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she'd undressed and taken down
her hair… or upon rising from her pillows in the morning…
or after lovenaking.
    She
wasn't supposed to do it at the dinner table. She was supposed to
arrive there properly coifed and dressed and in perfect order. She
wasn't supposed to be tumbling all to pieces, as though she'd been
recently ravished.
    Alistair
told himself to ignore it and brace for trouble. He tried to attend
to his meal, but his appetite was gone. He was too aware of her—the
fetching gesture, the disorderly curls—and a tension in the
air. Even when he looked or turned his mind elsewhere, he couldn't
shed his consciousness of her.
    Clearly,
his host discerned nothing amiss but went on steadily eating, a
contented if distant look on his face. It was fortunate he did so
much walking and climbing, for the botanist ate enough for any two
large men.
    Mr.
Oldridge talked about experiments with tulips during the remainder of
the meal. Finally, Miss Oldridge departed, leaving the men to their
port and allowing Alistair to put what was out of sight out of mind.
    He
fixed his mind on business and commenced making his case for the
canal.
    While
he talked, his host contemplated the chandelier. Still, he must have
heard something, because at the end of Alistair's presentation, the
botanist said, "Yes, well, I do see your point, but it's
complicated, you see."
    "Canals
are rarely simple matters," Alistair said. "When one is
obliged to use other people's land, one must be prepared to
accommodate and compensate them, and each party's requirements are
bound to be different."
    "Yes,
yes, but it is very like the tulip experiment," said his host.
"Without you apply the Farina Fecundens, they will not bear
seed. It is explained in Bradley's account, but Miller made similar
experiments. You will not find the account in every edition of the
Gardener's Dictionary. I will lend you one of my copies, and you may
read it for yourself."
    Following
this incomprehensible response, Mr. Oldridge proposed they rejoin
Mirabel, who would be awaiting them in the library.
    Alistair
begged to be excused. It was growing late and he must return to his
hotel.
    "But
you must stay the night," Mr. Oldridge said. "You cannot
travel all that way in the dark. The road, I am sorry to say, can be
difficult, even in broad day."
    Yes,
and that is why you need a canal! Alistair wanted to shout.
    Since
he wanted to, a retreat, clearly, was in order.
    At
any rate, he needed to think rationally, which meant he must get
away. Rational thinking was next to impossible in Miss Oldridge's
vicinity.
    Matters
here were not at all as he and Gordy had supposed. What, precisely,
the trouble was, Alistair couldn't say. At present he knew only that
both Mr. and Miss Oldridge had an uncanny ability to rattle him,
which, as Gordy had remarked, was exceedingly difficult.
    Alistair
was not high-strung. He might become emotional about women, but his
nerves were steady, perhaps to a fault. A jumpier man, he was sure,
could not possibly have landed in so many scrapes, because such a man
would have hesitated and thought, at least once if not twice.
    At
present, Alistair's nerves showed alarming signs of fraying.
    Even
if they'd been their usual rocklike selves, he couldn't stay. He'd
worn the same clothes all day—through dinner, no less—which
made him a little ill, and no doubt contributed to his prickly mood.
To don these same articles of clothing on the morrow was out of the
question.
    Alistair
had borne such privations on the battlefield because he had no
choice. Oldridge Hall was not a battlefield—not yet, at any
rate.
    A
short while later, therefore, having also declined his host's offer
of a carriage, Alistair set out on horseback, under steadily falling
sleet, for Matlock Bath.
    MR.
Carsington was already on his way before Mirabel learned of his
departure.
    Her
father relayed the news in a state of bewilderment. "He was in a
great hurry to go, and it was quite impossible to