Miss Wonderful

by Loretta Chase

She hadn’t reached this conclusion because he spoke of reforming. After all, men—especially rakes and other ne’er-do-wells—commonly pacified women by promising to reform. Even Papa did it, about twice a year, with most sincere intentions—which he’d forget the instant the next botanical riddle happened along.

  No, it wasn’t the talk of mending his ways. It was the troubled expression in Mr. Carsington’s eyes and the change in his tone when he spoke of his father. That note in his voice struck a painful chord within her. She recognized the frustration: the sense of failure no matter what one did, the awareness of a vast, unbridgeable gap.

  “I can walk and talk at the same time,” came Mr. Carsington’s deep rumble from behind her.

  He was very close behind her, she discovered as she glanced back. “I’m thinking,” she said.

  “But women are much more complicated beings than men,” he said. “I believe you can even hold more than one thought in your mind at once. Surely you must be able to think and walk and talk simultaneously.”

  “I was wondering if you practice the bored look in the mirror,” she said. “You are so very good at it. I feared you would fall asleep and tumble from your horse. Since you’ve already read Mr. Farey’s book, what I’ve had to say about Longledge Hill must seem tedious repetition.”

  “It wasn’t what you had to say about farming,” he said. “I’d already read enough about Derbyshire agriculture to make me want to hang myself. It’s you I find interesting.”

  Mirabel’s heart twisted about again. “I’m a farmer,” she said. “It isn’t in the least exciting.”

  “Why don’t you leave managing the estate to Higgins?” he said. “Why don’t you let him do what he was hired for, while you go to London and enjoy yourself? If the social whirl proves too frivolous, you might find scores of other intellectual ladies to talk to and attend lectures with.”

  She remembered, rather wistfully, the joys of London. Aunt Clothilde never gave up urging her to visit. One day, perhaps, Mirabel would. But not yet, not now, certainly, when everything she loved was threatened.

  “You are so kind,” she said. “I wish you as far as Calcutta. You only wish me as far as London.”

  “You’ve evaded the question twice and thus doubled my curiosity. Have you a lover here?”

  A lover? She? Was he serious?

  Mirabel stopped short. He trod on her heel, and her foot slipped. Then she was toppling backward, flailing for balance. He caught hold of her waist and righted her. It was done in an instant. But he didn’t let go.

  She heard his quick intake of breath and looked up to meet his strangely intent golden gaze. Her own breath came quicker, and her heart skittered against her rib cage.

  His hands were big and warm, his grip firm, and she thought he must sense the commotion within her. She ought to pull away, but she didn’t want to. She only wanted to look up into his eyes, trying to read them and daring to hope she wasn’t the only one in a commotion.

  He bent a hairsbreadth closer. “What a little waist you have,” he said in a soft, puzzled voice. “I should never have guessed.”

  She was not little, but he was so much larger. Her head came only to his immaculately shaven chin. She stood near enough to feel his breath on her face, near enough to detect the elusive scent she still had no name for. She saw the faint network of scars on the underside of his jaw and wanted to put her hand up and lay it against his cheek. She didn’t know why or what it would achieve, only that she wanted to.

  It took nearly all her willpower not to do it, to gather her composure and say, so very casually, “If you are done measuring me, Mr. Carsington, I believe I can contrive to walk on unaided.”

  He took his time straightening and was slow and deliberate releasing her. Even after he’d fully let go, she could feel the pressure and warmth of his hands. She knew a boundary had been crossed, and if she did not take very great care, she would soon have no boundaries left.

  “You gave me a fright,” he said. “I had a vision of you tumbling down the rocky hillside. My heart still pounds.”

  Mirabel’s did, too, with everything but fear. “Perhaps if you would not follow so closely, we should be less likely to stumble into each other,” she said while hoping she would not be tempted to do so accidentally on purpose.

  “A good point,” he agreed. “I should have paid more attention to where I was walking as well. But I was caught up in admiring the view, you see.”

  To the right, the left, and straight ahead the view consisted of trees, limestone rocks, scraggy bushes, and dirt. A smattering of evergreens provided the only bright color in the dreary landscape.

  “The scenery here is hardly worth the climb, I should say,” she said.

  “Not from my perspective,” he said.

  Heat washed through her. She understood his meaning. She had not spent two seasons in London without learning how to detect innuendo. She pretended not to understand, though she could not pretend it dismayed her. It had been a very long time since an attractive man had made improper remarks about her person. She’d forgotten how agreeable it was.

  A small, insistent voice in the back of her head made warning noises, and she remembered how agreeable he’d made himself to all the men last night.

  “For the present, you would be wiser to watch the path,” she said.

  “I shall try to be wise, Miss Oldridge.”

  Mirabel walked on.

  “About your lover,” he began after a moment.

  She did not mind flirtation and a bit of impropriety. She had never been missish. But she could not let herself fall victim to his charm. And she most certainly would not explain private matters to him. “I cannot believe you think I’ve undertaken all that I have, merely to be near a man,” she said quellingly.

  “What a pity. I was picturing clandestine meetings, perhaps on that ledge overlooking the romantic moors.”

  “You are certainly entitled to entertain any fanciful notions you like,” she said, repeating his patronizing retort of a few days earlier. “I should not wish to stifle an active imagination.”

  He laughed. “Touché, Miss Oldridge.”

  As the path rounded a sharp curve, Mirabel felt the air change. She looked up. The clouds were thickening. She paused. This time he was prepared, and they didn’t collide.

  He came up beside her and stood nearer than was strictly proper. He was breathing hard—winded, apparently.

  He could not be accustomed to such climbs, and his leg must be hurting as well. “I think the weather may change more quickly than you estimated,” she said. “Perhaps we’d better turn back.”

  He eyed the forbidding hillside. “Let’s go a bit farther. Where’s the Briar Brook?”

  “Not far,” she said. “But there’s hardly any path at all up ahead, and the climb is much steeper.”

  “So it appears,” he said. “It’s been ages since I scrambled up a rocky hillside. I should like to see if I can still do it.”

  Mirabel would have argued, but the longing look he directed at the rocky terrain ahead stopped her tongue.

  He wasn’t quite whole, and she was sure it vexed him more than he let on. The appearance of easy grace must want hard work to maintain. Yet no matter how hard he worked, he’d never move as smoothly and effortlessly as he’d done before Waterloo.

  She wished he wouldn’t let it vex him. No one with working eyesight could possibly perceive him as defective or weak. But even she had enough delicacy not to broach so personal a topic—not that he’d heed her if she did.

  Instead, she agreed to continue, and he managed so well and was so pleased with himself that she led him farther than she’d meant to.

  He told her he should have realized one didn’t need an even gait to get over and around rocks. “Think of crabs,” he said. Exaggerating his limp, he started moving sideways, hurrying up the hill ahead of her.

  Mirabel laughed, throwing her head back. That was when she felt the first raindrops.

 
; She called out to him.

  He paid no attention but raced up among the rocks, almost as quick as a crab. A moment later, the sky turned black, and the drops swelled into a deluge.

  And in the next moment, she saw him slip, and fall, and tumble down into the rocky stream. There he remained, terribly still, when she reached him.

  THE world went black, briefly. When Alistair came to, he wasn’t sure whether it was day or night or where he was.

  A low-hanging sky the color of coal smoke spewed cold, lashing rain. He closed his eyes and tried not to think, but his mind hurried along anyway.

  How bad was it? How many holes had the enemy made in him? How swiftly would his strength ebb away?

  How soon, he wondered, would the life leak out of him, and was that better than being rescued and somehow patched up so that, mutilated and incapacitated, he could die a long, slow death over years instead of hours?

  Artillery blasted nearby, and the air filled with smoke. He heard men scream in agony. Rifle fire. More smoke. Horses thundering toward him.

  They crashed over him, bringing oblivion. But not for long. He soon woke again, to stench and smoke and the cries of the dying, man and beast.

  He woke as well to the pain, which created a world of its own, making the grim scene about him seem a degree less immediate.

  The pain loomed large, dimming everything else. At first it was one steady throb like his heartbeat. Then other variations came and went, driving aches and spasms through him, these lesser torments darting in and out from under the great, steady drumbeat.

  All the world narrowed to only him and to the one human sensation in all its shades and variations. Pain, he discovered, was a fugue, and a kaleidoscope, and it hardly mattered what you called it, since it was the only thing.

  “Mr. Carsington.”

  Night music in the fugue.

  That was wrong.

  Alistair opened his eyes. Blue, blue eyes looked into his. A halo of fiery fluff above the eyes. Upon the fluff perched the aged hat with its tattered trim. Above and beyond the hat was the black sky, disgorging forty days and forty nights of rain.

  “You are conscious,” the night voice said. “Can you speak? Can you tell me where it hurts?”

  “Nowhere,” he said. Everywhere. His leg was on fire. Had he been shot? But no, that was years ago. This was now. The girl. The redhead. Ah, yes, he remembered: silken soft hair the color of sunrise…twilight eyes…the sweet, slender waist under his hands. When was that? Why had he let her go?

  “I know you are hurt,” she said. “Tell me where. I dare not move you until I know. But I must move you. You cannot lie in the Briar Brook all day. Please do be sensible. Where does it hurt?”

  “Nowhere,” he said. “Not in the least. Perfectly well.” He tried to lift his head, but pain shot down from his hip to his ankle. He caught his breath. It was only his plaguy leg, he told himself. Nothing to panic about.

  “Catch my breath,” he gasped. “Up in a moment.” He managed to lift his head and wrap one arm around a rock. He rested his head on the rock as though it were a pillow. Rain beat on his bare head. Where was his hat? He must find his hat. In a minute, he’d get up and look for it.

  “Jock!” she called. “Jock!”

  Who was Jock? Not her lover. She’d said she hadn’t one. He shouldn’t have asked. He’d done other things he shouldn’t. He remembered watching her hips sway and his all but announcing his approval of her handsome derrière. Because they’d been alone. No groom of menacing aspect. Jock. The groom.

  “Horses,” he said. “He can’t leave the horses.”

  The smoky haze settled in again. Around him, the animals’ screams mingled with the men’s. He smelled blood. Men’s or horses? He was going to be sick and disgrace himself.

  “Get up, you fool,” he mumbled. “Help your comrades.”

  The night voice, shaky now, called Alistair out of the haze. “Don’t try to speak, Mr. Carsington. Let’s save our strength, shall we? Jock won’t hear me in all this, at any rate.”

  She was right. In this storm, who would hear their shouts for help?

  The icy stream rushed around and over him, banging his legs against the rocks.

  “I must check for broken bones,” she said. “If you’re in one piece, we should be able to get you out of the brook without too much difficulty.”

  One piece, yes. He saw the stack of bloody limbs. He didn’t want his leg thrown into that ghastly heap.

  “Flesh wound,” he mumbled. “No call to get excited.”

  “Save your strength,” she said. “I’ll make it quick.”

  Firm, confident hands moved over his neck and shoulders. He closed his eyes, and the dark world swam back into his mind.

  He heard the din of artillery, which couldn’t quite drown out the groans and screams. The pain made him shake, and he was growing numb with cold. He thought about Kitty and Gemma and Aimée and Helen, about warm beds and soft hands. He would die here and never feel a woman’s hands on him again.

  A moment later Alistair came back to the pounding rain and the woman leaning over him, whose expert hands traveled down his limbs, gently pressing, probing.

  He found his wits and his voice. “Are you a doctor, too, Miss Oldridge?”

  “I’ve had more practice with animals,” she said. “Still, I should be able to recognize a broken bone if I encounter one.”

  When she reached his left ankle, the jolt of pain made him sit up sharply.

  “There’s the trouble,” she said. “It could be a great deal worse. You were rather cruelly knocked about when you fell. I’m fairly certain you’ve sprained your ankle, and you’ve undoubtedly wrenched some muscles. But nothing seems to be broken.”

  Banged about. Bruised. Muscles wrenched here and there. That was all. Why the devil did it hurt so much? And what was wrong with his brain?

  “Knew it was nothing,” he gasped. “Sprained ankle.”

  “I should hardly call it nothing,” she said sharply. “You have all the old hurts from battle, and you are wet and chilled to the bone.” While she spoke, she was helping him to his feet.

  Even with her help, the process was awkward and maddeningly slow. Also excruciating, thanks to the damaged ankle competing with his mangled upper leg.

  Not only did every movement hurt, but his muscles were no longer fully under his command and kept going into spasms. The pain and shakiness, the crashing stream, the slippery stones, the blinding rain, and his sodden clothes combined to make him feel like the cripple he’d worked so hard not to become.

  Alistair made himself work now, though his body wanted to give up, and a part of his mind wished he’d broken his neck so he wouldn’t have to fight anymore.

  But that was a tiny despised part of himself he usually kept locked away. Self-pity disgusted him. He’d seen what others endured and knew how trivial by comparison his own difficulties were.

  He told himself to be grateful he had a strong-minded countrywoman to lean on, who did not burst into tears or fly into a panic, but stayed as cool and steady as any comrade-in-arms.

  With her, he waded—lurched, rather—to a section of the bank where a gravel bed allowed for a reasonably secure footing, and climbed out.

  Henceforth the going became a degree easier. The ground was slippery, and they traveled steeply downhill rather than up, but they steadied each other. Eventually they reached the outlook, where a worried Jock was preparing to set out after them.

  MIRABEL had had a good deal of practice in appearing to have everything under control. Where business was concerned, one must preserve an unruffled demeanor, even if a late freeze decimated the orchards, or a prolonged spell of wet weather rotted half the winter’s hay supply, or the sheep began dying of a mystery ailment.

  As Captain Hughes would say, she was captain of the ship, and the well-being of vessel and crew depended on her. Any symptoms of confusion, hesitation, doubt, or alarm she displayed would swiftly infect others, undermining mo
rale and endangering both crew and vessel.

  She’d taken over her father’s affairs because he’d abandoned command, leaving the estate drifting toward the rocks and endangering the livelihoods of all the people who depended upon it.

  After more than a decade of shouldering her father’s responsibilities, it was second nature to take firm command of a situation, even if within, Mirabel felt hopelessly confused or frightened witless.

  From the time Mr. Carsington tumbled into the Briar Brook, she was as near hysteria as she’d ever been in her life. When she’d scrambled down to the water, her heart was thundering in her ears. The sheeting rain blurred her vision, and she couldn’t be sure if his chest was going up and down or not. Her hands shook so much she couldn’t tell whether he had a pulse.

  Fortunately, he opened his eyes, and after a moment seemed to recognize her, and she calmed enough to think, though not as clearly as she’d like.

  On the way back to Oldridge Hall, her mind continued to clear. Consequently, by the time a brace of servants had eased Mr. Carsington from his horse and loaded him onto a ladder, she knew something more was wrong with him than a sprained ankle.

  He would protest being carried, then begin mumbling again, apparently oblivious to his immediate surroundings. Inside the house, he repeated this set of behaviors while the servants carried him down the hall and up the stairs to the yellow guest suite.

  It would have been easier to put him in one of the ground-floor rooms, but a ground-floor room would be easier for a man with an injured ankle to escape from. Mirabel was certain he’d try to escape. After all, he hadn’t brought a change of clothes. If an ice storm couldn’t deter him, she doubted very much that a sprained ankle would.

  She had to make him to stay put, at least until Dr. Woodfrey had examined him.

  She saw Mr. Carsington transferred from the litter to a chair, supervised the process of peeling off his sodden outer garments, and got his injured foot propped up. After sending the footman Thomas for the tool she needed, she signaled Joseph to remain nearby. She thought it best to prepare her guest for the destruction of his costly boots.