Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

She hadn’t reached this conclusion because he spoke of reforming. After all, men—especially rakes and other ne’er-do-wells—commonly pacified women by promising to reform. Even Papa did it, about twice a year, with most sincere intentions—which he’d forget the instant the next botanical riddle happened along.

No, it wasn’t the talk of mending his ways. It was the troubled expression in Mr. Carsington’s eyes and the change in his tone when he spoke of his father. That note in his voice struck a painful chord within her. She recognized the frustration: the sense of failure no matter what one did, the awareness of a vast, unbridgeable gap.

“I can walk and talk at the same time,” came Mr. Carsington’s deep rumble from behind her.

He was very close behind her, she discovered as she glanced back. “I’m thinking,” she said.

“But women are much more complicated beings than men,” he said. “I believe you can even hold more than one thought in your mind at once. Surely you must be able to think and walk and talk simultaneously.”

“I was wondering if you practice the bored look in the mirror,” she said. “You are so very good at it. I feared you would fall asleep and tumble from your horse. Since you’ve already read Mr. Farey’s book, what I’ve had to say about Longledge Hill must seem tedious repetition.”

“It wasn’t what you had to say about farming,” he said. “I’d already read enough about Derbyshire agriculture to make me want to hang myself. It’s you I find interesting.”

Mirabel’s heart twisted about again. “I’m a farmer,” she said. “It isn’t in the least exciting.”

“Why don’t you leave managing the estate to Higgins?” he said. “Why don’t you let him do what he was hired for, while you go to London and enjoy yourself? If the social whirl proves too frivolous, you might find scores of other intellectual ladies to talk to and attend lectures with.”

She remembered, rather wistfully, the joys of London. Aunt Clothilde never gave up urging her to visit. One day, perhaps, Mirabel would. But not yet, not now, certainly, when everything she loved was threatened.

“You are so kind,” she said. “I wish you as far as Calcutta. You only wish me as far as London.”

“You’ve evaded the question twice and thus doubled my curiosity. Have you a lover here?”

A lover? She? Was he serious?

Mirabel stopped short. He trod on her heel, and her foot slipped. Then she was toppling backward, flailing for balance. He caught hold of her waist and righted her. It was done in an instant. But he didn’t let go.

She heard his quick intake of breath and looked up to meet his strangely intent golden gaze. Her own breath came quicker, and her heart skittered against her rib cage.

His hands were big and warm, his grip firm, and she thought he must sense the commotion within her. She ought to pull away, but she didn’t want to. She only wanted to look up into his eyes, trying to read them and daring to hope she wasn’t the only one in a commotion.

He bent a hairsbreadth closer. “What a little waist you have,” he said in a soft, puzzled voice. “I should never have guessed.”

She was not little, but he was so much larger. Her head came only to his immaculately shaven chin. She stood near enough to feel his breath on her face, near enough to detect the elusive scent she still had no name for. She saw the faint network of scars on the underside of his jaw and wanted to put her hand up and lay it against his cheek. She didn’t know why or what it would achieve, only that she wanted to.

It took nearly all her willpower not to do it, to gather her composure and say, so very casually, “If you are done measuring me, Mr. Carsington, I believe I can contrive to walk on unaided.”

He took his time straightening and was slow and deliberate releasing her. Even after he’d fully let go, she could feel the pressure and warmth of his hands. She knew a boundary had been crossed, and if she did not take very great care, she would soon have no boundaries left.

“You gave me a fright,” he said. “I had a vision of you tumbling down the rocky hillside. My heart still pounds.”

Mirabel’s did, too, with everything but fear. “Perhaps if you would not follow so closely, we should be less likely to stumble into each other,” she said while hoping she would not be tempted to do so accidentally on purpose.

“A good point,” he agreed. “I should have paid more attention to where I was walking as well. But I was caught up in admiring the view, you see.”

To the right, the left, and straight ahead the view consisted of trees, limestone rocks, scraggy bushes, and dirt. A smattering of evergreens provided the only bright color in the dreary landscape.

“The scenery here is hardly worth the climb, I should say,” she said.

“Not from my perspective,” he said.

Heat washed through her. She understood his meaning. She had not spent two seasons in London without learning how to detect innuendo. She pretended not to understand, though she could not pretend it dismayed her. It had been a very long time since an attractive man had made improper remarks about her person. She’d forgotten how agreeable it was.

A small, insistent voice in the back of her head made warning noises, and she remembered how agreeable he’d made himself to all the men last night.

“For the present, you would be wiser to watch the path,” she said.

“I shall try to be wise, Miss Oldridge.”

Mirabel walked on.

“About your lover,” he began after a moment.

She did not mind flirtation and a bit of impropriety. She had never been missish. But she could not let herself fall victim to his charm. And she most certainly would not explain private matters to him. “I cannot believe you think I’ve undertaken all that I have, merely to be near a man,” she said quellingly.

“What a pity. I was picturing clandestine meetings, perhaps on that ledge overlooking the romantic moors.”

“You are certainly entitled to entertain any fanciful notions you like,” she said, repeating his patronizing retort of a few days earlier. “I should not wish to stifle an active imagination.”

He laughed. “Touché, Miss Oldridge.”

As the path rounded a sharp curve, Mirabel felt the air change. She looked up. The clouds were thickening. She paused. This time he was prepared, and they didn’t collide.

He came up beside her and stood nearer than was strictly proper. He was breathing hard—winded, apparently.

He could not be accustomed to such climbs, and his leg must be hurting as well. “I think the weather may change more quickly than you estimated,” she said. “Perhaps we’d better turn back.”

He eyed the forbidding hillside. “Let’s go a bit farther. Where’s the Briar Brook?”

“Not far,” she said. “But there’s hardly any path at all up ahead, and the climb is much steeper.”

“So it appears,” he said. “It’s been ages since I scrambled up a rocky hillside. I should like to see if I can still do it.”

Mirabel would have argued, but the longing look he directed at the rocky terrain ahead stopped her tongue.

He wasn’t quite whole, and she was sure it vexed him more than he let on. The appearance of easy grace must want hard work to maintain. Yet no matter how hard he worked, he’d never move as smoothly and effortlessly as he’d done before Waterloo.

She wished he wouldn’t let it vex him. No one with working eyesight could possibly perceive him as defective or weak. But even she had enough delicacy not to broach so personal a topic—not that he’d heed her if she did.

Instead, she agreed to continue, and he managed so well and was so pleased with himself that she led him farther than she’d meant to.

He told her he should have realized one didn’t need an even gait to get over and around rocks. “Think of crabs,” he said. Exaggerating his limp, he started moving sideways, hurrying up the hill ahead of her.

Mirabel laughed, throwing her head back. That was when she felt the first raindrops.

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; She called out to him.

He paid no attention but raced up among the rocks, almost as quick as a crab. A moment later, the sky turned black, and the drops swelled into a deluge.

And in the next moment, she saw him slip, and fall, and tumble down into the rocky stream. There he remained, terribly still, when she reached him.

THE world went black, briefly. When Alistair came to, he wasn’t sure whether it was day or night or where he was.

A low-hanging sky the color of coal smoke spewed cold, lashing rain. He closed his eyes and tried not to think, but his mind hurried along anyway.

How bad was it? How many holes had the enemy made in him? How swiftly would his strength ebb away?

How soon, he wondered, would the life leak out of him, and was that better than being rescued and somehow patched up so that, mutilated and incapacitated, he could die a long, slow death over years instead of hours?