Miss Wonderful (29 page)

"You
don't know the half of it," said Captain Hughes. "Maybe
there's no reason for you to know. But I can tell you that you don't
improve matters by running away to Wilkerson's."

Chapter
11

ALISTAIR
might have withstood the other arguments, though they sent his
conscience into spasms.

What
demolished his resistance was the You don't know the half of it, and
the captain's tone, hinting at revelations to come.

Alistair
wished he could pretend his motive was practical: The more he knew
about Miss Oldridge, the better equipped he would be to either win
her support for the canal or weaken her influence over others.

But
that was a monstrous lie. The truth was, he wanted to know more about
her in the same way he wanted more of her on every other
count—because he was thoroughly, fatally, besotted.

His
case being fatal, he yielded to the captain and moved next door.

Though
not built on the grand scale of Oldridge Hall, Bramblehurst was not
the country cottage one might envision as the residence of a half-pay
captain. It was not, furthermore, a typically untidy bachelor abode.
The place was scrubbed and polished to within an inch of its life.
Captain Hughes obviously believed naval discipline applied as well on
land as at sea.

He
adhered as strictly to Dr. Woodfrey's rules as if they came direct
from the Admiralty.

He
rigorously enforced the "no visitors" and "no mental
exertion" rules, and made certain Alistair had the proper amount
of exercise. He shared his guest's restricted diet, much as he would
have shared his officers' privations during extended periods between
ports. He was a congenial and thoughtful host, who neither intruded
too much upon his guest's solitude nor left Alistair too much on his
own.

Nonetheless,
the nightmares worsened, night by night, revealing more of what had
previously remained hidden in a dark corner of Alistair's mind. Now
he wasn't sure which was worse: the gaping hole in his memory and the
nagging anxiety that something was irreparably wrong there, or the
moments of painfully vivid recollection that revealed a man he hardly
recognized, one who was antithesis of all he'd supposed himself to
be.

He
didn't know how much to believe. Were these true memories, as they
seemed? Or were they distortions, as dreams so often were?

He
kept these worries to himself, however, as he'd kept the missing
piece of memory secret—with one exception—along with the
uncertainty it produced about the health and wholeness of his mind.

Every
morning at breakfast, when the captain asked if he'd slept well,
Alistair claimed he'd slept like a top.

But
on Friday when he gave the usual answer, Hughes shook his head. "I
wonder how you can sleep so soundly with such dismal results,"
he said. "Your eyes are sunk halfway into your skull, and it
appears someone has blacked both your eyes. You're not lying awake
fretting about your canal, I hope."

"Certainly
not," Alistair said. "That accomplishes nothing."

"You
shouldn't weary your mind with trying to guess what Miss Oldridge
will do, either," said the captain. "You'll imagine she'll
act according to rational rules of engagement, when in fact she'll do
nothing of the kind."

"Ah,
well, women's and men's minds are different," Alistair said.

"The
most desperate engagement I ever undertook at sea was child's play
compared to the smallest dispute with a woman," the captain
said. "They invent their own weapons, their own rules—and
change 'em when the whim takes 'em. You'd think that a fellow who's
seen the world a dozen times over—a fellow a very few years
short of the half-century mark—" Black eyebrows knit and
an angry glitter in his eye, he plunged his fork into a slab of
bacon. "You'd think that an old sailor would have learnt their
ways by now, or at least learnt to steer clear."

"But
if we steered clear, life would lose so much of its sweetness—and
more than a little of its excitement," Alistair said. As he
looked back on the years since Waterloo, the womanless years, the
time seemed dreary beyond describing. How had he lived through it? He
was amazed he hadn't hanged himself.

They
ate in silence for a time.

Then
the captain muttered, "But he must take some of the blame.
Stuffy, preachy little pig's rump. What possessed her to marry him,
I'll never know. She said he was settled. Settled."

Alistair's
jaw dropped. Hastily, he reassembled his composure. "Miss
Oldridge has been married?" The union had been annulled, of
course, else she wouldn't be "Miss Oldridge."

She
might not be a virgin, then, after all, which meant the rules had
changed.

As
soon as he thought it, he was furious with himself. He could not
believe he'd grown so deranged as to look for loopholes that would
permit him to bed her.

He
found the captain regarding him gravely. "Not Miss O," he
said. "I was speaking—grumbling—about the other
lady. Mrs. E. Talking to myself. We old bachelors do that sometimes."
He went on eating.

"I
see," Alistair said. "The other lady." The captain's
woman troubles were located in the person of Mrs. Ent-whistle, not
Miss Oldridge… who had never been married.

Of
course she hadn't been. Hadn't she told him she was inexperienced?
She was untouched. And she had not been saving herself for him.

"Miss
Oldridge likes 'em lively," Captain Hughes said after a moment.
"Or at least she did. The fellow she was to be shackled to was a
man of spirit. I was sure he'd carry all before him. Not the sort to
take no for an answer. When she broke it off, he followed her here
and insisted on staying until she got matters sorted out."

In
response to Alistair's questioning look, the captain explained.
Following his wife's death, Mr. Oldridge had neglected his affairs
sadly, and his estate began a swift descent downhill. Matters had
reached a crisis shortly after Miss Oldridge became engaged in
London. She broke it off and returned home. This was eleven years
ago.

"Mr.
Oldridge's affairs were in a wretched tangle," the captain went
on. "Anyone could see it would take years to sort out. I believe
one or two matters are still in dispute, in the lawyers' hands."

That
would explain, Alistair thought, why she supervised her bailiff so
closely.

"But
how was William Poynton to wait years in Derbyshire?" Captain
Hughes said.

"Poynton?"
Alistair said. "William Poynton, the artist?"

The
captain nodded. "He was only starting out then. He'd been
commissioned to paint a mural in some Venetian nobleman's palazzo. A
great opportunity. He couldn't tell the signore to wait two or three
or five years. Today he could. Not then."

Poynton
was a highly regarded artist who traveled extensively abroad.
Alistair remembered the marvelous Egyptian scenes hanging in the
drawing room of Oldridge Hall. Poynton's work, of course.

"She
had to save the estate, and he had to make his name," the
captain said. "Mrs. E claims he should have waited. After a year
or two, she says, the girl would have been less fearful about leaving
the place in charge of a new bailiff. That's absurd, and so I've told
her. Poynton could no more turn down the commission or bid his patron
wait than I could decline a ship or tell the Admiralty Board it
wasn't convenient at the moment. When you're at the bottom, and your
superiors offer a step up the ladder, you don't make conditions."

"But
to give a woman up for the sake of professional advancement?"
Alistair said. "He couldn't have truly loved her."

The
captain shook his head. "Poynton was mad in love with her. It
was the talk of London. He came here after she'd broken off with him.
All the world knew of it. But he cared nothing for what a pitiful
spectacle he must appear to his sophisticated friends."

"He's
an artist," Alistair said. "They go in for such theatrical
gestures. They are masters at grand passions. I don't call that love.
If he had truly loved her, he would have found a way."

THOUGH
he'd turned the breakfast conversation to topics other than Mr.
Carsington's unhealthy appearance, and was much encouraged by his
reaction to the Poynton matter, Captain Hughes was not at all
sanguine about his guest's health. Instead of steadily improving, he
seemed to be growing steadily worse.

His
confidence in Dr. Woodfrey shaken, the captain sought out Mrs.
Entwhistle. While he enjoyed arguing with her and often contradicted
her "insights" regarding human nature, Captain Hughes had
nearly as high a regard for her intelligence as for her physical
attributes.

A
short time after breakfast, he met up with her in the park of
Oldridge Hall. As he'd hoped, she was taking her usual brisk morning
walk along the same woodland path she'd favored during her governess
days.