Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

She wore a wine-colored sarcenet dress trimmed in blue. The style was too severe and the colors weren’t quite right for her complexion, but it was the least unflattering dress she’d worn so far.

Her inept maid had made an attempt to dress her hair in the antique Roman style fashionable several years ago. As one would expect, the two knots at the back of her head were coming unknotted.

Reflected light from the candles and fire glimmered along a trail of hairpins to and from the chimneypiece. He found the sight arousing, heaven help him.

On the positive side, if mere hairpins could arouse him, he could not be anywhere near death’s door.

“If your ankle is not allowed to rest, it will not heal properly,” she said when she returned to the fire. “It will become weak and susceptible to repeated sprains.”

“Your miniature doctor exaggerates the danger,” Alistair said. “Medical men always make dire predictions. That way, if one dies, it isn’t their fault, and if one recovers, it’s due to their brilliance.”

“Everyone knows what happens with sprains,” she said. “At least in the country we do. You would be foolish to take such a risk. You especially cannot afford a weak ankle. It will undo all you’ve accomplished in recovering use of your leg.”

The speech was as simple and blunt as a club to the head, and equally effective.

His leg was fussy and uncooperative at the best of a times. Given a weak ankle, it might refuse to perform at all.

Alistair had the usual quantity of masculine pride. On the other hand, he was not a dumb brute. He refused to behave like an idiot merely to appease his pride.

“It grieves me to say this, but you have made an excellent point,” he said. “We must on no account upset the famous leg. There is no predicting what it will do.”

Her taut expression eased. She approached, took the chair by the bed, and folded her hands in her lap. “It is understandable, your being upset,” she said. “Anyone who’s endured a long period of immobility, as you have done, must cherish his freedom of movement. Even a day or two of being confined to bed must seem a great deal to you.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t mind that so much,” he said. “By dint of long study, I’ve mastered the art of lounging about or sleeping away the day instead of doing something noble or at least useful. No, no, it isn’t that. The trouble is, I’m sick to death of pandering to this capricious limb.”

She glanced at the peak in the bedclothes under which his injured foot reposed upon a pillow, then looked quizzically at him. “Pandering?”

“Let me tell you about this leg, Miss Oldridge,” he said. “This used to be a modest, well-behaved leg, quietly going about its business, troubling nobody. But ever since it was hurt, it has become tyrannical.”

Her expression eased another degree, and amusement glinted in her eyes, like faint, distant stars in a midsummer night’s sky.

Encouraged, he went on, “This limb is selfish, surly, and ungrateful. When English medical expertise declared the case hopeless, we took the leg to a Turkish healer. He plied it with exotic unguents and cleaned and dressed it several times a day. By this means he staved off the fatal and malodorous infection it should have suffered otherwise. Was the leg grateful? Did it go back to work like a proper leg? No, it did not.”

Lips twitching, she made a sympathetic murmur.

“This limb, madam,” he said, “demanded months of boring exercises before it would condescend to perform the simplest movements. Even now, after nearly three years of devoted care and maintenance, it will fly into a fit over damp weather. And this, may I remind you, is an English leg, not one of your delicate foreign varieties.”

Her mouth quivered, and laughter danced in her eyes.

Something quivered and danced within him, and his mind filled with the wrong thoughts—of touching his lips to the tiny laugh line at the corner of her eye, of bringing his mouth to her quivering one.

He kept talking. “In any case, it won’t go anywhere willingly at present. How on earth did I imagine I should be able to hop up from bed and trot along to the hotel?”

She said, not too steadily, “You did fall on your head. On a r-rock.” She stifled a giggle.

Alistair had always found giggling girls tedious. He told himself to be bored with her, too, but it was impossible. Her choked laughter made his heart so light, it seemed to float within him, and his mind was light and floating, too—not good, and he thought, Oh, no, I shall soon like her, and that won’t do because we know where it must lead. Stop charming her, you numskull.

He couldn’t stop.

He sighed theatrically. “Since a graceful exit is out of the question, I must accept my fate with humble resignation. I shall lie here looking wan and brave. Now and again, perhaps you would be so good, Miss Oldridge, as to stop by to admire my quiet fortitude.” He settled back upon the pillows and donned a heroic expression.

She laughed then, out loud, her eyes crinkling into narrow blue slits.

The cool, whispery sound wafted inside him and stirred again the place already disturbed with the erotic allure of hairpins and the untoward delight he took in a poorly suppressed giggle.

But before Alistair could say or do anything fatally stupid, Mr. Oldridge entered, carrying a large volume.

“Mr. Carsington is not to read, Papa,” the daughter said. “Dr. Woodfrey said he is not to exert his mental faculties.”

“I know,” her father said. “He is not to be overstimulated. That is why I have brought Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis. I sent my sister a copy some time ago, and she has written her thanks more than once. Clothilde says it is a most restful book. Whenever she finds herself in a state of agitation or unhealthy excitement, she reads it. Infallibly, after a page or two, she tells me, she subsides into a pleasantly drowsy state.” He beamed at Alistair. “I shall read to you—but if you find it too sensational, we shall try something else.”

MR. Oldridge had a soothing voice, and of the Latin words he uttered, Alistair understood about one in ten. Having some dim idea that he’d be quizzed later, he struggled to follow.

He didn’t remember falling asleep. He simply went from one place to another in the night, from a warm, clean bedroom to a battlefield.

The smell made him sick, and his foot slipped on the slick ground. He lost his hold of Gordy and slid downward toward the muck, the hideous muck that wasn’t simply mud, but blood and other things human. Parts. Bits and pieces.

It had nearly swallowed him, that unspeakable mire.

Don’t think about it, he told himself as Gordy dragged him up again.

But the horror was everywhere. There was no escaping it, all the long way to the tent. Then he spied the thing, the ghastly thing, worse than any sight in a shambles. No butcher dealt in parts like these.

He looked away, but not before he saw the arm, muddied and bloodied linen stuck to it, a bit of ruffle at the lifeless wrist.

The scene dissolved into haze. He became aware of voices. He couldn’t understand it all, but he grasped enough.

“No,” he said. “They’re wrong. It’s only a flesh wound. I refuse.”

There was more murmuring, headshaking, voices growing sharp and impatient. They hadn’t time to dig out bits of bone and metal and wood, the surgeons said. They couldn’t be sure of getting it all. What they were sure of was infection, gangrene. The leg must come off or he’d die, slowly and horribly.

All Alistair could think of was the heap he’d seen, and someone tossing his leg onto it. After all those hours of hanging on, fighting fear and despair…was this what he’d been saved for? An impatient surgeon wielding a saw? Had he endured all those long hours only to be mutilated?

“They don’t know,” he gasped. “They know only one way. We must go away from here.”

“Yes, yes, but please wake up.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder. He brought his hand up, and covered it. “Yes, steady,” he said. “You need only steady me, and I’l

l do perfectly well.”

“Of course you will. Only do wake up.”

It was a woman’s voice, an Englishwoman who spoke in the accents of his own class. The night voice.

Alistair opened his eyes. The world about him was so quiet, he could hear the faint crackle of the fire. The room was lit as before, and he had no trouble recognizing the woman leaning over him.

“That’s better,” she said. “Do you know me?”

“Of course.” He smiled up at her. He’d been dreaming, that was all.

Relief was too small a word for what he felt. He’d been crawling through Hell for half eternity, it seemed, and come out on the other side. He didn’t know where he was now. Not Heaven, he was sure, and glad of it, for he wasn’t quite ready to give up the things of this earth—like the sight and scent of a pretty woman bending so near that he might easily reach up and bring his hand to the back of her neck, and draw her down….

But this would be wrong, he remembered, and not only wrong but stupid beyond permission.

He suppressed a groan and squeezed the hand upon his shoulder. He had only to turn his head to kiss it…but he mustn’t because that, too, was wrong, though he couldn’t remember why.

“I must have fallen asleep,” he said. “Bad dream.”

“What is your name?” she said.

He gazed blankly at her.