Miss Wonderful Read Online Free Page B

we are merely apprehensive," she said, "you are
laboring under a grievous misapprehension. 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,