Alistair was beginning to wish he’d let her choke on the bonnet ribbons. He said, “Miss Oldridge, I have a letter from your father, in which he expresses not only a strong interest in my project, but a clear grasp of its implications. I find it difficult to believe that the man who wrote this letter will heed nothing I say.”
That stopped her in her tracks. She turned fully toward him, blue eyes wide. “My father has written to you?”
“He replied to my letter immediately.”
There was a longish pause before she said, “It is about a project, you said. But not connected to botany.”
“A dull matter of business,” he said. “A canal.”
She paled a little, then her animated face hardened into a polite mask. “Lord Gordmor’s canal.”
“You have heard about it, then.”
“Who has not?”
“Yes, well, there seems to be some misunderstanding about his lordship’s plans.”
She folded her hands at her waist. “A misunderstanding,” she said.
The temperature in the room was rapidly dropping.
“I’ve come to clear it up,” Alistair said. “Lord Gordmor is ill at present—the influenza—but I am a partner in the enterprise and acquainted with every detail. I am sure I can ease your father’s apprehensions.”
“If you think we are merely apprehensive,” she said, “you are laboring under a grievous mis apprehension. We—and I believe I speak for the majority of landowners on Longledge Hill—are inalterably opposed to the canal.”
“With respect, Miss Oldridge, I believe the proposal has been misrepresented, and I am sure the gentlemen of the Longledge area will, in the interests of fairness, grant me an opportunity to correct and clarify matters. Since your father is by far the largest landowner hereabouts, I wished to speak to him first. His good opinion, I know, will carry great weight with his neighbors.”
The corners of her wide mouth turned up a very little, creating a shadow of a smile disagreeably reminiscent of his father’s.
“Very well,” she said. “We shall search for him. But perhaps you will allow me a few minutes to don something cleaner and drier.” She gestured at her riding dress.
Alistair’s face heated. He’d become so agitated about smiles and skin and scent that he’d forgotten she was wet and probably chilled. He’d kept her standing about all this time when she must be longing to be free of her damp attire.
He absolutely would not think about what getting her free of it involved…the buttons and tapes and corset strings to be undone…
No.
He fixed his mind on canals, coal mines, and steam engines, and apologized for his thoughtlessness.
She coolly dismissed the apology, asked him to make himself comfortable and take some refreshment, and still wearing the smile that wasn’t one, exited the room.
THE conservatory to which Miss Oldridge—wearing a different but no more attractive frock—took Alistair rivaled the Prince Regent’s at Carlton House. The Regent’s, however, was used primarily for entertaining, and plants were moved in and out as necessary. Mr. Oldridge’s plants were far more numerous and less mobile.
This was not quite an indoor garden, either. It was more like a museum or library of plants.
Each specimen was carefully labeled, with extensive notes and cross-references to others. At intervals, notebooks lay open in the dirt, containing further notes in Latin in the hand Alistair recognized as Mr. Oldridge’s.
Neither the flesh-and-blood hand, however, nor the gentleman attached to it appeared in the conservatory. The same held true outside of the house, in the greenhouses and gardens.
At last one of the gardeners told them Mr. Oldridge had been absorbed in studying moss life in the higher elevations. The gardener was fairly certain his master would be found upon the Heights of Abraham, one of his favorite spots of late.
Alistair was well aware that the Heights of Abraham rose in Matlock Bath. Even had he somehow failed to notice the wooded slope with the great mass of rock jutting up from it directly behind his hotel, he could not help knowing, because the place abounded in signs and cards advertising the fact.
He could not believe he’d come all this way on the damnable road, while the man he sought was back in the village he’d come from, possibly falling off a cliff and breaking his neck at this very moment.
He looked at Miss Oldridge, who was gazing into the distance. He wondered what she was thinking.
He told himself her thoughts were irrelevant. He was here on business. It was her father’s views that mattered.
“Your father must be unusually dedicated to his—er—hobby,” he said. “Not many people will climb mountains at this time of year. Don’t mosses go into hibernation or whatever it is most plants do in winter?”
“I have no idea,” she said.
An icy mist was falling, and Alistair’s bad leg was taking note of the fact in the form of spasms and shooting pains. She, however, continued walking away from the house, and Alistair limped along beside her.
“You do not share his enthusiasm,” he said.
“It is beyond me,” she said. “I am so ignorant as to imagine he could find mosses and lichen enough on his own property, instead of tramping all the way over to the Derwent River to look for them. Still, he always contrives to be home in time for his dinner, and I daresay the walking and climbing keep him limber, and at least he isn’t—Ah, there he is.”
A man of medium height and slender build emerged from an opening in the shrubbery and ambled toward them. He was well protected from the elements in a hat and overcoat of oilcloth, and his battered boots were sturdily made.
As the man drew near, Alistair discerned the family resemblance. Most of Miss Oldridge’s features came, he surmised, from the maternal side, but her hair and eyes seemed to be a younger and more vivid version of her father’s. Age had dulled rather than greyed his hair and faded his eyes to a paler blue, though his gaze seemed sharp enough.
His countenance offered no sign of recognition, however, when introductions were made.
“Mr. Carsington wrote you a letter, Papa,” Miss Oldridge said. “About Lord Gordmor’s canal. You made an appointment to meet with Mr. Carsington today.”
Mr. Oldridge frowned. “Did I, indeed?” He thought for a moment. “Ah, yes. The canal. That was how Smith made his observations, you know. Fascinating, fascinating. Fossils, too. Most enlightening. Well, sir, you will stay to dinner, I hope.”
And away he went, leaving Alistair staring after him.
“He must visit his new specimens,” came the cool, whispery voice beside him. “Then he will dress for dinner. In the winter months we dine early. In summer we dine fashionably late. The one place you can be sure to find my father is in the dining room, punctual to the minute. Wherever he may ramble, whatever botanical riddles might fascinate him, he always contrives to be home in good time for dinner. I recommend you accept his invitation. You’ll have at least two hours to make your case.”
“I should be honored,” Alistair said, “but I came unprepared, and have no suitable attire for dinner.”
“You are more elegantly dressed than anyone we have dined with in the last decade,” Miss Oldridge said. “Not that Papa will notice what you are wearing. And I don’t care in the least.”
IT was true that Mirabel Oldridge cared little about the minutiae of dress. She rarely took any notice of what others wore and found life simpler when they treated her the same way. She dressed plainly to encourage the many men she dealt with to take her seriously: to listen rather than look, and keep their minds on business.
To her great discomfort, however, she had taken excessive and repeated notice of Mr. Carsington, from the crown of his sleek hat to his gleaming boots.
He had not been wearing the hat when she first saw him. As a result she was aware that his hair was a rich brown with golden glints his deep-set eyes seemed to reflect. His face was angular, the profile patrician to the last degr
ee. He was handsome in a brooding sort of way, tall, broad-shouldered, and long-limbed. Even his hands were long. When he had offered to help with the knotted bonnet strings, she had looked at his hands and felt giddy.
Matters did not improve when he’d stood so near to work on the ribbons. She’d caught a whiff of shaving soap or cologne; it was so faint that she couldn’t be sure what it was or whether she’d simply imagined it.
But she’d become confused because she was nervous, she told herself, which was perfectly reasonable. She’d been uneasy because she’d been caught unprepared, which was as unpleasant as it was unusual.
One near catastrophe years ago had taught her to keep informed of everything having to do with her father. That way, no one could take advantage of him, or confuse, manipulate, or bully her. That way she would never be at a loss. She would know exactly what to do at all times.
For instance, she read all her father’s correspondence and dealt with it. All he ever had to do was read what she’d written and sign his name. In any event, he appeared to read. There was no way to be sure his mind was engaged. He was too busy trying to unlock the secrets of plant reproduction to pay attention to his relatives’ letters, or his solicitor’s—or any other materials unconnected with botanical pursuits.
Not having opened any letters from Mr. Carsington, Mirabel had no idea what he’d written and couldn’t begin to guess how Papa had answered.
If she wished not to be caught unprepared at dinner, she had better fill the gap in her knowledge.
This was why she wasted no time in turning Mr. Carsington over to the servants, who’d see to drying and brushing his “unsuitable” attire and provide whatever else he needed for his toilette.
Yet Mirabel stood for a moment, watching him limp away, only to wish she hadn’t, because her heart squeezed, as though it winced for him, which was foolish.
She’d seen and even helped nurse men with worse injuries. She knew men and women who’d suffered as much or more than he had done. She knew of some who’d acted bravely, too, and received not a fraction of the admiration showered upon him. And anyway, she told herself, he was far too elegant and self-assured to need anybody’s sympathy.
Mirabel thrust the limp to the back of her mind and hurried to her father’s study.
As Joseph had reported, his master’s diary lay open to this date, and the appointment was duly noted.
She ransacked the desk but found no trace of Mr. Carsington’s letter. Most likely Papa had stuffed it in his pocket and scribbled field notes on it or lost it. The copy of his reply had survived, however, because he’d written it in his memorandum book instead of on a loose sheet of paper.
The letter, dated ten days ago, was as Mr. Carsington described: her father expressed interest, clearly grasped the implications, and seemed most willing to discuss the canal further.
The words made Mirabel’s throat hurt.
In the letter she saw the father she’d known once, who took an interest in so many things, so many people. How he’d loved to talk—and listen, too, even to a little girl’s prattle. She remembered sitting on the stairs, listening to the voices below, during the frequent dinners and card parties and other social gatherings. How many times had she heard him and her mother in conversation at table, in the library, the sitting room, this study?
But after her mother’s death fifteen years ago, he had grown increasingly preoccupied with plant rather than human life. On the rare occasions he did emerge from the realms of botany, it was only for a short time.
Mirabel had missed the most recent occasion. He must have taken notice of the everyday world during the few days she’d spent visiting her former governess in Cromford.
During the visit Mirabel had bought the bonnet with which she’d nearly choked herself this afternoon.
She could not believe she’d let the man unnerve her so completely. It was not as though she’d never encountered his kind before.
During her two London seasons—a lifetime ago, it seemed—she’d met countless men like him: elegant in dress, polished in all the social graces, never at a loss as to what to do or say.
She’d heard the cultivated voices, the drawls and lisps some fashionables affected, the laughter, gossip, and flirtation.
Surely she’d heard voices like his, so low-pitched as to make every commonplace utterance seem of the deepest intimacy, every cliché a delicious secret.
“I have heard and seen them all,” she muttered. “He is nothing remarkable, merely another London sophisticate who sees us as provincials and bumpkins. We are all ignorant country folk who don’t know what’s good for us.”
Mr. Carsington would soon discover his error.
Meanwhile, his dinner conversation with Papa should prove vastly entertaining.
Two
WHILE Alistair made no pretense to intellectual brilliance, he was usually capable of putting two and two together, and fairly quickly.
Circumstances this day, however, conspired against him. By Miss Oldridge’s abysmal standards he might seem dressed elegantly enough for a country dinner. He knew better.
Thanks to conscientious servants and a good fire, his clothes were brushed and dry. But the clothes were for afternoon wear and could not be transformed into acceptable dinner attire by even the most diligent servants.
Furthermore, the staff could not instantly launder and starch his linen. His neckcloth was limp, and creases had formed in the wrong places, which made him wild.
Meanwhile his leg, which hated damp and ought to have lived in Morocco, was punishing him for the ramble in the icy mist by tying itself into throbbing knots.
These annoyances contributed to his failure to realize what any idiot would have divined hours ago.
Miss Oldridge had spoken of stamens and pistils and asked if he was botanical. Alistair had seen the conservatory, the notebooks, the acres of hothouses.
But when he wasn’t in a fit over his clothes or being tortured by his leg, he was completely distracted by her. As a result, it wasn’t until they met in the drawing room before dinner, and Mr. Oldridge acquainted him with Hedwig’s observations on the reproductive organs of mosses, that the truth finally dawned: The man was in the grip of a monomania.
Alistair was familiar with the malady. He had an evangelical sister-in-law and a cousin obsessed with deciphering the Rosetta stone. Since such people rarely, of their own accord, abandoned their chosen place of mental residence, one must take them firmly by the elbow, figuratively speaking, and lead them elsewhere.
Accordingly, at the start of the second course, when his host ceased lecturing to concentrate on carving the goose, Alistair charged into the gap.
“I envy your having so many facts at your command,” he said. “I wish you had been able to advise us before we first presented our canal proposal. I do hope you will advise us now.”
Mr. Oldridge continued dismantling the fowl, but his mouth pursed and his brows knit.
“We will gladly alter the route, if that is the primary concern,” Alistair persisted.
“Can you alter it to another county?” Miss Oldridge asked. “Somersetshire, for instance, where they have already despoiled the countryside with slag heaps?”
Alistair looked across the table at her, which he’d been trying not to do since first clapping eyes on her dinner attire.
Her dress was a cool lavender, when she ought to wear only warm, rich colors. It had a high neck and a lace ruffle to conceal the narrow bit of shoulder and neck the bodice left uncovered. Her glorious hair was stuffed any which way into a clumsy roll at the back of her head. For jewelry she wore a plain silver locket and chain.
Alistair wondered how she could look in her mirror without seeing the obvious: Every article with which she’d chosen to adorn her person was completely, absolutely, and irredeemably wrong. She must lack a faculty every other woman in the world possessed. He wondered if hers was a disorder akin to tone deafness, and his irritation with her was what a music lover
would feel on hearing an instrument out of tune or a singer off-key.
He wanted to order her back to her room to dress properly, but he couldn’t, which was maddening.
This perhaps explained why he answered her in the tone and manner he usually reserved for irritating younger brothers.
He said, “Miss Oldridge, I hope you will permit me to correct a slight misapprehension. Canals do not produce slag heaps. Collieries produce slag heaps. At present, only Lord Gordmor is mining coal in your vicinity, and his collieries are nearly fifteen miles from here. The only landscape he is despoiling is his own, because the property is good for nothing else.”
“I should think he might graze sheep with less trouble and noise, and do as well,” she said.
“You are certainly entitled to entertain any fanciful notions you like,” Alistair said. “I should not wish to stifle an active imagination.”
Her eyes sparked, but Alistair smoothly addressed his host before she could retort. “We freely admit our motives to be selfish and practical,” he said. “The primary aim is a more efficient and cheaper means of transporting coal.”
Oldridge, engaged in distributing choice bits of fowl to daughter and guest, merely nodded.
“Lord Gordmor will then be able to bring the coal to more customers,” Alistair went on, “and sell it at a lower price. However, he and his customers aren’t the only ones who’ll profit. The canal will provide you and your neighbors easier access to more goods. Fragile items, traveling smoothly on water rather than bumping along rutted roads, will reach their destinations in one piece. You will have an economical means of conveying manure and agricultural produce to and from the various markets. In short, all in the Longledge environs, from landowner to laborer, will reap its benefits.”
“Lord Hargate has not spent much time at his country place of late, even when Parliament is not sitting,” Mr. Oldridge said. “Politics can be acutely demanding of the physical and mental faculties and wearing to the spirit. I hope he is well.”