His heart gave a thump of relief, but he played his part. With a shocked look he said, “Miss Oldridge, I assure you I could not be more serious, especially about the matter of wearing one’s upper waistcoat buttons undone with a plain shirt—or wearing them fully buttoned with a frilled one.”
…unless she was the one who did the unbuttoning, he could have added. Then he wouldn’t care what kind of shirt he wore.
He remembered the hurried thudding of her heart against his chest, and his own heart banging against his ribs.
He remembered the sweet curve of her hips under his hands.
He remembered the warm fragrance of her skin.
No, he must forget these things. Otherwise, he would make more mistakes, do something irreparably stupid.
Remember Gordy instead, he told himself. Remember the man who refused to believe, as everyone else did, that you were dead, the man who, near dead himself with fatigue, searched the filthy, reeking battlefield for you.
He told himself to remember his younger brothers, who would be robbed to support their feckless brother.
He told himself to remember their sire, whose third son had disappointed him time and time again.
He came out of these unhappy reflections to find his tormentor anxiously searching his countenance. He wondered how long he’d been silent, fighting with himself.
She rose and said, “I have kept you up talking too long. If you are ill tomorrow, it will be my fault, and Crewe will never trust me again. I solemnly promised not to do you any harm.”
“You did me no harm,” Alistair said. “The opposite, rather. I’m grateful to be rescued from that dream.” He could not resist adding, “Thank you for jumping on me.”
“Pray don’t mention it,” she said, heading for the door. “The pleasure was mine, Mr. Carsington.”
ONLY a few ill-natured persons believed Mirabel would go so far as to push Lord Hargate’s son into the Briar Brook. This did not mean the rest were not exchanging other theories, very like the sort of damaging gossip Captain Hughes had predicted.
The vicar’s wife, Mrs. Dunnet, who was partial to Mirabel, paid a call on Monday. In the drawing room, over tea and cakes, she tactfully made Mirabel and Mrs. Entwhistle aware of the local mood, as ascertained from conversations heard after church the previous day and in the course of this morning’s calls.
“I am sure Mr. Dunnet has preached more than once about idle rumors and bearing false witness,” the vicar’s wife said. “The trouble is, most of his listeners assume his words apply to everyone else but them.”
“I daresay most of the talk reflects discontent and vexation rather than true malice,” said Mrs. Entwhistle. “And we mustn’t forget Caleb Finch’s friends. They’ve never forgiven Mirabel for dismissing him.”
At the mention of her former bailiff, Mirabel got up from her chair and walked to the French doors. The day was overcast. That was like Caleb Finch, she thought. She had not seen him in years, yet he hung over her world and darkened it.
She had only herself to blame.
She should have brought charges against him; she knew that now. But at the time she’d been scarcely twenty years old, unsure of her evidence, unsure of herself, and sadly naive about business.
As well, William had arrived in the midst of it, and she’d been trying to make him understand why the wedding must be put off, why she couldn’t go away with him, not then, while the estate was falling to pieces.
“My dear.”
Mirabel turned at the sound of her governess’s voice and mustered a smile. “How I should like to forget Caleb Finch. Is he back again?”
How she wished she’d had the courage years ago to bring him before the law. He might have been transported—along with some of the friends who’d connived with him to take advantage of her father.
“He is not in Longledge,” said Mrs. Entwhistle.
“He could hardly wish to show his face here,” said Mrs. Dunnet. “I have not heard him mentioned this age. Even his friends don’t speak openly of him.”
“Caleb Finch’s allies are a minor irritation,” Mrs. Entwhistle said. “My great concern is the respectable people of Longledge. If we do not soon quiet them, your reputation will be in tatters.”
Mirabel wished she didn’t need to worry about her reputation and the effect of rumors on it. But she couldn’t afford any smirch on her character. She would lose all the influence she had worked so hard to win. No one would pay any attention to her objections to the canal.
“I am not at all sure how one goes about stopping such talk,” she said. “Denial only makes matters worse.”
“One needs to understand the causes,” said Mrs. Entwhistle. “I believe we may blame envy.”
“Envy?” Mirabel returned to her chair. Mrs. Entwhistle had a remarkable grasp of human nature.
“You have a celebrated person under your roof,” that lady explained. “But at present, your neighbors are forbidden to visit him. Everyone, naturally, wants to be made an exception to the rule. They see that Captain Hughes is an exception, as am I, and do not understand why they should not be as well.”
“I will not turn you out, or turn Captain Hughes away, merely so as to offend nobody,” Mirabel said. “They will only find something else to be vexed about.”
“You need not turn anybody out,” said Mrs. Entwhistle. “It is simple enough to quiet such talk.”
Mrs. Dunnet laughed. “It cannot be so simple as all that, or else I am very stupid. Nothing I said availed.”
“It is only that people long for excitement,” Mrs. Entwhistle said. “They wish to learn whether mysterious new injuries appear daily, or whether Mr. Carsington evidences symptoms of poisoning—or whether he is even alive.” The widow’s dark eyes twinkled. “The devil makes talk for idle tongues, and why not? It is February, this is a small community, and people have no other entertainment. If I were you, I should entertain them, Mirabel.”
“I hope you are not proposing I poison my guest in order to keep my neighbors amused,” Mirabel said.
“I propose that you rearrange your schedule for today,” her former governess said. “Put business aside and spend the time visiting your neighbors instead. Be sure to give them every possible detail about your exalted guest. Also—and this is most important, Mirabel—you must beseech their advice regarding his care.”
The vicar’s wife turned an admiring gaze upon the plump, beruffled widow. “How astute you are,” Mrs. Dunnet said. “That will be worth a hundred sermons, though you must never tell Mr. Dunnet I said so.”
MIRABEL’S Aunt Clothilde had sent Mrs. Entwhistle to Oldridge Hall fifteen years ago. She was intended to be more of a companion than a teacher for the motherless girl, since by that time Mirabel’s education was essentially complete. The governess had found a household devastated and demoralized by the death of its beloved mistress. In short order she rebuilt morale and, as Captain Hughes put it, “Got ’em all shipshape again.”
In doing so, she had given Mirabel the kind of education her mother might have done, one that extended far beyond the schoolroom. Mirabel had profitably e
mployed this knowledge a few years later, when she had to give up her romantic dreams and return home from London to prevent another shipwreck.
This was why Mirabel didn’t question Mrs. Entwhistle’s counsel but promptly followed it.
As a result, Mirabel spent all of Monday, well into the evening, listening to various ladies’ tender expressions of pity for Mr. Carsington’s sufferings. She accepted with a straight face and humble gratitude their medical receipts guaranteed to cure everything from chapped lips to deafness.
She listened to advice about forestalling lung fever and stoically bore their reminiscences of the great influenza outbreak of ’03, which had killed her mother. She waited while they wrote notes to the patient and promised to deliver them to him as soon as Dr. Woodfrey deemed his brain strong enough for reading. She went home at last in a carriage loaded with jellies, conserves, syrups, and enough Balm of Gilead Oil to cover Prussia.
She arrived shortly after dinner and found Mrs. Entwhistle in the library conversing with Captain Hughes. Papa, she was informed, had gone upstairs to keep Mr. Carsington company.
“I had fully intended to have my tea upstairs with the patient,” Mrs. Entwhistle said. “But when Captain Hughes told us during dinner that Mr. Carsington seemed to be in low spirits today, your father insisted on visiting him. He said he knew exactly the thing to alleviate the trouble.”
Mirabel recalled her father’s confused idea that laudanum was somehow the answer to Mr. Carsington’s mysterious problems.
She did not know for sure that laudanum would do him any harm. On the other hand, she couldn’t be sure it would do him any good, and she most certainly had no idea whether her father had any inkling of proper dosage.
Mirabel ran out of the library and up the stairs.
Ten
HEART pounding, Mirabel burst into the room, ran to the bed—and stopped short.
Mr. Carsington was not in the bed, drugged unconscious or otherwise.
She looked about her and found three pairs of eyes regarding her with varying degrees of perplexity.