Miss Wonderful (The Dressmakers 1)

“I can’t leave him—it—here.”

He reached again for Finch, but as he moved, the mud beneath the corpse sagged, and the body slid out of reach. Another piece of the shaky ledge gave way.

The rain fell faster and heavier, beating on Alistair’s head. Mud and pebbles rained down, too, from the disintegrating rim of the hole.

The rope was wet, his hands numb. Merely standing still, putting little weight upon it, he could barely hold on, and the ground beneath his feet was crumbling away. If he tried to climb, and put his full weight on the rope, he’d lose his hold and fall. If he tried to climb the crumbling shaft wall, it would collapse on him.

He looked up at the face he could barely see. He didn’t need to see it. He had her memorized, carved into his heart. “I love you,” he said.

MIRABEL understood what was happening, why he said the three words.

The hole was caving in, and he was going to be buried alive.

She was vaguely aware of a voice, some distance behind her. An unfamiliar voice, talking to her father. She couldn’t make out the words, didn’t care. All her consciousness was riveted upon the man below. Her heart was pounding in her ears. She had to get down there somehow. She had to help him. She couldn’t lose him. She wouldn’t.

Then Papa called out, “It’s all right, my dear. We’ve run the rope through the stirrup leather. The horse will pull him out. I’ll guide the animal. You assist Mr. Carsington.”

“The rope’s wet,” Alistair told her. “I can’t pull myself up, and the shaft wall is likely to give way if I try to get a toehold.”

“No, don’t try it, sir,” came the stranger’s voice. Its owner lay down on his stomach next to Mirabel. “Just leave it to us to pull you up.”

They let down more rope, and the man told Alistair to loop it about his waist, then round his hand.

“We’re going to tow you,” the man said.

Mirabel couldn’t speak. She could scarcely breathe. She didn’t think, but blindly did as she was told.

It was slow, and twice he slid back, but with the stranger’s help, they got Alistair up. A mere six lifetimes later, his ice-cold hand was grasping hers.

Another minute and they’d pulled him out and over the edge. He was wet and filthy, and probably in unimaginable pain, but he was safe, and she dared to breathe again.

She threw her arms about him, and felt the ground shift. He pulled her clear, and a heartbeat later, the hole caved in.

They watched silently as the earth swallowed Caleb Finch.

For a long while afterward, no one spoke. They stared at the place for a time, then turned away.

After they’d helped her father onto a horse, the stranger finally broke the silence.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said to Alistair.

“Jackson?” Alistair said. “I thought I recognized your voice.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said. “I truly am sorry, sir. This is all my doing—all mine—but I never meant for it to turn out like this, I swear.”

Twenty

ALISTAIR did not intend to stay at Oldridge Hall. He wasn’t satisfied with Jackson’s confession and wanted to think it over. If matters were as he suspected, honor forbade his accepting Mr. Oldridge’s hospitality. In any case, the farther Alistair was from Mirabel, the clearer his thinking would be.

But Mr. Oldridge proved amazingly obstinate.

They had ridden to the house, and Alistair—intending to go on to Bramblehurst and impose upon Captain Hughes—was trying to brush off the older man’s thanks and graciously decline the invitation.

“No, no,” Mr. Oldridge said. “It is not convenient for you to depart. I cannot be chasing you all over the neighborhood. You are here now, and I don’t doubt Benton has already ordered hot baths. He thinks of everything, you know. You will bathe, and sleep, and we will wake you in time for dinner. Someone will find your servant between now and then, I daresay. But if we cannot find him, you must dine in a dressing gown and refrain from going into a decline because of it. You will not die because you lack a starched neckcloth or whatever it is you make such a fuss about. I shall see you at dinner, then, and we shall talk.”

Throughout this speech, Mirabel stared at her father, her eyes opening wider and wider.

Mr. Oldridge met her gaze. “Caleb Finch was holding a knife when we fell,” he said. “On impact, it might easily have entered my body instead of his. A great deal passed through my mind between that time and your arrival. Nothing on earth is so dear to me as you. I am heartily sorry that I’ve been like a stranger to you, and that it wanted the recent series of shocks to bring me to my senses.”

He gave neither of them a chance to respond but hastily dismounted, and hurried into the house.

CREWE was there to wake his master at the appointed time, and to apprise him, during the dressing process, of all that had occurred while Alistair slept.

Mr. Oldridge had refused to bring charges against Jackson, who’d been allowed to set out immediately for London.

He’d set out to alert Gordy, of course.

Gordy, the traitor.

“All Jackson’s idea, indeed,” Alistair muttered, as he buttoned his trousers. “As though he’d dare do such a thing—abduct a gentleman—without his master’s express order. ‘I’ll settle matters here,’ Gordy said. I can guess what he was whispering to Jackson behind my back.”

“Sir?”

“It cannot wait,” Alistair said. “First thing tomorrow, we must set out for London. See to it, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

The dressing continued through a long silence, finally broken by a small, meditative cough.

Alistair sighed. “What is it?”

Crewe handed him a neckcloth. “I merely wished to observe, sir, that you slept undisturbed.”

“No, I did not.” Alistair wrapped the linen about his neck. “I dreamt of the circular railway at Euston.”

He remembered the dream clearly: the locomotive steam engine racing round and round the track, Gordy shouting at him to get off.

In reality, Alistair had ridden the machine safely, all those years ago. But a short time afterward, the locomotive had fallen off the track. Trevithick hadn’t funds for repairs. Others had made the device work elsewhere, though. Weren’t they using locomotive engines running on rails, to carry coal in Wales?

The rail track was the great advantage. Locomotive engines were not much faster than horses, except on level ground. But horses could not gallop endlessly for hours, where the steam engine would go on as long as it was fueled. But the great advantage was the rails. They made the way as smooth as water. A horse could tow a much heavier load traveling on water—or along the rails of a tramroad—than it could carry on its back.

Rails, however, could be laid almost anywhere. You didn’t need locks or aqueducts to get over inclines. You didn’t need great reservoirs.

His mind busy with engineering matters, Alistair quickly tied his neckcloth. He was only distantly aware of Crewe’s shocked look as he helped his master into his waistcoat and coat.

“I want you to pack,” Alistair said. “We must set out for London, first thing.” Without so much as a glance in the mirror, he hurried out.

MR. Oldridge continued in tearing good spirits at dinner. He made light of his recent travails, calling them adventures, and was delighted when Mirabel explained how Alistair had discovered and interpreted the message hastily scratched on the table.

After dinner, when they retired to the library, he became more solemn. As soon as the tea was brought in and the servants had gone out, he said to Alistair, “You must not be too hard upon your friend. He was under a very great strain—and Mirabel’s writing to him that you were not right in the upper story did not help matters.”

Alistair was too astonished by the man’s prescience to answer.

Mirabel tried to say something, but her father held up his hand. “A moment, pray. I signed those letters to Lord Gordmor and the Hargates because I was

deeply worried about Mr. Carsington, too, as was Captain Hughes. He’d sought me out that day in an attempt to comprehend my theories about Mr. Carsington’s ailment.”

“But it is no great mystery,” Alistair said. “I suffer from insomnia.”

“He was dreaming about Waterloo, Papa,” Mirabel said.