Miss Wonderful (26 page)

Mrs.
Dunnet laughed. "It cannot be so simple as all that, or else I
am very stupid. Nothing I said availed."

"It
is only that people long for excitement," Mrs. Entwhistle said.
"They wish to learn whether mysterious new injuries appear
daily, or whether Mr. Carsington evidences symptoms of poisoning—or
whether he is even alive." The widow's dark eyes twinkled. "The
devil makes talk for idle tongues, and why not? It is February, this
is a small community, and people have no other entertainment. If I
were you, I should entertain them, Mirabel."

"I
hope you are not proposing I poison my guest in order to keep my
neighbors amused," Mirabel said.

"I
propose that you rearrange your schedule for today," her former
governess said. "Put business aside and spend the time visiting
your neighbors instead. Be sure to give them every possible detail
about your exalted guest. Also—and this is most important,
Mirabel—you must beseech their advice regarding his care."

The
vicar's wife turned an admiring gaze upon the plump, beruffled widow.
"How astute you are," Mrs. Dun-net said. "That will be
worth a hundred sermons, though you must never tell Mr. Dunnet I said
so."

MIRABEL'S
Aunt Clothilde had sent Mrs. Entwhistle to Oldridge Hall fifteen
years ago. She was intended to be more of a companion than a teacher
for the motherless girl, since by that time Mirabel's education was
essentially complete. The governess had found a household devastated
and demoralized by the death of its beloved mistress. In short order
she rebuilt morale and, as Captain Hughes put it, "Got 'em all
shipshape again."

In
doing so, she had given Mirabel the kind of education her mother
might have done, one that extended far beyond the schoolroom. Mirabel
had profitably employed this knowledge a few years later, when she
had to give up her romantic dreams and return home from London to
prevent another shipwreck.

This
was why Mirabel didn't question Mrs. Entwhis-tle's counsel but
promptly followed it.

As
a result, Mirabel spent all of Monday, well into the evening,
listening to various ladies' tender expressions of pity for Mr.
Carsington's sufferings. She accepted with a straight face and humble
gratitude their medical receipts guaranteed to cure everything from
chapped lips to deafness.

She
listened to advice about forestalling lung fever and stoically bore
their reminiscences of the great influenza outbreak of '03, which had
killed her mother. She waited while they wrote notes to the patient
and promised to deliver them to him as soon as Dr. Woodfrey deemed
his brain strong enough for reading. She went home at last in a
carriage loaded with jellies, conserves, syrups, and enough Balm of
Gilead Oil to cover Prussia.

She
arrived shortly after dinner and found Mrs. Ent-whistle in the
library conversing with Captain Hughes. Papa, she was informed, had
gone upstairs to keep Mr. Carsington company.

"I
had fully intended to have my tea upstairs with the patient,"
Mrs. Entwhistle said. "But when Captain Hughes told us during
dinner that Mr. Carsington seemed to be in low spirits today, your
father insisted on visiting him. He said he knew exactly the thing to
alleviate the trouble."

Mirabel
recalled her father's confused idea that laudanum was somehow the
answer to Mr. Carsington's mysterious problems.

She
did not know for sure that laudanum would do him any harm. On the
other hand, she couldn't be sure it would do him any good, and she
most certainly had no idea whether her father had any inkling of
proper dosage.

Mirabel
ran out of the library and up the stairs.

Chapter
10

HEART
pounding, Mirabel burst into the room, ran to the bed—and
stopped short.

Mr.
Carsington was not in the bed, drugged unconscious or otherwise.

She
looked about her and found three pairs of eyes regarding her with
varying degrees of perplexity.

Crewe
had paused in the act of trimming a candle.

Papa
was rising from his chair.

Mr.
Carsington lifted his head from the hand it had been leaning on and,
after a moment, smiled a small, secretive smile.

The
back of her neck tingled.

"Oh,"
she said. "I thought you were sleeping."

His
smile widened. Mirabel abruptly recalled what she'd done in the early
hours of morning—and her sarcastic remark about leaping upon
gentlemen in their sleep.

Her
face grew very hot.

"Never
mind," she said. She started to turn away.

"Please
don't go, Miss Oldridge," Mr. Carsington said.

"Your
father and I were talking about Egyptian date palms. I should like to
hear your views."

Perhaps
his smile hadn't meant what she thought it did. Perhaps it had been a
smile of relief at her interrupting a deadly boring botanical
lecture.

Her
father gestured at the chair he'd vacated, and Mirabel took it. She
could not run away, no matter how embarrassed she was.

While
botany was less likely to prove fatal than an opiate overdose, it was
not without its dangers. From date palms, Papa might proceed to
Sumatran camphor trees, in which case Mr. Carsington was sure to
throw himself out of the window.

"We
were speaking of young men sowing wild oats," her parent said,
"and I remarked that this may well be a law of nature. In
ancient Egypt, I was telling Mr. Carsington, only female date palms
were cultivated. Wild males were brought from the desert to fertilize
them."

"I
could not understand why the Egyptians should go to so much bother,"
Mr. Carsington said. "Why not use cultivated males as well as
females? But you are better versed than I in agriculture. What is
your opinion?"

"I
can think of three reasons," she said. "Tradition,
superstition, or—and this, I fear, is not always the rule in
agricultural practices—the wild males had been proven to
produce fruit either in greater quantity or of superior quality."

"The
Babylonians suspended male clusters from wild dates over the
females," Papa said. "Many nations of Asia and Africa used
this combination."

"Then
it would appear to be a widespread practice," Mirabel said. "Yet
I don't see what it has to do with the human species sowing wild
oats. To my knowledge, date palms do not possess intellectual powers,
let alone principles. They cannot decide how to act. They are
governed entirely by natural laws."

"But
the young are governed more by nature—by natural feelings, in
other words—than by intellect and moral principle," her
father said. "For example, would either of you claim to be the
same person you were, say, a decade or so ago? At that time, as I
recollect, Mirabel, you were in London, breaking hearts left and
right—"

"I
was what? " Mirabel stared at her father. He could not have said
what she thought he did.

"Were
you really?" said Mr. Carsington. "Well, that is
interesting. You grow more complicated by the minute, Miss Oldridge."

ALISTAIR
wished he had a way of capturing the moment, for the look Miss
Oldridge gave her father was priceless. If the botanist had suddenly
sprouted palm fronds and date clusters, she could not have appeared
more dumbfounded.

She
quickly composed herself, however, and directed a level gaze at
Alistair. "This is absurd," she said.

"You
never told me you'd been to London," he said.

"It
was ages ago," she said. "You weren't even born yet."

He
laughed. "No doubt my father wished I hadn't been. Some ten or
so years ago I incited a riot near Kensington Gate."

"A
riot?" she said. "You started a riot?"

"Did
you not read of it? The tale was in all the papers."

"I
don't remember," she said.

"You
had too much on your mind, I daresay. All those hearts you had to
break."

Alistair
thought she was well on her way to breaking his.

This
day had dragged on so slowly, grey and dismal. He hadn't realized how
low his spirits had sunk until now. He'd hardly noticed his state of
mind, it was so familiar, this melancholy.

Then
she'd burst into the room and he'd thought his heart, in pure joy,
would burst from his chest.

Numskull
heart. She would break it, and forget about it as quickly and easily
as she'd forgotten all the others. It would serve him right. He
should guard it better, lock it away and keep his mind on business.
Should, should, should. But he couldn't summon the will to resist
her, to stifle the happiness he felt when she came into the room.