Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

“If an elderly gentleman like the captain can manage the hill in summer, I reckon I can manage it on a balmy spring day.”

“Elderly?” She stared at him for a moment, then said, as patiently as to a child, “It is February. And while the day did begin mildly enough, the wind has picked up.” She looked up. “Also, it looks like rain.”

Alistair looked up as well. The scattered clouds had grown and spread, but they were pale and unthreatening, with large patches of blue between. “Not for hours,” he said. “I shall be snug in my hotel long before the weather turns. Tell me the truth, Miss Oldridge. If you were on your own this day, would you stop halfway, or continue?”

“I’ve lived here my whole life,” she said. “I played here as a child. Obviously my case is altogether different from yours. Common sense should tell you to heed those with greater experience.” She let out a huff of impatience. “I do not understand why a gentleman of your intelligence would allow his pride and vanity to dictate to his common sense—but I can see it is no use arguing.”

She hardly raised her voice, but her tone was sharp, and her mare, growing uneasy, started backing off the path.

Alistair wished she had chosen a less temperamental mount for this journey. Sophy had a look in her eye he didn’t like. If she bolted—

“I beg you to attend to your mare,” he said, his calm voice belying the alarm twisting his gut.

But before he finished speaking, she had the horse quieted and guided her on. She made it all seem as effortless as if she were promenading along Hyde Park’s Rotten Row, rather than a narrow trail through a steeply angled landscape of rock and timber.

Still, the terrain wanted his full attention. To avoid distracting her again, Alistair held his tongue until they reached the outlook.

There, to his relief, she dismounted and let the groom take charge of her horse. Alistair did likewise.

The site was not the narrow ledge he’d pictured but a broad, rough terrace in the hillside. A handful of boulders adorned a thin carpet of brown, unidentifiable vegetation. One forlorn shrub grew out of a crack near the outer edge.

From this vantage point he looked out over the moors while his guide explained the difference between black and white lands. The black referred to the blackish-brown heath covering the ground, making it look like a landscape in Hell. The white lands had more green vegetation—some parts had even been limed and reclaimed—though at this time of year it was hard to tell the difference.

“You must know this isn’t nature’s work,” he said. “The moorlands were once forests. Then the great monasteries went into the wool business. No new trees grew to replace those cut down, because the sheep ate everything: the saplings, then the grasses that took the place of the trees, and eventually, all the grass. The sweet soil washed away and left your picturesque moorland, where only matgrass and heath can grow.”

“You think it’s ugly,” she said, turning away from him toward the bleak landscape beyond and below.

Surprised by the despairing note in her voice, Alistair moved nearer.

Since her round riding hat was small, with only the narrowest brim, he had no trouble seeing her face. The profile view revealed red-gold curls dancing wildly in the wind and a creamy countenance the air and exercise had tinged pink. No tear trickled from the too-blue eye and along the straight nose, and the soft, pink lips didn’t tremble.

Her chin jutted out a bit, but that seemed to be her usual way, looking defiant or stubborn or in general uninterested in trying to please anybody.

All the same, she struck him at this moment as young, far younger than her years…and lost.

Alistair told himself his romantic imagination was at work and overdoing it. She was one and thirty years old and had for a decade managed a large estate and handled all her father’s affairs. Even Alistair could see she’d done this successfully. The estate, clearly, was thriving.

Furthermore, according to Crewe, her neighbors generally agreed that she had a good head for business. Alistair understood how great a compliment this was and how very clever, strong-willed, and confident she must be to have earned it. Men usually resented women encroaching on their turf and would go out of their way to create difficulties for them.

In Longledge, however, most of the men—of both high and low degree—respected Miss Oldridge’s judgment and admired what she had done with her father’s property. She even had the power to sway opinions, as he’d discovered last night when he’d eavesdropped on her impassioned speech to Captain Hughes. The words had moved Alistair then, and troubled him yet.

Still, capable and strong-willed though she was, Alistair couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was lost, or vulnerable, or needful of something. He didn’t know what it was, but he sensed he’d somehow hurt or disappointed her, and this at least he must try to remedy.

He must do so, not because she was a damsel in distress, he told himself, but because he needed her on his side. She had influence with the landowners. His motives were purely businesslike and practical.

“To prepare for this mission,” he said, “I perused, among other volumes, Mr. John Farey’s General View of the Agriculture and Minerals of Derbyshire. Mr. Farey calls the moorlands ‘disgusting’ and the plants growing here ‘noxious and useless.’ While I will admit it is not the prettiest sight I have ever seen, I shouldn’t call it ugly or disgusting. Dramatic would be my word.”

She looked at him full on, the great blue eyes wary. “You are humoring me.”

“Miss Oldridge, the labor of humoring you far exceeds the bounds of my patience,” he said. “When I am with you, I can barely remember my manners.”

She smiled then, and his heart warmed as though it basked in summer sunshine. His brain, unfortunately, warmed as well, and commenced melting. He doubted he’d ever encountered a weapon more deadly than that smile.

“Your manners are otherwise very beautiful,” she said. “Several parties last night remarked that you belonged in the diplomatic corps.”

“How much more agreeable it would be for you,” he said, “were I spending this day with the Tsar in St. Petersburg.”

“I was thinking of someplace warmer,” she said.

“Hades?”

She laughed, and the light sound had the same whispery quality as her speaking voice. “I was thinking of Calcutta or Bombay.”

“Of course. There I might die of any number of contagions, if the heatstroke didn’t kill me first.”

“I don’t wish you dead,” she said. “I wish you well and thriving—elsewhere.”

“You could nudge me over the ledge,” he said, “if your groom happened to look away for a moment. It would confirm my valet’s Foreboding, and my father’s prediction of my coming to no good end. And everyone would be happy.”

Her smile faded. “Why would your father predict such a thing? You cannot be so desperately flawed as all that.”

“My sire finds me expensive and troublesome to keep,” he said. “I am, actually.”

She studied him for a moment, her blue gaze traveling the full length from the crown of his sleek hat to the toes of his top boots. “I can believe you are expensive.”

Alistair told himself she could discern no fault with his attire. No one ever could. All the same, he felt himself flushing under her scrutiny, which vexed him.

He became aware of dirt on his well-buffed boots, and thought the hem of his overcoat wasn’t quite straight. He was not sure his coats ever hung precisely as they should, because of his leg. The curst leg spoilt everything. He was sure it had become shorter than the right one, no matter what his tailor claimed. He wished he’d worn a riding coat, so the disparity would be less evident.

He found her looking at him questioningly. “It isn’t only my clothes,” he said.

“No, certainly not,” she said. “There are the expensive ballet dancers.”

“Yes,

that sort of thing. And the lawsuits. And the sponging houses. And—Oh, the list is immensely long.”

“Lawsuits,” she repeated. “Sponging houses. Well, well. You grow more complicated by the moment.”

“But I am mending my ways,” Alistair said. “The canal is completely respectable.”

“Yet your valet has forebodings, you said.”

“Not about the canal. About me. Crewe often has them. He believes his dreams predict the future.”

Alistair told her about the cliff dream, and the odd light, and how Crewe had had the same dream before Waterloo.

When he was done, she said, “If you do happen to fall, you may well break your neck. Drowning, on the other hand, would be difficult. The largest body of water nearby is the Briar Brook, which isn’t deep enough.”

“Then it should be safe enough for me to continue up the hillside with you,” he said.

“You mean dangerous enough. If it were safe, you would be as bored with the prospect as you have been with everything else.”

“You thought I was bored?” It was his turn to smile. “Well, then, perhaps you’re not as clever as I’d supposed.”

Six

MR. Carsington’s golden eyes danced, and the smile—the complete article, not a crooked bit of one—was devastating.

Mirabel quickly looked away and started up the path while mentally flagellating herself.

She should not have let the conversation become personal.

She had thought him possessed of the unshakable aristocratic self-assurance she’d encountered so often in London and found as unfathomable as her father did the mating habits of lichen. But Mr. Carsington had a chink in his armor. He wasn’t as sure of himself as it seemed.

This wasn’t the only way she’d mistaken him. His discomfort with mention of his wartime heroics wasn’t the usual becoming modesty, false or otherwise. He was truly uneasy, and she found herself wondering what troubled him so much about it, and wishing he’d tell her so that she could set him right.

She’d found out, too, that for all his vanity about his appearance, he was far from happy with himself.