Miss Wonderful (3 page)

Gordmor
took his eyes off his neckcloth long enough to glance at Alistair.
"Perhaps, like some of us, he felt you had used up your quota of
battlefield luck. Frankly, I'm glad he blocked that route."

Apparently,
Waterloo had tried very hard to kill Alistair. He'd learnt that the
foe had shot three horses out from under him, slashed him with
sabers, and stuck him with lances. A body of friendly cavalry had
ridden over him, a couple of fellows had died on him, and looters had
robbed him. Given up for dead, he had lain in the muck among the
corpses for hours. He was nearly a corpse when Gordmor found him.

Not
that Alistair remembered. He only pretended to. He'd assembled the
general picture from others' remarks. He wasn't sure it was all true.
Or if it was, it might be greatly exaggerated. He was sure Gordy knew
or at least suspected that something had gone awry with Alistair's
brain box, but they never spoke of it.

"My
father could have let me continue serving King and country,"
Alistair said. "Then he could not complain of my frittering away
my life in idleness." "But a gentleman is supposed to be
idle." "Not this one," Alistair said. "Not any
longer. I must find a way to earn my keep by the first of May."

"Six
months," Gordmor murmured. "That should be time enough."

"It
had better be. If I haven't found an occupation by then, I must woo
and win an heiress. If I fail to do either of these—he punishes
my younger brothers!" This had been Lord Hargate's coup de
grace. The earldom and all its other titles, honors, and privileges,
along with most of the family properties, would go to Alistair's
oldest brother Benedict when their father died. Great estates were
usually entailed this way, to keep them intact over generations. But
this only shifted the younger sons' upkeep from father to eldest son.
To spare Benedict this burden, his lordship had acquired certain
properties, intended to be wedding gifts for his boys.

Today
he'd threatened to sell one or both of the younger men's properties
and arrange an annuity for Alistair from the proceeds, if Alistair
failed to find an occupation—or a well-dowered bride—in
the stated time.

"Only
your inscrutable father could devise such a scheme," Gordmor
said. "I think there is something Oriental about his mind."

"You
mean Machiavellian," Alistair said. "I daresay it is
uncomfortable to have so forceful a character for a parent,"
Gordmor said. "Yet I can't help ad-miring him. He's a brilliant
politician, as all in Parliament know—and tremble, knowing. And
even you must admit his strategy is excellent He struck precisely in
your tender spot: those great louts you think of as your baby
brothers." "Tender spots have nothing to do with it,"
Alistair said. "My brothers annoy me excessively. But I cannot
let them be robbed to support me."

"Still,
you must admit your father succeeded in unnerving you, which is no
small accomplishment. I recall that when the surgeon proposed to saw
off your leg, you said, 'What a pity. We had grown so attached.'
There was I, blubbering and raving by turns, and you, trampled nearly
to pulp, as cool as the Iron Duke himself."

The
comparison was absurd. The Duke of Wellington had led his armies time
and again to victory. All Alistair had accomplished was to endure
long enough to be rescued.

As
to his cool demeanor, if he'd taken it all so calmly, why wasn't it
plain and clear in his head? Why did the scene remain shrouded, out
of his reach?

He
turned his back to the window and regarded the man who'd not only
saved his life but made sure he kept all his limbs. "You lacked
my training, Gordy," he said. "You'd only the one older
sister, where I had two older brothers to beat and torment me from
the time I could walk."

"My
sister finds other ways to torment me," Gordmor said. He
shrugged into his coat and gave his reflection a final scrutiny. He
was fair-haired, slightly shorter than Al-istair's six-plus feet, and
a degree burlier in build.

"My
tailor does his best with the material at hand," Gordmor said.
"Yet spend what I will and do what I will, I always contrive to
be a shade less elegant than you."

Alistair's
leg was twitching for rest. He left his post at the window and limped
to the nearest chair. "It's merely that war wounds are
fashionable these days."

"No,
it's you. You even limp with address."

"If
one must limp, one ought to do it well."

Gordmor
only smiled.

"At
any rate, I must do you credit," Alistair told his friend. "If
not for you, I should be lying very still at this moment."

"Not
still," said his lordship. "Decomposing. I believe it is an
active process." He moved to a small cabinet and took out a
decanter and glasses.

"I
thought we were going out," Alistair said.

"Presently."
Gordmor poured. "But first I want to talk to you about a canal."

Chapter
1

Derbyshire,
Monday 16 February 1818

MIRABEL
Oldridge left the stables and started up the gravel path toward
Oldridge Hall. As she was turning into the garden, the footman Joseph
burst out of the shrubbery and into the footpath.

Though
Miss Oldridge had recently passed her thirty-first birthday, she
didn't look it. At the moment—her red-gold hair windblown, her
creamy cheeks rosy, and her blue eyes sparkling from exercise—she
appeared quite young.

Nonetheless,
to all intents and purposes she was the senior member of the family,
and it was to Miss Oldridge, not her father, the servants turned when
difficulties arose. This perhaps was because her parent so often
caused the difficulties.

Joseph's
abrupt appearance and breathless state told her there was a
difficulty even before he spoke, which he did in a rush and
ungrammatically.

"If
you please, miss," he said, "there's a gentleman which he
came to see Mr. Oldridge. Also which he has an appointment, he says.
Which he does, Mr. Benton says, as master's book were open, and Mr.
Benton seen it plain as day and in the master's own hand."

If
Benton the butler said the diary entry existed, it must, impossible
as this seemed.

Mr.
Oldridge never made appointments with anybody. His neighbors knew
they must arrange social visits with Mirabel if they wished to see
her father. Those who came on estate business understood they must
deal with Mr. Oldridge's agent Higgins or Mirabel, who supervised the
agent.

"Will
the gentleman not see Higgins instead?"

"Mr.
Benton says it isn't proper, miss, Mr. Higgins being beneath the
gentleman's notice. A Mr. Carsington, which his father is the Earl of
someplace. Mr. Benton said what it was. A something-gate, only it
weren't Billingsgate nor none of them other London ones."

"Carsington?"
Mirabel said. "That is the Earl of Har-gate's family name."
It was an old Derbyshire family, but not one with which she was on
visiting terms.

"Yes,
that's it, miss. Besides which this is the gentleman what was
trampled so heroic at Waterloo, which is why we put him in the
drawing room where Mr. Benton says with respect, miss, but it won't
do to leave him cooling his heels like he was nobody in particular."

Mirabel
glanced down at herself. It had rained off and on all morning. Globs
of mud clung to her damp riding dress and, thanks to the walk to and
from the stables, thickly caked her boots. Her hair and the hairpins
had long since parted ways, and she'd rather not contemplate the
state of her bonnet.

She
debated what to do. It seemed disrespectful to appear in all her
dirt. On the other hand, putting herself right would take ages, and
the gentleman—the famous Waterloo hero—had already been
kept waiting longer than was courteous.

She
picked up her skirts and ran to the house.

DERBYSHIRE
was not where Alistair wanted to be at present. Rural life held no
charms for him. He preferred civilization, which meant London.

Oldridge
Hall lay far from civilization, in a godforsaken corner of
Derbyshire's godforsaken Peak.

Gordmor
had aptly, if hoarsely, described the charms of the Peak from his
sickbed: "Tourists gawking at picturesque views and the
picturesque rustics. Hypochondriacs guzzling mineral waters and
splashing in mineral baths. Ghastly roads. No theater, no opera, no
clubs. Nothing on earth to do but gape at the view—mountains,
valleys, rocks, streams, cows, and sheep—or at rustics,
tourists, and invalids."

In
mid-February the area lacked even that degree of animation. The
landscape was bleak shades of brown and grey, the weather bitterly
cold and wet.

But
Gordmor's—and thus Alistair's—problem lay here, and could
not wait until summer to be solved.

Oldridge
Hall was a handsome enough old manor house, greatly enlarged over the
years. It was, however, most inconveniently situated at the end of a
long stretch of what was humorously called "road"
hereabouts: a narrow, rutted track where dust prevailed in dry
weather and mud in wet.