Miss Wonderful (30 page)

In
the old days she dressed simply in dull shades of grey and brown, as
her position required. These days she was more colorful. This morning
she wore a red pelisse. The matching bonnet was a fetching concoction
of feathers and ruffles.

Captain
Hughes paid her compliments, which she accepted with indifference,
never slackening her pace. She grew more interested, however, when he
told her how his guest reacted to the Poynton story. She agreed that
Mr. Carsington's affections seemed to be engaged.

The
affair could not progress, however, if the man's health was failing,
and this Captain Hughes explained, was his primary concern at
present.

"I
can't believe he looks so ill because he's languishing for Miss
Oldridge," he said. "If you tell me this is the case, I'll
be ill myself."

"Yesterday
Mirabel received a letter from her aunt in London," said Mrs.
Entwhistle. "It included a detailed account, which she read to
me, of Mr. Carsington's love affairs. Given this report, I believe it
is safe to say that languishing is not in his style. His style runs
rather to dramatic scenes, impassioned speeches, and riots. These
activities require a degree of physical effort incompatible with
pining away or languishing."

"Riots?"
said the captain. "Over women?"

Mrs.
Entwhistle's frivolous bonnet bobbed up and down.

"Well,
that's more like it then," the captain said. "A man of
action, exactly as I supposed him."

"Regrettably,
your perceptions are not as acute as some people believe," Mrs.
Entwhistle said. "Mr. Oldridge is convinced that you alone
understand what is wrong with Mr. Carsington."

The
captain looked at her incredulously. "I?"

Another
bob of the bonnet. "Something to do with Egyptians, poppies,
and…" She thought for a moment, biting her lip in a way
that made Captain Hughes impatient.

"Egyptians?"
he said. "Poppies? What the dev—How is a fellow to make
heads or tails of that?"

"Mr.
Oldridge wondered at Dr. Woodfrey's not prescribing laudanum,"
she said. "If I understand correctly, Mr. Oldridge does not
believe a concussion is the trouble. He seems sure that you know what
the ailment is. He has mentioned this more than once."

"I
only know Carsington don't sleep and won't admit it," Captain
Hughes said. "I thought he was worrying about his canal, or
about Miss Oldridge blasting holes in his…"

He
trailed off, because something was teasing in a far corner of his
mind. It was like a dot of white sail on the horizon just far enough
away to elude identification. He waited, but it never drew nearer.

"There's
no help for it," he said at last. "I'll have to talk to Mr.
Oldridge myself. It'll end in a headache, but it's in a good cause, I
reckon."

MIRABEL,
meanwhile, was also hearing about Mr. Carsington. While Captain
Hughes was hunting down her father for enlightenment, she was
receiving enlightenment from a group of ordinary women concerned
about their and their husbands' livelihoods.

Her
mother had started the informal meetings many years earlier. The
women gathered once a month to discuss worthy community projects and
how best to carry them out. The meeting also provided an opportunity
to air grievances before the one local member best circumstanced to
address them: the lady of Oldridge Hall.

At
one such meeting, eleven years ago, she'd gleaned the first clues
about Caleb Finch.

The
current topic was Mr. Carsington.

By
now everyone knew why Lord Hargate's third son had come to this part
of Derbyshire. Not everyone was as thrilled as the gentry families
with unmarried daughters.

The
miller Jacob Ridler, like millers everywhere a canal had ever been
proposed, was vehemently opposed, according to his wife. But he
wasn't the only one. Even those who'd seemingly benefit objected: the
lime burners to the north, who needed coal for their kilns, for
instance; purveyors of the various minerals, who had to transport
heavy loads; and farmers looking to sell their produce and manure
beyond the local market.

"The
water is a great worry, miss," Mary Ann Ingsole, a farmer's
wife, said while they prepared clothes for a needy family. "If
the canal drains away Jacob Ridler's water, he can't run the mill.
Then where do we grind our corn?"

"My
Tom says they'll send all our mutton, beef, and corn on barges down
to London and leave us to live on potatoes," another woman said
grimly.

"Jacob
says they have to build a reservoir," said Mrs. Ridler. "But
where, miss? Where's a big enough parcel of land that don't have a
farm or quarry or livestock on it?"

"They
don't build reservoirs proper," said another. "They burst,
and somebody's killed."

These
were merely a few of the objections. Mirabel listened to them all.
When the women had finished unburdening themselves, she said, "I've
made no secret of my opposition. But I'm only one woman, and it's the
men who'll decide this."

Mr.
Carsington must hold a public meeting to form a canal committee and
draft a petition to Parliament, she explained. This would offer the
best opportunity for those opposed to speak up.

"But
they won't," Mary Ann Ingsole said. "Even Hiram, who as you
know never fears to speak his mind, don't like to come out against
Lord Hargate's son."

"Same
with all of them," said the woman beside her. "They grumble
at home and amongst themselves, but they'd as soon be pilloried as
say anything against him in public."

"Jacob
said he'd feel like a traitor. Everyone knows how Mr. Carsington got
hurt. It was plain soldiers he risked his life for, like our own
menfolk."

"Besides
which, Lord Hargate and the older sons have done so much good
hereabouts."

"If
it was anyone else but him, the men'd loosen their tongues, to be
sure, miss."

Mirabel
had realized the local gentry would prefer to avoid conflict with a
member of Lord Hargate's family, consoling themselves with their
material gains from the canal. She had not imagined, though, that
prosperous tradesmen and farmers would behave like medieval serfs.

If
no one would speak up, she could not mount a successful opposition.
Her counterpetition to Parliament would be dismissed out of hand.

She
left the meeting and climbed into the gig, her spirits at low ebb.

Canal
projects had been killed before, and she knew how it had been done.
She had money enough to mount a battle that would tie up the
parliamentary committee until Judgment Day with lawyers, witnesses,
and petitions.

But
she couldn't do it alone. She was a woman, and couldn't vote.
Parliament would take no notice of her objections. They certainly
wouldn't believe she spoke for others if not one of these others
would make the slightest murmur against the canal.

It
was her own fault, she told herself, for not devising a better
counterattack. If she'd devoted less attention to Mr. Carsington's
manly beauty and more to the canal, if she'd occupied her mind with
business instead of finding pretexts to throw herself into his arms,
she might have weakened his position by now.

Instead,
he was advancing at a prodigious rate, without doing a single thing.
From Sir Roger on down, everyone simply surrendered to the famous
Waterloo hero.

And
how could she blame them, when she, too, had sur-rendered—not
her opposition to the canal, but everything else: her intellect and
morals, her common sense and pride.

Not
to mention she'd put herself in precisely the situation she'd been so
determined to avoid.

Once
again, as she'd done eleven years ago with Mr. Poynton, she was going
to make herself completely wretched because of a man.

Why
couldn't she, just once, become smitten with a man whose plans and
ambitions were not in irreconcilable conflict with hers?

She
released a sigh and tried to let her surroundings quiet her mind.

It
was early afternoon, and cold, though not bitterly so. Masses of grey
clouds shifted restlessly overhead.

She
drove along one of the deep, twisting country lanes Mr. Carsington so
abhorred. In spring, the roadside would be thick with wildflowers,
and the trees would form a graceful green archway over the road. At
present, the lane was a study in drab greens and dull browns, lonely
and melancholy to some eyes, perhaps.

It
was not so to hers.

She
could hear the wind make the evergreens seem to whisper among
themselves, and she could watch it catch up handfuls of last autumn's
fallen leaves and scatter them, as a fairy queen's attendants might
strew flower petals along their lady's path.

The
steady clip-clop of her horse's hooves, the sigh of the wind, the
nearby chirp of an optimistic bird, the chatter of a squirrel—all
these simple country sights and sounds about her gradually soothed
her troubled heart.

As
the unnatural gloom dissipated, Mirabel's natural buoyancy returned.
Few cases were truly hopeless, she told herself. They only appeared
so to people lacking courage and imagination. She was not one of
those people.

She
should not feel stupid because she hadn't yet discovered a way to
defeat Mr. Carsington.

Aunt
Clothilde was one of London's most fashionable hostesses. Married to
Lord Sheffield, an active politician, she dealt with politicians
daily. Yet even she had admitted Mr. Carsington was a challenge.

For
a man, Lady Sherfield had written, he was amazingly intelligent. He
was chivalrous as well. Even his affairs—the "seven or
eight" he'd referred to, which Aunt Clothilde had described in
juicy detail—only testified to his noble qualities. He did not
use and discard women, as rakes did. He was loyal to a fault, even
with harlots and thieves. He was gallant and honorable___

Then
Mirabel saw it, the glimmer of hope.

Hadn't
he said, time and again, that he wanted to understand the objections,
so that he could address them? It had upset him when she'd told him
that people were too overawed by his family and his fame to
contradict him.

He
had restrained himself with her, he said, because he wanted to behave
honorably.

How
would he feel, then, if she told him what the women had said today?
How would he feel upon learning that simple, hardworking people were
too mindful of his heroism and sacrifice and his family's long list
of good deeds, to express their true feelings?

If
she could make him understand how very great and unfair his advantage
was, perhaps he'd return to London and let someone else take his
place here. Even with Lord Gordmor, the ordinary people would stand a
better chance. Respect for his title would not stop them from
speaking out on behalf of their families and their livelihoods.

Surely
Mr. Carsington's honor would oblige him to leave the field to a less
godlike individual.

And
when he was gone?

She
mustn't think about that.

Luckily,
she had only a short way to go, and her resolve hadn't time to melt
away under the memory of boyish grins and pathetic puns and feverish
kisses.

She
still had her priorities in order a short while later, when she drove
up to Captain Hughes's door.

But
before she could climb down from the gig, his butler came out and
told her, with effusive apologies, that they weren't receiving
visitors. The master had gone out and left strict orders: Mr.
Carsington was not to be disturbed under any circumstances.

"Nancarrow,
this is absurd," Mirabel said. "You know that Mr.
Carsington was staying at Oldridge Hall recently. I'm sure Dr.
Woodfrey never forbade my visiting."

The
buder's face turned bright red. "I'm sorry, miss," he said.
"Orders is orders. I'm obliged particular not to make
exceptions, as it sets a bad example, and bound to lead to mutiny."

Nancarrow
was the captain's former boatswain, and fanatically devoted.

"Very
well," Mirabel said, though it wasn't well at all. "Perhaps
you would be so good as to provide me with pen, ink, and paper, that
I might write Mr. Carsington a note."