Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

She stood where she was, as she was, barely dressed, her hair undone. She wore the frothy concoction Aunt Clothilde had sent, without explanation, along with the letter describing Mr. Carsington’s indiscretions.

The nightclothes were provocative. It was an unscrupulous tactic, but Mirabel didn’t care. She would do whatever was necessary to win him over. She was in love, truly, deeply, hopelessly in love this time, and this time she would not give it up.

“I should not have let you go before,” she said. “I should have tried harder to understand. But I was too mortified and angry to think clearly.”

She’d had hours since then to calm down and sort it out and make up her mind what was most important: a house and a piece of land or the love of a lifetime.

He still gazed at her in that blank way. Had he shut his mind and his heart to her because of his pride? Did he see her differently now? In his eyes had she become another Judith Gilford—the heiress whose petty tyrannies, Aunt Clothilde believed, had driven him away?

It didn’t matter what he saw, Mirabel told herself. She would not give him up, no matter what it cost her.

She stood firm, chin up, her hands clasped to white-knuckled tightness and pressed against the knot of fear that was her insides.

“I was unreasonable,” she said. “Captain Hughes approved of your revised plan. He read my letter only because he’d promised he would.”

She’d known her father would not appear at the canal meeting, no matter how earnestly he promised. He’d insisted on setting out early, and walking, as he always did. She could hardly force him to drive with her and Mrs. Entwhistle in the carriage. She’d prepared the letter for the likely eventuality of Papa’s nonappearance, and given it to Captain Hughes the day before the meeting.

“I should have signaled or sent word to him not to read it,” she said now. “Your new plan was most accommodating and well thought out. I’ve been silly not to accept it. I cannot expect everything to remain exactly as it was. The world changes, and we must change with it. I ought to be happy and grateful for all the trouble you took on my account, instead of causing you more difficulty.”

“It was a good plan,” he said.

“Yes, very good.”

“But not good enough,” he said.

“No plan could be good enough,” she said. “I wanted Lord Gordmor to close up his mines and go away and stop troubling us with his transportation problems. I didn’t want any more Lord Gordmors or any other enterprising men, including my neighbors, finding new ways to make fortunes on Longledge Hill. I didn’t want increased trade. I wanted the peaceful, simple country life I’d grown up with.”

“Then I shall find a way for you to keep it,” he said.

She looked down at her still-clasped hands, then up into his starkly handsome face. The tenderness she saw there lightened her heart. “You are not to waste your time on any such thing,” she said. “You are not to risk everything you have worked so hard for. I came to tell you so. Mine would be a poor sort of affection if I could not sacrifice a very little comfort for your sake.”

“I think you’d lose more than a little comfort,” he said.

Yes, the truth was, it would break her heart to see her home changed. But she knew what he, what any reasonable person would think. One couldn’t make time stand still. Times were changing, and she must change with them.

Her mother had been dead for half her life, and recreating the world Mama had lived in and making her dreams come true would not bring her back. This man was very much alive, and Mirabel loved him. She’d rather make a life with him, under any conditions, than go back alone to her solitary life in her beautiful arcadia.

She said, “I have been in love before, you know, and let it go because I could not abandon my land and roam the world as he wanted—as he needed—to do. I broke off my engagement, and came home, and resigned myself to spinsterhood. Yet it seems I am not fully resigned. I asked myself a short while ago whether I was willing to sacrifice my affection for you. I decided I was not.”

“He was a fool to go,” he said, his voice low and fierce. “He should have stayed and fought for you. But I’m glad he was a fool, because I’m selfish. I want to be the one who fights for you.”

Her hands unclasped, and her heart banged crazily. “You don’t have to fight,” she said. “I’m won. I’m yours.”

“Are you, my love?” He smiled then, and opened his arms, and she ran straight into them.

As soon as those strong arms closed about her, she knew she’d made the right decision. She’d learnt to take care of herself, to do without a man’s protection or even affection. She could do without his if she must, but only if she had no other choice, only if he abandoned her.

She would do everything in her power to make sure he didn’t.

“I must send you back to your room,” he rumbled into her hair. “In a moment.”

His hands came up and tangled in her hair. He kissed her forehead and her nose. She tilted her head back, offering her lips.

“We had better not,” he murmured, raising his head.

“No, we really mustn’t,” she said.

Liar, liar. She didn’t care what they must or mustn’t do. It was late, and they were alone, and the storm seemed to shut out the world.

He slid his hands down to her shoulders. He gazed deep into her eyes, as though she harbored unfathomable secrets—as though she had anything left hidden from him.

She’d opened her heart. She’d let him see and touch—and do things she had no name for—to parts of her body she’d once felt depraved merely looking at.

“I want to be good,” he said. “I’ve taken appalling advantage of your inexperience.”

“Yes, it was very bad of you,” she said, drawing away. “And it was bad of me not to discourage you. It was bad of me to come tonight in all my dishabille. Despicable, really. I am not wearing a scrap of undergarments. And this gown—what was Aunt Clothilde thinking, to send such a frilly, flimsy little nothing to a respectable spinster?” She looked down and fiddled with the ribbons at the front of the low neckline. “I suspect it is French. No decent English dressmaker would make such a thing.”

“Mirabel.” His voice had thickened. “Please. I am not made of iron.”

“I know that.” She smiled. “You are flesh and blood. Very muscled. And the hair on your chest is more generally golden than on that your head.” She untied the topmost ribbon. “Whereas I am quite, quite smooth in that area.” She glanced down. “But a good deal more rounded.”

“Yes.” One strangled syllable. “I think your body is perfection, but I must not look at it now. Mirabel, you are not to untie the next ribbon. It is the worst sort of cruelty. You know I must resist you. We shall be wed, and I absolutely will not anticipate the wedding vows.”

She untied the second ribbon. “I thought you already had,” she said. “Twice.”

“That was irresponsible and selfish. And anyway…Anyway, you are intact—barely—by the grace of God. Oh, why am I talking about this? You must go. Good ni

ght.” He limped to the door and opened it.

She stood where she was. She untied the last of the ribbons and shrugged out of the dressing gown.

He shut the door.

“Don’t,” he said.

“I won’t,” she said. “I want you to take it off me. You are so good at dressing and undressing.”

He stalked to her, eyes flashing gold sparks, and she wondered if he meant to pick her up and eject her bodily from the room.

He grasped her shoulders. “You,” he said. “You.”

“Yes, this is truly me.” She reached up and dragged her fingers through his sleep-tousled hair. “I did not know a wanton lived inside me. You found her and set her free. Now you must live with the consequences.” She tugged him down, and his mouth sank onto hers, and in an instant he swept her into another realm, where she was young again, and fresh, and utterly happy.

She curled her hands round his neck and stood on tiptoe, trying to get more of him. He deepened the kiss and dragged her down into a drunken darkness. No fruit of the poppy could be half so intoxicating as the taste of him. With his tongue he played inside her mouth and made her remember the more intimate way he’d played with her not ten days ago. Heat skittered along her skin and under it. Dry reason evaporated, and pleasure seeped in, cool and dark and dangerous, to make her someone else, the wanton he’d brought to life. No longer cautious, no longer responsible, no longer in control.

She moved her hands over his shoulders, his powerful arms, and relished the answering caresses, his long, skillful hands sliding over the frilly nightgown, making it whisper under his touch as though it were alive. He made everything come alive, created a wild, vibrant world, mysterious and exotic and yet so familiar, as though it had always existed inside her.

She slid her hands down to the sash of his dressing gown. His hands got in the way, nudging hers aside, un-fastening the ribbon of her nightgown, loosening the bodice. He pushed the thin fabric down, and she caught her breath as his hand closed over her breast.