Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

Alistair did not wait to hear more but strode down the promenade until he had a clear view of the Parade. It was busy today, with vehicles and pedestrians going to and fro. These he barely heeded. He stared in the direction Mirabel had gone, and tried to understand.

She had dealt them a devastating blow. She had very nearly destroyed them. And yet—and yet…

“She knew,” he murmured. “She knew we’d win.” Otherwise, why have the carriage packed and waiting for her?

A minute later, he heard Gordy’s voice behind him: “It seems the lady does not mean to give us time to catch our breath.”

“She promised to show us no mercy,” Alistair said.

“Indeed, I have sadly underestimated her, else I should have been packed and ready to leave as well,” Gordy said. “We cannot risk giving her a minute. She has influential friends in London. Do not forget that her father’s sister is Lord Sherfield’s wife, and believed to wield no small influence over him.”

Alistair turned to his friend. “Sherfield? Aunt Clothilde is Lady Sherfield?” The Countess Sherfield was one of his mother’s nearest friends.

“Surely you knew they were related,” Gordy said. “Lady Hargate must have mentioned the connection when you told her where you were going.”

“No.” Alistair continued briskly down toward Wilkerson’s, aware of the puzzled glances Gordy cast his way as they walked.

“That is very strange,” Gordy said.

“Hardly,” Alistair said. “When I called upon my mother before I left, I was full of our brilliant plan and the wonders of modern invention we’d bring to a remote outpost of civilization. She couldn’t get a word in edge-ways.”

“Waxed oratorical, did you?” Gordmor smiled. “Well, I doubt it makes much difference whether or not you knew beforehand. Miss Oldridge has useful friends, true. So do we. Moreover, we have every practical point in our favor, as you so eloquently explained a while ago to the mob.”

Theirs was to be a relatively short canal in a thinly populated part of Derbyshire, Alistair had reminded his listeners. The route lay along fairly level ground, requiring no aqueducts, tunnels, or long flights of locks. The recently enacted Poor Employment Act of 1817 provided government loans for projects that employed the poor. This reduced the sum they must raise from investors.

He knew the plan was sound. The many politicians he and Gordy consulted had promised that so simple and inexpensive a canal scheme could proceed from the first committee meeting to the Prince Regent’s signature in two months or less.

If this hadn’t been the case, he and Gordy could not have undertaken it. They hadn’t the money for elaborate schemes and couldn’t hope to raise such funds, given the sour economic conditions following war’s end. Last year’s poor harvest had not improved matters.

It was by no means a villainous plan in the first place. In the second, Alistair had added nearly five miles to the route to please his lady love.

Yet she turned up her nose.

“At the moment, I’m more concerned about your well-being,” Gordy said. “Do have a care for your heart, Car. I don’t wish to slander your beloved, but you deserve a warning at least. Henrietta says the lady jilted a fellow some years ago and had to leave London under a cloud.”

“I know about that,” Alistair said. “More than Lady Wallantree does, I’ll wager. There were difficult circumstances. Not that I care if Miss Oldridge jilted a dozen fellows. It was in the past, and my own is nothing to boast of.”

He would never believe that the girl he’d made love to could be cruel and coldhearted. If anything, her nature was too open, too compassionate. The cool detachment was only on the surface, shielding her true feelings. He understood the need to protect tender places. Still, he did not understand what she was about at present.

And he was disappointed in himself. In spite of all his efforts, he’d failed her.

“Car.”

Alistair came back to the moment, the present crisis. “Her past is irrelevant. The canal is what signifies. I should like to know what troubles her. I was sure my plan addressed her personal objections. If there’s another difficulty, I’d rather know about it before we’re in front of a parliamentary committee.”

He’d become accustomed to things springing out of the darkness and the sudden metaphorical blows to the head. He found the surprises stimulating, actually.

This didn’t mean he could let himself be ambushed in Parliament. The thought of being rendered tongue-tied, even for an instant, before his father’s colleagues and minions made his blood run cold.

“Very wise,” Gordy said. They had reached the entrance of Wilkerson’s, and he lowered his voice. “Do you go on ahead and learn what you can from the lady. I’ll settle matters here and catch up with you as soon as I can.”

AN hour later, Jackson was staring in dismay at the motionless figure stretched out upon a mossy piece of ground in a wooded part of Longledge Hill.

“What have you done?” he demanded of Caleb Finch. “Didn’t I tell you what his lordship said?”

“He’s all right,” Finch said. “I only give him some medicine.”

“What kind of medicine?”

“Some of that Godfrey’s Cordial. Told him it were my dear old auntie’s elderberry cordial.”

Opium was one of the main ingredients of Godfrey’s Cordial.

Jackson stepped closer. The old gentleman seemed to be slumbering peacefully. His dreams must be pleasant ones, because he smiled. He had a sweet smile, did Mr. Oldridge. Quite a harmless fellow. Jackson did not like seeing him lying on the cold ground. He also didn’t like Finch’s failure to wait for orders, and said so.

“And if I waited, like you say, until tomorrow or the next day,” Finch said, “what do you think was the chance I could talk him into coming away again? As it was, he was on fire to run back to the meeting, even when I told him it was close onto noon, and it’d be long over by the time he got there. Besides, his lordship wants him to disappear, don’t he? Well, it’ll be easier now. We’ll just load him onto a cart and take him away.”

“We don’t have a cart,” Jackson said.

“Yes, we do,” said Finch. “I borrowed it from the colliery. And a horse to pull it. They’re down that track a ways.” He nodded toward an ancient, overgrown packhorse trail. “I told you Miss O had a hundred tricks up her sleeve, didn’t I? And wasn’t I right? You let her get going in London, what with her lord and lady relations, and she’ll grind you down to powder. I knew how it would be, and I come prepared. Well, I don’t expect thanks, not a bit, not for doing my duty.”

It was as well that he didn’t expect thanks, because Jackson was disinclined to offer them. A man was supposed to follow his superior’s orders. A man wasn’t supposed to rush ahead and do whatever he took it into his head to do.

But Finch had gone ahead and done it, and they couldn’t release Mr. Oldridge now.

“It’s the same plan as his lordship wants,” Finch said. “It’ll work perfect. Miss Oldridge’ll hurry back from London as soon as she finds out her pa’s missing. While she’s here looking for him, master gets his canal act through Parliament quick and painless. Meanwhile, we’ll have Mr. O in Northumberland, safe and snug. As soon as Lord Gordmor gets his papers signed, we send the old gentleman home. Only think how happy they’ll all be at the house, like he come back from the dead. Like Lazarus.”

“You’d better make sure he does come back, in the same condition he left,” Jackson warned. “His lordship reminded me several times that the gentleman was not to be harmed in any way. I recommend you be careful with your cordials, Finch. If you give him too much and it kills him, I’ll see you swing for it.”

Seventeen

THOUGH they were ladies, encumbered with all the baggage, servants, and outriders deemed necessary for a long journey, Mirabel and Mrs. Entwhistle had covered some sixty miles by the time they stopped for the night at an inn in Market Loughborough.

Following a fine di

nner Mirabel mainly played with, they adjourned to a sitting room to await their tea.

When the inn servant carried in the tea tray, she informed the ladies that a Mr. Carsington wished to speak to them.

“Heavens, he has lost no time,” said Mrs. Entwhistle.

Mirabel said nothing, merely sat straighter, while her heart performed noisy calisthenics within her bosom.

“Pray show him in,” Mrs. Entwhistle told the servant.

He entered a moment later, his countenance marked with lines of weariness and his eyes dark. He was otherwise point-perfect, as usual: every hair neatly arranged to appear romantically windblown, every neckcloth fold precisely in place, and not a crease or wrinkle in sight.

Mirabel experienced a mad urge to leap up and rumple him. She reminded herself that it would be fatal to soften. He would wrap her about his finger. She must pretend he was her worst enemy. Otherwise, she would be lost, and all she’d done these last ten years and more would have been done for nothing.

She gave a cold nod in response to his bow and greetings and kept her hands tightly folded in her lap.

She invited him to join them for tea.

“I didn’t come for tea,” he growled. He threw his hat down and advanced upon her. “I added five miles to my canal, solely to please you, though it inconveniences my partner and increases our costs. I came to find out why you insist upon being so thoroughly unreasonable.”

“I should ask the same question,” she said. “I fail to understand why you and Lord Gordmor persist, when I have promised to do everything in my power to thwart you.”

“If you no longer care for me, you had better say so,” he said. “In ordinary circumstances, it would be unsporting to trifle with my affections in this way, but—”