Miss Wonderful

by Loretta Chase

  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.

  If he hadn’t heard the shout, he would have guessed a dog or cat had wandered into their midst.

  He turned his horse in that direction, though there was no path visible in the rapidly dwindling moonlight. The horses had been picking their way along an old, rutted packhorse road, as they followed the signs of recent passage: the grooves a pair of wheels had made in the dirt, the marks of feet and hooves, and fresh droppings.

  Here, in the swiftly dimming moonlight, Alistair distinguished nothing like a trail or path. But the uneasiness he’d carried for all these long hours deepened into anxiety, and he urged his tired animal to more speed.

  Yet by the time he and Mirabel reached the patch of woodland, the birds had settled again, and all was silent.

  They halted and listened. They were well ahead of the others and heard no voices, only the wind sighing through bare branches and whispering among the pines.

  And then a scream broke the quiet, a man’s scream, short and terrible, and near at hand.

  They dismounted and ran toward the sound.

  THE warning shout stopped Alistair in his tracks.

  “Have a care, have a care.” Mr. Oldridge’s breathless voice came from nearby.

  “Papa!”

  Mirabel would have rushed toward the sound, but Alistair held her back. “The sound is coming from below,” he said. “Wait here.”

  He walked forward cautiously, straining to see the ground ahead. Thick clouds were swallowing the moon and releasing a cold drizzle.

  “Here, here,” Mr. Oldridge called. “An air shaft. Have a care, I beg.”

  Alistair got down on hands and knees and crept toward the voice. He paused when he saw the hole, a ragged shape, only a shade darker than the surrounding darkness. He drew as near as he dared and peered down. He could see nothing.

  “Mr. Oldridge,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes, certainly.”

  “We’ll fetch a rope and have you out in a trice.”

  “I fear it is more complicated than that.”

  Mirabel crept up beside Alistair. “Papa, are you injured? Is anything broken?”

  “I think not, but it is difficult to be sure. Caleb Finch fell on top of me. He is…dead.”

  Nausea welled up. Alistair took a deep breath, let it out. He remembered. The mud. The cold, stiffening body keeping him down. The stench. He thrust the memory away.

  “In that case, I’ll come down to you, sir,” he said.

  “Alistair.”

  He could not read Mirabel’s face in the darkness, but he heard the fear in her voice. “If you both are trapped there,” she said softly, “how shall I get you out?”

  “We won’t be trapped,” Alistair said. “I must go down.” More audibly he said, “Mr. Oldridge, can you tell me anything more? It is difficult to see.”

  “I saw the telltale depression in the ground, and hesitated,” Oldridge said. “Then Finch caught me, and when I tried to warn him, he thought it was a trick. It is one of the old air shafts. The hill is honeycombed with them. This one has succumbed to age, weather, and gravity and—in short, it is caving in. We seem to be resting upon a heap of debris that partially blocks the hole.”

  “You are not at the bottom, then,” Alistair said.

  “Oh, no. We are wedged over the opening.” He wasn’t sure how deep the shaft was, he added. Given its position on the hillside, he estimated at least another twenty feet to the bottom.

  “I am not sure it would be wise for me to attempt to break through to get to the bottom,” Oldridge said.

  “No, most unwise,” Alistair said. The shaft must lead to an old mine tunnel, but that was more than likely blocked with debris or flooded. Which meant that if the lump of debris supporting them gave way, the two men would fall to the bottom with it. If the fall didn’t kill the one still alive, he’d be buried alive or drowned.

  “I think it would be best to send for help,” Mr. Oldridge said. “I am quite prepared to wait.”

  And if the rain increased, and became one of the sudden torrents, like the one Alistair had experienced weeks ago? The walls of the shaft could give way, to bury Mr. Oldridge alive or send him to the bottom. They would never be able to extricate him in time.

  It had to be now, and Alistair must do it.

  “We’ll need a good length of rope,” he told Mirabel.

  ALISTAIR tied the rope around the nearest sturdy tree and dropped the other end into the hole.

  The rain was building steadily.

  He climbed down, fingers tight on the rope. It was slippery. If his grip failed, he’d crash through the unstable pile of debris and fall to the bottom, taking Oldridge and the corpse with him.

  With every move, clumps of dirt and rock gave way. The rain beat on his head and spattered mud in his face. As he went lower, he became aware of the smell that wasn’t wet earth. It was all too familiar. Blood. And excrement. The smell of sudden, violent death. A very different matter from a quiet passing in bed.

  He wanted to retch, but he wouldn’t let himself. If he gave way to sickness or panic, the woman he loved would lose her father and her future husband at once. Even now she might be carrying his child.

  The thought of the child—his child—steadied his nerves and took him down to the uncertain pile of debris where the two men were wedged. He could hear one’s breathing. His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and he made out the shape of Mr. Oldridge’s genial face.

  “Can you reach my hand?” he asked, bending down toward Oldridge. He heard a shuffling sound, then dirt and gravel clattering to the bottom. Was that a distant splash he heard? In the rain, it was hard to tell.

  “I must get him off first,” Oldridge said.

  “Let me see if I can help,” Alistair
said.

  He inched down nearer. Still holding onto the rope, he felt with his free hand until he found an ungiving limb.

  “I’ve got him,” Alistair said. “Which way do we move him?”

  “To my left.”

  “Together now, then, on three, but gently, gently. One. Two. Three.”

  He tugged and Oldridge pushed, and they shifted the corpse to one side. Another clump of earth gave way.

  “We’d better make haste,” Alistair said, glad the beating rain drowned out the pounding of his heart. “Take my hand.”

  Oldridge grasped his hand.

  “Can you climb onto my shoulders?” Alistair said. The ground was sliding away from under his feet. He edged back from the crumbling dirt. “You’d better do it now,” he told Oldridge.

  For any other man, even a much younger one, this would have been next to impossible: The hole was cramped, its sides unstable, the ground beneath their feet threatening to give way any minute. Oldridge was far from young, probably bruised and stiff, and that might be the least of his troubles. But years of clambering over the Peak’s hills and dales and negotiating slippery paths had kept him strong and nimble. Though he moved more stiffly than usual, the botanist managed to climb onto Alistair’s shoulders.

  Alistair carefully straightened. “Can you reach?” he gasped.

  “Ah, yes.”

  At the top of the hole, the blackness lightened to dark grey. He saw Oldridge’s head mere inches now from the top. Then Mirabel’s face. She lay on her stomach, her hand outstretched.

  “Come, Papa,” she said.

  With her help, Oldridge shimmied and heaved himself up and over the edge.

  Alistair then turned to deal with the corpse. But as he bent toward it, the body slumped and the dirt—turning to mud—beneath Alistair’s feet shifted and slid away. He edged back, tightly clutching the rope, and listened to the rattling dirt and rocks falling into the darkness below.

  “Alistair,” Mirabel called. “Please.”