A Flight of Fancy (11 page)

“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell,” Cassandra quoted from the fifth chapter of Matthew.

Her eyes were fine, other than not seeing more than half a dozen feet in front of her with clarity, but she had plucked out part of her heart, the part that loved Whittaker to distraction.

Most of her heart.

No, no, now she had more time to work on improving travel.
Surely floating through the sky would be more pleasurable than riding on jouncing horses or in carriages. Faster too, if the wind obliged. Perhaps she had a higher purpose.

God had gifted Cassandra with intellect, not beauty; an aptitude for language and mechanics, not for needlework and household management; an aptitude for solitude, not joining her life to another. She failed when she tried. God had taken drastic steps to show her the error of her ways, but she was willing to comply now.

The upcoming mile-long walk seemed daunting at the end of the day and in the dark. Somehow she must find a lantern. A lantern with the flame enclosed in glass and metal would be far better than a torch as Mr. Sorrell suggested. Next time she would confiscate a lantern from somewhere. For now she must rely on a quarter moon and starlight to guide her through the garden and out a narrow gate into the parkland. She had found the route earlier in the day when sunshine drove everyone outside for some exercise after the rain and mists of the previous day. Tonight the sky was so clear the surprisingly smooth and well-trodden path gleamed like a pale ribbon across a dark skirt. A glance upward told her branches had been cut back to allow light to shine through even at night. A lovely notion.

A notion that brought her up short, shivering.

She clutched her shawl around herself and stared at the sparkling sky. An odd place to have a path clear when the paths in the front of the house remained untended and overgrown. One would think a lord would want his guests to have fine paths to walk on, not the passages out to the fields.

Trembling from more than the chilly autumn night, she continued, ignoring the pain in her legs when she could, stopping to rest when she could not. She wished she owned a watch so she
knew the time passing. It felt like an hour and a half, not half an hour, before the trees ended with a stone wall and another gate. This one was bolted, but from the inside. If some gamekeeper or gardener inspected the gates and locked the gate before she returned, she would be in serious trouble, but she had yet to see any servant moving outside at night. And Honore would find her. Honore encouraged her ballooning interests, bless the dear girl.

On the far side of the second gate, light flickered in the distance. It still looked a mile off, and the ground grew rough over the stubble that sheep had left behind. Yet the light shone as a beacon, a lighthouse guiding her to safe harbor. She forgot pain and apprehension. Her heart lifted as if it were full of the hot air that sent the balloons soaring into the heavens. In moments she would see . . .

Ah, yes, she did see it, the thirty feet of colorful silk bag bobbing over the brazier that produced the fire needed for the hot air. The basket strained at its moorings while one man stood beside a torch planted in the ground and another man stood—

Cassandra stopped so fast she teetered. Air trapped in her lungs.

Two men stood in the basket. Three men in all tended the balloon launching. The one still on terra firma lit a second torch. The flaming pine pitch shone yellowish-white full on his face.

Geoffrey Giles, the ninth earl of Whittaker, stood not a dozen yards away.

9

At least the man bore Geoffrey’s features—the sharply defined cheekbones and jaw, the thick, dark hair, the broad shoulders. But the hair was more unkempt than usual and dusted with gray, and those shoulders wore a leather jerkin like a laborer. Slight differences and enough to stop her from calling out his name and demanding to know what he was doing there. He looked at her as though she too were a stranger, a quick scan from head to toe, perhaps his gaze lingering a little too long where it shouldn’t have, like that of an insolent youth. She had encountered that often enough in London and Devonshire fairs and treated him as she did those young men.

She turned her back on him as though he did not exist and addressed her friends. “You found another assistant?”

“He said Lady Whittaker sent him to help, as she wanted no accidents in her fields but didn’t want to stop the flow of progress.” Philip Sorrell grinned like a schoolboy let out on an early holiday.

“Don’t expect she’d like us here if she knew you were,” Roger Kent added.

The laborer who looked like Whittaker snorted.

“Well, I am here, so we can send this fellow away.” Cassandra
turned toward the man and reached out her hand. “I can take the torch.”

“Aye, miss.” He started to hand it to her, then swung away with an abruptness that sent sparks swirling behind him like dancing stars, and stuck the torch in the ground near the first one. Cassandra remained where she was, frozen, her hand still outstretched and shaking. Her mouth felt like someone had rolled a ball of lint over her tongue, and she could not breathe. The stench of pine pitch made her stomach burn. For a moment, sickness rose in her throat. She swallowed and returned her attention to the balloon.

“It is—” The words emerged as a croak. She swallowed again. “The balloon looks filled now.” That was better, strong and steady. “Shall I untie the lines?”

“If you can.” Mr. Sorrells leaned over the side of the basket. “Or that fellow can help you.”

“Balloon’s filling too slowly.” Mr. Kent bounced up and down, making the basket sway. “Let us be on our way before the night is gone.”

Both men looked so excited, their faces glowing in the firelight, that Cassandra ached to clamber over the edge of the basket and join them. Going up would make her life complete. She would not feel the slightest twinge of regret over Whittaker if she could sail into the heavens. But the men would not let her this time, not on this balloon’s maiden voyage. They thought it too dangerous in the event of a mechanical failure. But at least they said only this time and not never. Whittaker had persisted in saying, “When we’re married, you will never . . .” as though she would lose interest because she bore his name and wore a ring on her finger.

The man who looked too much like him for her comfort
stepped to one of the lines and began to untie the knot. Heart pounding, Cassandra followed suit.

“Is the tubing tight?” Mr. Kent said above her. “We want to ensure the tube doesn’t come out so we keep the balloon inflated properly.”

Mr. Sorrells’s sigh sounded loud enough to be air escaping from the silk bag. “For the tenth time, Roger, yes, the tube is tight.”

Of course it would be. It must be. The tube ran high enough into the inflated balloon that no one could reach it from the basket. A design flaw. Yet the balloon had to be far enough above the brazier and bottle of acid to keep it from catching fire. That had happened and men had died in other flights. Surely a compromise could be worked out, or another method . . .

“Miss Bainbridge, please.” Mr. Kent leaned down right above her. “Are you going to untie that knot or leave us tilting like a seesaw?”

Cassandra glanced up. Indeed, with the other ropes untied, the basket tilted dangerously from the tug of the balloon. Coals could spill from the brazier, and vitriol-coated iron shavings could spill from the beaker that, with the heat, created the necessary light hot air for the balloon to work. Her inattention might have caused a disaster.

In her haste to untie the knot, her fingers fumbled, making amok of the lines.

“Let me.” The man nudged her fingers away and loosed the rope.

Cassandra jumped as though splashed with the acid bath. The man’s hands were rough, dry, and cracked, not a gentleman’s hands. Yet their touch sent a jolt through her, heat, a breathless longing. She glanced at him to see his reaction, but he stood
motionless, his hands clasped behind his back, his head tilted up to the ascending balloon.

The ascending balloon! She was not even watching after waiting for this moment for so long, wanton that she was. Her cheeks burned as she gazed toward the heavens. The silhouette of bulbous silk and oval basket was etched against the stars, blurring as the distance went beyond her range of sight, since she had not thought to wear her spectacles. Whoops of joy from Sorrells and Kent floated through the air like a shower of gold rain. Pure joy. And she forgot the man nearby, that mortifying flash of wanting to be touched. Her longing focused on the diminishing sight of something she had helped design.

She pounded her cane on the sheep-shorn grass. “I should be up there too.”

“No, my dear, you should not be.” Whittaker’s voice came from the laborer with rough garb and hands.

She spun toward him. Her cane stuck in the ground, soft from the rain of the day before, and she twisted her right ankle, the one most badly burned. A cry spilled from her lips and tears stung her eyes.

“Cassandra.” Whittaker caught her. Strong arms, stronger than she remembered, folded around her. “Are you in pain? Stupid question. Of course you are. Shall I carry you back to the house?”

Ah, the temptation to say yes, to let those strong arms enfold her and hold her against him, to rest her head on his broad shoulder. Yet he had said she shouldn’t be in that balloon, had denied her the greatest desire of her heart.

She wrenched herself free. “What are you doing here?”

“This is my field.”

“You are supposed to be in the Dale protecting your looms.”

His face twisted. “More than you know. But when I heard you were helping with this balloon launch, I came to ensure you did not go up with them.”

“You have no right.”

“You are staying in my house. You are under my protection.”

“You have odd ways of protecting your guests.” Cassandra curled her upper lip. “You have not once made an appearance. And speaking of appearances, what are you doing dressed like that and—” She wrinkled her nose, aware now that she was close to him. “You reek like sheep and ale.”

“And you smell like apples. A little sweet. A little sour. So refreshing.” His voice dropped to the low timbre, the smooth pitch, that never failed to send a shiver racing through her.

It did not fail this time. She clutched her cane like a weapon. If he came near her again, she would . . . she would . . .

“I am protecting my looms, as you said I am.” He took that step nearer to her.

She did nothing.

“And as you see, I am ensuring your safety, my dear.”

“I am not your dear.”

“You made a promise you always would be.” He stepped close enough to touch her again but did not reach out.

She was tall for a female, not like Lydia, but more than Honore and Mama. Yet he was still a full head taller. To look into his face rather than at the top button of his jacket, she had to tilt her head back, as she had done so often when she was his dear, his darling, his love, and he hers, when her face turned up to his meant an invitation almost from their first meeting. Certainly from the first time they found themselves alone together in one of the walkways at Vauxhall. Music and fireworks in the distance. Darkness and quiet around them. The lightest brush of
his lips on hers felt like the explosions coloring the skies above the trees. She should have known then that he was not right for her, should have confessed to Mama or Lydia—though neither had been around—that she could not sort out whether she loved him or lusted for him. The trouble caused by the latter had surely suppressed the former.

“I lied,” she whispered through a constricted throat.

She should be revolted by the odors of sheep and ale. Yet beneath, she caught his familiar scents, the clean earthiness of leather, the fresh, exotic tang of sandalwood.

She forced air into her lungs to make her voice stronger. “I mean, I was mistaken. I only—”

He kissed her lightly, tenderly, so sweetly her eyes burned. Then he turned away from her. “I cannot stay. Without the mills, as you have most likely noticed, Whittaker Hall will fall into rack and ruin, and the scores of men and women and their children who rely on me for a living will be penniless at best, thanks to my wastrel father and gamester brother.”

A difficulty her seven thousand pounds in dowry would have solved without him having to rely on the income from the mills.

The mills. Luddites. Danger.

“Whittaker,” she called after him.

He kept going, his long legs eating up the ground to create distance between them.

“Geoffrey?” She stumbled after him. “You are not truly in danger. Wait! You cannot—”

He could not what? Save his livelihood and that of all those who worked in the mills and on the estate? But surely not. An earl hired people to do what needed to be done. He did not go himself. But if he did go himself, the choice belonged to him. She had no more right to stop him than he had to stop her from
going up in a balloon. They meant nothing to one another. They were nothing to one another. Nothing. Nothing.

She rubbed her right thigh. Even through her petticoat and shift and skirt, she felt the ridge of a scar forming where once a row of blisters had lined her leg, blisters that had almost cost her that leg. Mama had warned her. Lydia had warned her. Lydia had married for the infatuation of passion the first time and regretted it for years. Now she had found her love, the man God wanted for her. But then, Lydia was beautiful, perfect, not hideously marked. Cassandra would devote herself to science as much as Father and Society allowed. Whittaker would find another lady, another dowry.

Cassandra pressed her lips together and turned to the torches. Both threatened to die. She needed to light fresh ones to help guide the men back, if they could get back. They could raise and lower their elevation to find different currents. The sails and paddles might enable them to steer.