Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

There were other rumors: Finch spotted at church in Ledgemore one Sunday and someone who looked like him at the posting inn in Stoney Middleton a week or more ago.

Because Alistair was Gordy’s representative, he was also told an apparently unrelated story about his lordship’s mine foreman losing his place suddenly, because Lord Gordmor’s bailiff took a dislike to him. The foreman was muttering about going to the law, the miners weren’t happy, and the grumbling had traveled from cottage to public house to posting inn, to reach Longledge this week.

Alistair, who’d visited the mines less than a fortnight earlier and found all in order, was beginning to develop a theory. He said nothing of his suspicions to his informants but promised to look into the matter.

All this had happened while Mirabel rested.

Now she knew that Caleb Finch and Lord Gordmor’s bailiff were one and the same man—a man who might have been nursing a grudge against the Oldridges for eleven years.

SINCE no carriage could negotiate the narrow, rutted trails hereabouts, Oldridge had to travel in the coal cart. While Jackson was outside, laying down blankets so the great philosopher’s tender bottom wouldn’t be bruised, Caleb emptied a sizable dose of laudanum into the wine bottle and pushed it in front of the old man. “Drink all you like,” he said. “It’ll make the journey more peaceful-like.”

Oldridge frowned at the bottle. “I hope Cook does not take offence and give notice,” he said. “How many dinners have I missed? I lose count. One must take care with artists. Their feelings are so easily wounded.” He looked up at Caleb. “Perhaps someone would send Cook a note? Merely to tell her I’ve been unavoidably detained.”

“Whatever you wish, sir,” Caleb said, humoring him.

“A very good idea. A business engagement, eh? Called away sudden-like. Business in the north.”

“I have not attended much to business,” the old man said sadly. “It was remiss of me. The great Dr. Johnson suffered from melancholia, you know. A strange ailment, indeed. How ironic that one should read about it in order to understand a young man, only to discover it in oneself.”

“I’m sure it is strange,” said Caleb, to whom the words were gibberish. “Do have another glass, sir. Won’t get another chance until we get to the carriage. A precious rough ride until then. But this’ll settle you nicely.”

IT was long after midnight when Alistair and Mirabel reached the colliery. They’d hurried up the packhorse trail as fast as they dared and were now far ahead of the others, who continued systematically scouring the rugged hillside, looking for Papa under bushes, between rocks, in caves and crevices.

The colliery was deserted. Not so much as a watchman.

No witnesses, Mirabel thought. With the foreman dismissed and the men given a holiday, Finch would be free to do whatever he liked.

She would not let herself imagine what might have happened.

“I want to check the foreman’s cottage first,” Alistair said. “A while ago, I thought I saw smoke coming from this direction.”

She followed him to the cottage, half a mile away. It looked deserted. They dismounted, and Alistair cautiously tried the door. It opened easily.

The structure was only a slight improvement over a miner’s hut. The candle Alistair lit revealed a single room containing a small, thickly blackened fireplace. The room still smelled of smoke, which meant its occupants must have left fairly recently. The single cot had been stripped bare. A few pieces of crockery stood on the one narrow shelf above the fire, an empty wine bottle on the scarred table.

“Do you see anything?” Alistair asked. “Anything of his, any sign he was here?”

Mirabel moved slowly through the small, dirty room, searching for a sign. If Papa had not been here, he might have been thrown into a mine. He’d be sick, hungry, hurt, and cold. How long could a man approaching sixty, accustomed to ample meals and every material comfort, survive in such circumstances?

If, that is, he’d been left there alive.

She should have had Finch prosecuted when she had the chance. She should not have let her romantic trials cloud her judgment. She should have had more backbone.

She told herself to stop fretting about the past. It accomplished nothing. The present was what mattered. Yet her anxiety must have shown in her face, because Alistair spoke sharply.

“I beg you will not entertain morbid fancies,” he said.

“You have described Finch as a greedy, dishonest creature. What would he gain by injuring your father?”

“Revenge,” she said. “On me.”

“Revenge won’t line his pockets,” Alistair said. “I’m sure whatever he does is done for gain.” He lifted an empty wine bottle and sniffed it. “He drinks good wine. Stolen from Gordy, I shouldn’t wonder.” He started to set it down again, then paused, the bottle in midair, his gaze on a spot on the table.

Mirabel joined him. Something gleamed in one of the table’s many cracks. Alistair took out his penknife and worked the object out of the crack.

A gold toothpick.

He handed it to Mirabel. “Your father’s, do you think?”

She studied it. “It could be Papa’s. I cannot imagine Caleb using a gold toothpick, though it is possible. It cannot belong to the mine foreman. Perhaps—” She broke off as Alistair bent to peer more closely at the table.

“Something is scratched here,” he said. “N. T. Is that an H?”

She squinted at the marks, tiny ones, running vertically. One might easily mistake the faint line of letters for scratches. “Or an N,” she said.

“N. T. H or N. Then an M, an L, and a rectangle that could signify an O or a D.”

He studied it for a long time, while Mirabel tried out various words and word combinations. “Perhaps it’s a code?”

Alistair shook his head. “Why leave a message in code?

If your father left this…” He trailed off, and his gaze became remote.

“What is it?” she said.

“Northumberland,” he said. “Finch is Gordy’s bailiff, recollect. The ancestral home is closed up, most of the staff let go. Finch must have handpicked the few remaining. Gordy hasn’t been there in years. Depresses his mind, he says.”

She could easily imagine how Lord Gordmor felt. Finch must have run his estate into the ground, the way he’d almost done her father’s.

“We must have the mines searched,” Alistair said, “but I think you and I should continue northward. I feel certain your father left this message. The table is freshly scratched, so it was done quite recently.”

“Unless it is a trick.”

“Do you think Finch so clever?”

Mirabel considered. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen Finch since I dismissed him. I was young, and half my attention was elsewhere. Perhaps he is clever. On the other hand, if he is so brilliant a deceiver, how is it he couldn’t deceive a twenty-year-old girl preoccupied with losing the love of her life?”

“If you believed Poynton to be the love of your life, any half-wit could pull the wool over your eyes,” Alistair said.

She smiled, in spite of her worry. “Yes, of course. How good of you to point that out. Clearly I’m overestimating Finch’s intelligence.”

SINCE Caleb considered himself a deep and knowing man, he hated admitting he’d made a mistake. But there was no avoiding the fact: He’d misjudged the effects of a large dose of laudanum.

Instead of falling unconscious—or dead—the vexatious old man set to puking.

And Jackson, tenderhearted blockhead, stopped the cart, “because the motion upsets him, don’t you see?” These fine gentlemen had delicate digestions, Jackson said. Mr. Oldridge probably couldn’t stomach the plain, peasant fare he’d had for breakfast, or the steak and kidney pudding he’d had at noonday, or the fried slices of leftover suet pudding he ate at tea. It was all coming back to haunt him, like the ghost at the feast in Hamlet. Jackson had seen the play on the stage in London not long ago and now fancied him

self a scholar.

They wasted an hour waiting for the old man to empty his gut, and after that they crawled along, Jackson walking alongside the cart, promising a good, hot cup of tea the instant they reached Ledgemore, where the carriage waited.

A snail could have beat them, easy.

They crept along for hours in the wooded part of the hill, with the weather getting ready to turn foul again, and Caleb’s temper turning uglier by the minute, while the old man lay curled up in the cart, sleeping like a baby, with Jackson hovering nearby, like he was a nursemaid.

But when Jackson stepped away to answer nature’s call, Oldridge jumped up out of the cart and bolted for the woods.

It happened so sudden that no one was ready. Jackson needed a moment to finish and button himself up, and Caleb, who was quicker off the mark, tripped over a root and went down, head foremost. He got up in time to see Oldridge disappear behind a rise.

Caleb ran after him, cursing under his breath, because Jackson was shouting, fool that he was. He should save his breath to catch the sneaking rascal. They’d hear Jackson’s roaring down in the valley, sure, or at least the dogs would, and set to barking, and wake everyone.

Long minutes later, muscles and lungs burning, Caleb finally closed in on the runaway. He was slowing down and stumbling. Not enough wind in him to outrun a man more than ten years younger, Caleb thought smugly. He stretched his long legs and ran, leaping over rocks and fallen branches. In a last burst of speed, he jumped, and tackled Oldridge, and brought him down hard. Then Caleb dragged him up, and while the wicked old reprobate was gasping for breath, drew his knife and laid it against his neck.

“Your nursemaid ain’t here now,” Caleb said, gasping, too. “It’s time for your accident.”

He pulled the man with him, the knife at his neck, while he looked for a likely place.

Ah, yes. There. A good long tumble onto a pile of broken rocks.

ALISTAIR had paused to look up at the sky, which was swiftly clouding again. If he hadn’t stopped, he might not have heard the shout and realized it was connected to the subsequent cawing and screeching of irate fowl. The birds were soaring up from the trees, complaining about the intruder who’d disturbed their peace.