Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

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