Miss Wonderful by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online Page B

and
started massaging his outraged leg. While doing so, he told his valet
about the day's vicissitudes, discreetly excluding his deranged
reaction to Miss Oldridge.
    "I
am sorry, sir, you had a lengthy journey in bad weather to no
purpose," Crewe said. "Perhaps I might fetch you a bottle
of wine and something to eat?"
    "I've
been more than amply fed," Alistair said. "Mr. Oldridge
appears to have two great passions: botany and dinner."
    "Indeed,
sir. The servants here all solemnly swear that he has never once been
late to dinner, though he is late or absent in every other
circumstance."
    "I
should have stayed here and listened to servants' gossip,"
Alistair said, staring into the fire. "As it was, I was
ill-prepared for the encounter." The glowing coals brought to
mind Miss Oldridge's hair, and the way the candlelight caught it,
making it a soft gold at times, a fiery red at others. "His
daughter…" He hesitated. "She holds amazingly strong
opinions for one so young."
    "A
lady of uncommon character, they say, sir. She would have to be, to
manage so large an estate and all her father's business interests."
    Alistair
looked up from the fire to his servant's face. "Miss Oldridge
manages the property?"
    "She
manages everything. I was told that her bailiff hardly dares draw a
breath without her approval. Sir, are you ill? Perhaps I had better
fetch that wine. Or a hot posset—indeed, you will not wish to
risk a chill at this time, when you have so much to do."
    Though
he was not ill, Alistair let his valet go to concoct one of his
possets.
    The
master used the time to digest what he'd just heard.
    The
ill-dressed, inquisitive girl with the fire-colored hair ran one of
the largest estates in Derbyshire.
    "Well,
someone must," he muttered a while later, when he'd finally
found a relatively clear perspective on the situation. "He
doesn't attend to anything else, that's plain enough. As she told me:
If it wasn't botanical, he wouldn't attend."
    He
became aware of Crewe hovering nearby with the hot drink. "I beg
your pardon, sir?"
    "How
old is she?" Alistair demanded. "Not a girl, I'm sure. No
girl could possibly—Gad, why didn't I see?" he shook his
head and accepted the cup from his valet. "Did the gossips by
any chance mention how old Miss Oldridge is?"
    "One
and thirty," said Crewe.
    The
sip of posset Alistair had taken went down his windpipe. When he
stopped choking and coughing, he laughed. He might as well. It was a
fine joke on him.
    "One
and thirty," he repeated.
    "Last
month, sir."
    "I
thought she was a girl," Alistair said. "As anyone would. A
slimmish lass, with a mass of coppery hair and great blue eyes and
such a smile…" He looked down at the drink in his hand,
his own smile fading. "God help us. The canal—everything—depends
on her."

    Chapter
3

    THE
following morning, Mirabel and two servants set out under overcast
skies to find Mr. Carsington's body.
    They
reached Matlock Bath without encountering any corpses, however, and
learned from the postmistress that the gentleman had arrived safely
the previous night and was staying in Wilkerson's Hotel.
    The
choice of hotel was surprising. Mirabel had thought he'd be staying
up the hill, at the Old Bath Hotel, Matlock Bath's grandest. Instead
he'd chosen Wilkerson's, which stood on the South Parade, exposed to
all the dirt and noise of coaches coming and going.
    When
they entered the village, though, the Parade was quiet. By this time
the sun had grown bolder, making an occasional dart through the
clouds to sparkle on the river and the whitewashed houses pressed
against the hillside.
    Though
the place was as familiar to Mirabel as her own property, she never
grew tired of its beauty.
    Here
the hills rose steeply from the Derwent River, the great milestone
crag of the High Tor visible at every turn.
    It
might have been a castle, with a garden wall along whose sides
patches of greenery softened the grey rock.
    The
spa itself was clean and pretty. Lodging places, shops,