Miss Wonderful by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online Page A

muscular
thighs… and such long legs. Merely recalling sent heat washing
through her, though she sat in darkness upon a horse in a cold,
driving rain.
    She
could not help the heat. It was natural enough, she told herself. He
was a hero and looked the part: tall, strong, and handsome. Few women
could gaze on him unmoved.
    All
the same, she retained intellect enough to comprehend his irrational
determination to travel at night in this filthy weather.
    She
had not spent two seasons in London without learning something about
dandies, and this was a dandy if ever she had met one… though
she'd never met one quite so imposingly built.
    "Well,
that's different, then," she said. "Good night, Mr.
Carsington."
    She
turned and rode back to the house.
    To
her surprise, Mirabel found her father pacing the vestibule when she
returned. Usually, he drank his tea in the library while pausing
botanical tomes, then proceeded to the conservatory to say good night
to the divers vegetable matter therein.
    "Oh,
dear. You could not persuade him," Papa said as she gave her
dripping bonnet and cloak to the footman.
    "He
has nothing to wear," she said.
    Her
father blinked at her.
    "He
is a dandy, Papa," she said. "Deprived of what he deems
proper dress, he is like a plant deprived of vital nutrients. He
wilts and dies, and one can scarcely imagine the agonies he suffers
in the process." She started toward the stairs.
    Her
father followed her. "I knew something was wrong. It is like the
cactus spines."
    "Papa,
I am wet and somewhat out of sorts, and I should like—"
    "But
he limps," her father persisted.
    "I
observed that," Mirabel said. How she wished for a less
heartbreakingly gallant manner of limping! It made her feel things
she didn't want to and couldn't afford to. And anyway, it was
ridiculous at her age, after her experience…
    She
proceeded up the stairs. "I understand he was quite seriously
injured at Waterloo."
    Her
father trailed after her. "Yes, Benton told me about it. Yet I
strongly suspect Mr. Carsington also suffered a head injury without
realizing. I have heard of such cases. That would explain, you see."
    "Explain
what?"
    "The
cactus spines."
    "Papa,
I haven't the least idea what you mean."
    "No,
no, I daresay." She heard his footsteps pause behind her.
"Perhaps he will not understand about the tulips, after all.
Yes, perhaps you are right. Well, good night, dear."
    "Good
night, Papa." Mirabel climbed the stairs and went to her room.
Though she was tired, she blamed it on overstrained nerves. She had
not been prepared. Had she been forewarned of Mr. Carsington's
arrival… but she hadn't been, had not even imagined this turn
of events.
    She
had made an incorrect assumption about Lord Gordmor that could prove
to be disastrous. She'd never dreamt he would be so persistent.
    She'd
erred, and it was too late to undo the error. All she could do was
take a lesson from it. She'd based her calculations on insufficient
information. She would not make that mistake twice.
    And
so, after she had shed her damp clothes and dried off and donned a
warm nightgown and robe, she went to her sitting room. There,
comfortably ensconced in a soft chair before the fire, she wrote a
letter to Lady Sherfield in London. If there was anything about Mr.
Carsington Aunt Clothilde didn't know, it wasn't worth knowing.
     
    IT
took Alistair the full two hours Miss Oldridge had predicted to
traverse the "few miles" from Oldridge Hall to Wilkerson's
Hotel, where he was staying.
    He
arrived soaked to the bone, a condition to which his leg objected in
the most strenuous terms, refusing to assist him in any way in
climbing the stairs.
    But
he was used to the leg's tantrums and made it to his bedchamber.
There his manservant Crewe expressed his disapproval with a mildly
censuring cough and the recommendation of a hot bath.
    "It's
too late to make the servants haul water up the stairs,"
Alistair said.
    He
dropped into a chair near the fire, set his foot on the fender,