Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

“She didn’t say. I must leave.”

“Mirabel.”

“I shall be staying with her in London. I shall ask her. I am glad you approve of her taste.” She spoke hurriedly. “She will take me shopping. I had been dreading that. It takes so much time, and I had so much to do, with my political machinations. But now I shall have plenty of time to shop.” She darted him a smile: “For my trousseau.”

“No, no, no,” he said.

Her startled gaze met his.

“Yes, you will shop for a trousseau, but later, with me,” he said.

“You don’t approve of my taste,” she said.

“With the present exception, you have no taste to speak of,” he said. “That is not the problem. The problem is, you must not abandon your campaign.”

“Mr. Carsington,” she began.

“Alistair,” he said.

“Alistair,” she said, and his Christian name had never sounded like this before. It was infinitely different when uttered in that whispery night voice. And he, he realized, was a different and better man, here, with her.

She laid her hand on his chest. “Pray recall that the object of my campaign was to destroy your canal scheme,” she said. “This, it turns out, would ruin your best friend as well as your younger brothers. I cannot be responsible for so much carnage, certainly not on account of a narrow strip of waterway hardly twenty miles long.”

“A better solution exists,” he said. “It is there, in the back of my mind somewhere. I will never get to it unless you keep challenging and provoking me.”

He gently grasped her shoulders and gazed into the twilight of her eyes. “All my life, it has been too easy,” he said. “I always knew someone would be there to solve my problems. As a result, nothing was ever at stake. Nothing was important enough to make me exert myself. Nothing ever tested my intellect or ingenuity. Until now. Until you. You will not let anything be easy. You have made me reexamine everything. You have made me think, and plot and contrive. You must not surrender now. I have never been so plagued and beset with problems in all my life—and I know it is good for me. I have not felt so alive since—gad, I can’t remember when. Do you understand, my dear, troublesome girl? I need the aggravation.”

She studied him in that direct way of hers, not hiding her attempt to puzzle him out. Then, “Oh,” she said. And, “Oh, yes, I quite understand.” She smiled, a great rising sun of a smile. “I am so relieved.”

She kissed him, hard, upon the mouth, the way he’d kissed her good-bye that day at the mausoleum. Then she hurried from the room in a flutter of ruffles and lace.

MIRABEL made it to her room without attracting attention and slipped under the bedclothes, though she knew she would not sleep a wink.

The next she knew there was a stir about her, footsteps hurrying to and fro, muffled voices. She glanced at the window. The sky was still grey, the sun not yet risen. There was a tap at the door connecting her room with Mrs. Entwhistle’s. A moment later, the lady herself appeared in an amazing profusion of ribbons and ruffles. Her sleeping attire was, though it hardly seemed possible, even more frivolous than Mirabel’s seraglio costume.

“My dear, I am so sorry to burst upon you like this,” she said. “But Jock has come with distressing news.”

Papa. Something had happened.

Heart hammering, Mirabel leapt up from bed, threw on her dressing gown, and hurried out to the hall, where a sopping-wet Jock stood.

A bad sign, a very bad sign, if the groom had been sent to her in bad weather in the dead of night.

He apologized for disturbing her, but Mr. Benton had said they must not lose a minute.

“Master never come home to dinner, miss,” the groom said. He said more, though no more needed to be said.

Not long afterward, she and Mrs. Entwhistle, their entourage and outriders, were all racing back to Oldridge Hall.

THE clamor outside—of horses being put to harness and servants bustling between inn and carriage—woke Alistair, but only briefly. He glanced toward the window, saw it was still dark, and groggily assuming the noise he’d heard was the storm, returned to sleep. It was the soundest sleep he’d had since arriving in Derbyshire a month ago.

He dreamt he was riding in a carriage towed by Mr. Trevithick’s locomotive steam engine, Catch-Me-Who-Can.

Alistair was going round and round the circular track at Euston at the mad pace of twelve miles per hour. Gordy was shouting at him to get off—it was dangerous, bound to explode—and Alistair only laughed. He was young, and whole, and fearless—or at least believed he was. Waterloo lay years ahead, in a future his still-immature mind couldn’t possibly imagine.

The carriage shook violently, and he could barely hear Gordy over the engine’s shrieking.

“Sir, please. It is nearly nine o’clock.”

Alistair opened his eyes. The room was only a degree less dark than before. Crewe was regarding him worriedly.

“Nine o’clock?” Alistair repeated. He struggled up to a sitting position. “Why is it so confoundedly dark?”

Though the storm had passed hours earlier, the sky remained thickly overcast, Crewe told him.

Alistair remembered then that Mirabel’s party had taken over the better rooms, exiling him and Crewe to this dismal corner of the inn, where what feeble daylight there was could scarcely penetrate.

He prayed the isolation had worked in her behalf. If anyone knew of her prolonged stay in this room…

Surreptitiously he began to feel about the bed for stray hairpins. Then he remembered her entering, her glorious sunrise colored hair tumbling about her shoulders. She had worn only the nightgown and the dressing gown, both of which fastened with ribbons. And the silk slippers. She could not have left any stray bits of attire behind for nosy inn servants to find.

His eyes widened. He had deflowered her! The sheets!

He leapt from the bed and flung back the bedclothes.

Nothing. Not a spot.

Before he could consider the meaning of this lack of evidence, Crewe called his mind elsewhere.

“Sir, I must beg your pardon,” the valet said. “I over-slept, else I should have wakened you long since.”

“You were standing guard again, I collect,” Alistair said. “Far into the early morning hours.”

“I knew you would not wish a certain lady’s visit to be misconstrued by malicious persons,” the valet said tactfully. “I am happy to assure you that the lady returned to her rooms w

ithout attracting any notice. The inn staff were busy below, in the public dining room, accommodating travelers the storm had waylaid. They hadn’t time to be spying upon other patrons.”

“Remind me to nominate you for sainthood at the first opportunity,” Alistair said as he headed for the washstand.

“Meanwhile, as soon as my business affairs permit, I shall double your wages.”

“I wish I deserved it, sir,” said Crewe. “As it happens, I was asleep at my post and failed you.”

Aware that Crewe’s standards of service were impossibly high, Alistair poured water into the bowl. “That I rather doubt,” he said. He began splashing water on his face.

“Miss Oldridge and her party departed some hours ago,” Crewe said. “For home.”

Alistair straightened, his face streaming water. “She’s turned back?” But she’d agreed to continue to London, and go on plaguing him.

“Her father has gone missing, sir.”

JACKSON would not go away.

According to the plan, he was supposed to make sure Caleb had matters in hand and enough money for the trip to Northumberland. Then Jackson was to return to assist his master in London.

But all because Caleb had encouraged Mr. Oldridge to swallow a few drops of Godfrey’s Cordial, Jackson decided to play nursemaid. When the storm came on Wednesday night, it was Jackson who made them stop at the mine foreman’s deserted cottage.

It was no good Caleb telling him there was no harm in Godfrey’s Cordial. Doctors made their patients swill buckets of it, didn’t they? Jackson only looked sour and fussed over the old man like it was his own dear pa.

Mr. O was no dear pa to Caleb. He was an aggravating old man, half-senile, and no good to anybody. Amiable, was he? Then how come he never put his little red-haired hussy daughter in her place? How come he let her stick her nose where it didn’t belong? How come he never had one good word to say for Caleb, after all those years serving him faithful? Instead, the old fool let her turn off Caleb without a character. It was as good as slandering him, to dismiss him without any explaining to anybody what she was about and refusing to write even ten words commending him to the next employer. Because of her, people wouldn’t talk to him. No one would take him on—him, who’d lived among them his whole life, and his parents before, and their parents before that. It was worse than if she’d blackened his character outright or had him put in the stocks.