Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

His rigid posture relaxed, too, and he said, “An excellent point, Miss Oldridge.”

So, he was not offended. Mirabel’s estimation of his character rose a cautious degree. She went on, “It does seem to me that we ought to keep the two matters separate. Gallantry in battle is no assurance of wisdom in other matters.”

He regarded her steadily—seriously, she would have thought, but for the smile that yet hovered at his mouth. She wanted to ask what the almost-smile meant. She was tempted, terribly tempted, to touch the place where it lurked. Her heart was beating a little too fast.

She folded her hands at her waist and said, “I wish you to understand that it would make no difference to me if you were the Duke of Wellington. I should still think ill of this canal scheme and do my best to hinder you.”

“Have you ever met the Duke of Wellington?” he asked.

“No, but I understand that he, too, is handsome and charming and possesses an immense force of personality. Still, I fancy I could stand up to it.”

The amber gaze raked her up and down. “I should like to see that. Perhaps you could.”

The slow survey made her knees wobbly. Amusement danced in his eyes, and something inside her danced, too, a darting pleasure and excitement she hadn’t felt in a long time: the thrill of flirtation.

But it couldn’t be. She was long past flirting age, and dressed like a hag besides.

“All the same,” he went on, “I think you would not deny His Grace a fair hearing. Would you not at least tell him what you did and didn’t want?”

“Did he tell Napoleon his strategy?” she answered calmly enough, though her mind was neither calm nor clear, and she wasn’t sure what she wanted.

“Miss Oldridge, I am not trying to conquer the world,” he said. “I only want to build a canal.”

She became aware of movement, and glancing past him, noted, with mingled relief and vexation, that the young ladies were casually meandering this way. “Your fleet draws nigh,” she said.

He didn’t look away from her. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he said. “Better yet, show me: what you’ve invested, what you stand to lose. Show me what you were talking about to Captain Hughes.”

“You could never understand,” she said.

“Suppose I cannot? What will it cost you? A few hours of time?”

Saturday 21 February

CREWE’S cough this morning was low and tragic, telling Alistair that his valet was in the throes of another one of his famous Forebodings.

He’d had one the night before the battle of Waterloo, and blamed the ensuing catastrophe on his master’s riding out to battle without him.

Ever since then, Crewe had been convinced he possessed clairvoyant powers.

The tragic cough did not dampen Alistair’s mood, which was cheerful, despite his having arisen at the uncivilized hour of nine o’clock. He saw nothing inauspicious about this day. At present, he stood shaving in a pool of sunshine, recalling his after-dinner encounter with Miss Oldridge with the first real pleasure he’d experienced in—Well, he couldn’t remember how long it had been.

He remembered the moment of surprised pleasure last night, though, with perfect clarity. He’d gone all stiff and sensitive about his curst fame and his famous dratted injury, and she—But he didn’t know how to explain, even to himself, what she’d done. She’d meant it to be a setdown, he supposed, reminding him that he was not the only one who’d fought at Waterloo, not the only one injured, and certainly not the one who’d lost or suffered most.

Even his family, usually brutally direct with one another, tended to skirt the subject of Waterloo when he was about. Only Gordmor, of all his friends, referred easily and comfortably to the lame leg.

Miss Oldridge was the first woman he’d encountered who didn’t pretend he wasn’t lame and didn’t get starry-eyed about his so-called heroics.

She didn’t seem to pretend much of anything or to be easily rendered starry-eyed.

Crewe’s poignant cough called Alistair back.

“Crewe, do you not see the sun pouring through the window?” Alistair said patiently. “Did you fail to notice that this morning dawned fair, with temperatures well above the freezing mark?”

“I wish I could take heart in the weather, sir,” Crewe said. “But after such a dream.” He shook his head. “It was so very like the one I dreamt the night before Waterloo.”

Alistair paused in his shaving. “Do you mean the one where the footpad cuts my throat and you find me in the alley as the last drops of blood are oozing from my body? Or is it the one where I pitch off the cliff into the sea, and you jump in to save me, but you’re too late, and I drown?”

“The cliff, sir,” said Crewe. “The sky darkened suddenly, as before a storm, and the remaining light had a peculiar quality. It was as if the sun hung behind a great, green glass. I remember the light in particular as the same I dreamt before that fateful day in June of 1815.”

“I’m not riding out to battle,” Alistair said. “I’m merely touring Longledge Hill with Miss Oldridge. You may be sure we’ll have a servant in attendance. Even in this wilderness, a lady does not go out without protection. Doubtless she’ll bring along a large groom of menacing aspect. Should exposure to so much raw nature arouse my passions, he will discourage me from attempting her virtue. Should the scenery produce a similar effect upon her, I reckon I can protect myself.”

As he returned to scraping his jaw, he tried to imagine the lady subjecting him to amorous advances. Given her straightforward style, he supposed she’d throw herself at him, literally. He saw her hair tumbling down, and her face upraised to his, and her wide mouth parted…and he nicked himself.

Crewe went white. “Sir, I beg you will allow me to assist you.” He hurried forward and pressed a towel to the tiny speck of blood near Alistair’s ear. “Consider how much weighs upon your mind at present. Is it not the wisest course to allow me to undertake a task requiring one’s fullest attention?”

Alistair waved away valet and towel. “If, before Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington could shave himself without fatal results,” he said, “I believe I can manage it before ambling along country pathways with a levelheaded—or do I mean hardheaded?—countrywoman.”

Crewe subsided into gloomy silence, and Alistair completed his shaving without interruption or injury.

Once the razor was put away and the less hazardous business of dressing commenced, Crewe grew talkative again. Last night, while the master was out, he’d gone to a tavern the local servants frequented, and continued gatherin

g information. He had found out why Lord Gordmor’s agent had been turned away, and this news confirmed Alistair’s own impression of the situation on Longledge Hill.

About the Oldridges, on the other hand, Crewe had learnt nothing new.

LORD Hargate’s heroic son was bored witless.

Mirabel told herself she should have expected it. One hour into the riding tour she was reproaching herself for agreeing to show him her world, especially now, when the landscape was mainly brown, grey, and the drabbest greens.

He could never see it as she did.

Few men could.

Even in Longledge, few truly understood why she’d given more than a decade of her life to this place. Few had any inkling how much she’d given up: the prime of her young womanhood, along with those youthful hopes and dreams. She’d given up as well her one chance at love, because the man she loved was not ready to relinquish his hopes and dreams to make a life with her here.

She had never meant her life to turn out this way.

She’d begun because she had no choice. She’d believed Papa would improve in time, but it never happened. He let all those about him do as they liked. As you’d expect, some took advantage of him. While she was in London, his incompetent—and possibly dishonest—estate manager had made chaos of estate affairs and in a few years nearly destroyed what it had taken generations to build.

At first, Mirabel had taken charge out of necessity. There was no one else to do it. But as time passed, she developed a passion for the land not altogether unlike her father’s passion for plants. While he pondered theories of botanical reproduction, she built an arcadia.

She replaced outmoded and inefficient agricultural practices with modern ones, increased farm production, rebuilt the estate village, and began restoring the timber her father had allowed to be nearly decimated.

But to Mr. Carsington, her thriving plantation was only a stand of trees. Her modern cottages were rustic dwellings. Her cultivation methods had something tedious to do with turnips and corn. Her livestock were a lot of boring animals.