanding about his lordship’s plans.”

She folded her hands at her waist. “A misunderstanding,” she said.

The temperature in the room was rapidly dropping.

“I’ve come to clear it up,” Alistair said. “Lord Gordmor is ill at present—the influenza—but I am a partner in the enterprise and acquainted with every detail. I am sure I can ease your father’s apprehensions.”

“If you think we are merely apprehensive,” she said, “you are laboring under a grievous mis apprehension. We—and I believe I speak for the majority of landowners on Longledge Hill—are inalterably opposed to the canal.”

“With respect, Miss Oldridge, I believe the proposal has been misrepresented, and I am sure the gentlemen of the Longledge area will, in the interests of fairness, grant me an opportunity to correct and clarify matters. Since your father is by far the largest landowner hereabouts, I wished to speak to him first. His good opinion, I know, will carry great weight with his neighbors.”

The corners of her wide mouth turned up a very little, creating a shadow of a smile disagreeably reminiscent of his father’s.

“Very well,” she said. “We shall search for him. But perhaps you will allow me a few minutes to don something cleaner and drier.” She gestured at her riding dress.

Alistair’s face heated. He’d become so agitated about smiles and skin and scent that he’d forgotten she was wet and probably chilled. He’d kept her standing about all this time when she must be longing to be free of her damp attire.

He absolutely would not think about what getting her free of it involved…the buttons and tapes and corset strings to be undone…

No.

He fixed his mind on canals, coal mines, and steam engines, and apologized for his thoughtlessness.

She coolly dismissed the apology, asked him to make himself comfortable and take some refreshment, and still wearing the smile that wasn’t one, exited the room.

THE conservatory to which Miss Oldridge—wearing a different but no more attractive frock—took Alistair rivaled the Prince Regent’s at Carlton House. The Regent’s, however, was used primarily for entertaining, and plants were moved in and out as necessary. Mr. Oldridge’s plants were far more numerous and less mobile.

This was not quite an indoor garden, either. It was more like a museum or library of plants.

Each specimen was carefully labeled, with extensive notes and cross-references to others. At intervals, notebooks lay open in the dirt, containing further notes in Latin in the hand Alistair recognized as Mr. Oldridge’s.

Neither the flesh-and-blood hand, however, nor the gentleman attached to it appeared in the conservatory. The same held true outside of the house, in the greenhouses and gardens.

At last one of the gardeners told them Mr. Oldridge had been absorbed in studying moss life in the higher elevations. The gardener was fairly certain his master would be found upon the Heights of Abraham, one of his favorite spots of late.

Alistair was well aware that the Heights of Abraham rose in Matlock Bath. Even had he somehow failed to notice the wooded slope with the great mass of rock jutting up from it directly behind his hotel, he could not help knowing, because the place abounded in signs and cards advertising the fact.

He could not believe he’d come all this way on the damnable road, while the man he sought was back in the village he’d come from, possibly falling off a cliff and breaking his neck at this very moment.

He looked at Miss Oldridge, who was gazing into the distance. He wondered what she was thinking.

He told himself her thoughts were irrelevant. He was here on business. It was her father’s views that mattered.

“Your father must be unusually dedicated to his—er—hobby,” he said. “Not many people will climb mountains at this time of year. Don’t mosses go into hibernation or whatever it is most plants do in winter?”

“I have no idea,” she said.

An icy mist was falling, and Alistair’s bad leg was taking note of the fact in the form of spasms and shooting pains. She, however, continued walking away from the house, and Alistair limped along beside her.

“You do not share his enthusiasm,” he said.

“It is beyond me,” she said. “I am so ignorant as to imagine he could find mosses and lichen enough on his own property, instead of tramping all the way over to the Derwent River to look for them. Still, he always contrives to be home in time for his dinner, and I daresay the walking and climbing keep him limber, and at least he isn’t—Ah, there he is.”

A man of medium height and slender build emerged from an opening in the shrubbery and ambled toward them. He was well protected from the elements in a hat and overcoat of oilcloth, and his battered boots were sturdily made.

As the man drew near, Alistair discerned the family resemblance. Most of Miss Oldridge’s features came, he surmised, from the maternal side, but her hair and eyes seemed to be a younger and more vivid version of her father’s. Age had dulled rather than greyed his hair and faded his eyes to a paler blue, though his gaze seemed sharp enough.

His countenance offered no sign of recognition, however, when introductions were made.

“Mr. Carsington wrote you a letter, Papa,” Miss Oldridge said. “About Lord Gordmor’s canal. You made an appointment to meet with Mr. Carsington today.”

Mr. Oldridge frowned. “Did I, indeed?” He thought for a moment. “Ah, yes. The canal. That was how Smith made his observations, you know. Fascinating, fascinating. Fossils, too. Most enlightening. Well, sir, you will stay to dinner, I hope.”

And away he went, leaving Alistair staring after him.

“He must visit his new specimens,” came the cool, whispery voice beside him. “Then he will dress for dinner. In the winter months we dine early. In summer we dine fashionably late. The one place you can be sure to find my father is in the dining room, punctual to the minute. Wherever he may ramble, whatever botanical riddles might fascinate him, he always contrives to be home in good time for dinner. I recommend you accept his invitation. You’ll have at least two hours to make your case.”

“I should be honored,” Alistair said, “but I came unprepared, and have no suitable attire for dinner.”

“You are more elegantly dressed than anyone we have dined with in the last decade,” Miss Oldridge said. “Not that Papa will notice what you are wearing. And I don’t care in the least.”

IT was true that Mirabel Oldridge cared little about the minutiae of dress. She rarely took any notice of what others wore and found life simpler when they treated her the same way. She dressed plainly to encourage the many men she dealt with to take her seriously: to listen rather than look, and keep their minds on business.

To her great discomfort, however, she had taken excessive and repeated notice of Mr. Carsington, from the crown of his sleek hat to his gleaming boots.

He had not been wearing the hat when she first saw him. As a result she was aware that his hair was a rich brown with golden glints his deep-set eyes seemed to reflect. His face was angular, the profile patrician to the last degr

ee. He was handsome in a brooding sort of way, tall, broad-shouldered, and long-limbed. Even his hands were long. When he had offered to help with the knotted bonnet strings, she had looked at his hands and felt giddy.

Matters did not improve when he’d stood so near to work on the ribbons. She’d caught a whiff of shaving soap or cologne; it was so faint that she couldn’t be sure what it was or whether she’d simply imagined it.

But she’d become confused because she was nervous, she told herself, which was perfectly reasonable. She’d been uneasy because she’d been caught unprepared, which was as unpleasant as it was unusual.

One near catastrophe years ago had taught her to keep informed of everything having to do with her father. That way, no one could take advantage of him, or confuse, manipulate, or bully her. That way she would never be at a loss. She would know exactly what to do at all times.