A Flight of Fancy (8 page)

“For a few more weeks only, I am assured.”

A nonsensical thing to respond, true though it was. But ahead of her, Honore had mounted the short flight with her long-legged grace. The doors opened to receive her like gleaming arms, and her laughter drifted back into the afternoon.

Cassandra should have been the first one over that threshold—as a bride.

Her throat closed up again. Honore had done her a favor in going first. Cassandra would not enter first like a new bride.

Eyes fixed straight ahead, she dug her cane into the ground and started forward. Major Crawford’s hand remained beneath her elbow without invitation, without rejection, without providing her the jolt of longing that the most proper of touches from Whittaker never failed—

She drew her thoughts up short and pulled herself up the first step, then the second, then the third. With her lips set, she managed not to gasp or even whimper in pain. Then she stood on solid flagstones worn smooth from hundreds of years and thousands of feet and crossed the threshold without Geoffrey Giles, Lord Whittaker, at her side. No line of servants greeted her. She wasn’t their master’s wife. They would serve her as a guest and nothing more. Instead, a lady in black gauze over a pale gray silk glided forward and reached out her hands, noticed that Cassandra’s held a cane and a reticule, and rested them on her shoulders instead. “Welcome to Whittaker Hall at last, Cassandra.”

Lady Whittaker, the earl’s mother, kissed Cassandra’s cheek. Though touched with silver strands, her hair shone the same brown as her son’s—so dark it appeared black in most
lights—and she had the same brown eyes. She smiled and a dimple appeared in one cheek.

Cassandra bowed her head to hide more foolish tears. “Thank you for the invitation, my lady.”

“Oh, please, you should call me—” Lady Whittaker broke off. “We’ll discuss that later. Major, will you be so kind as to see to the unloading of their luggage. I am taking this young lady to her room. She looks in need of refreshment and a rest.”

“Of course.” The major bowed and turned toward the front door, adding, “Until later, Miss Bainbridge.”

“Cassandra slept most of the way in the carriage.” Honore appeared from the shadows of the great hall with its suits of armor standing in two corners like headless warriors, niches set with some sort of statuary, and one area set up with a fire and chairs to make the cavernous space welcoming. “But I am certain she’ll do well to lie down flat.”

Bless Honore. Indeed, the backs of Cassandra’s legs itched and burned. She needed soothing ginger lotion rubbed into them. She also needed a show of protest.

“I am truly quite all right, my lady.”

“Nonsense, you are too recently an invalid.” Lady Whittaker herself bustled toward one end of the hall, leading the way down a corridor off the main hall, past a grand staircase so old a somewhat rusty dog gate hovered over it like the blade of a guillotine, and around another bend. “Watch your step here—the floor changes, as this is the newer wing of the house.”

The floor turned from stone to wood. The dull
tap
,
tap
of Cassandra’s cane turned into an echoing
thud
,
thud
. She winced with each contact. So loud. She would wake anyone nearby. Except no one would be nearby. All the rooms opening off the corridor appeared to be small, cozy parlors, a breakfast room
that would receive the morning light, and—hurrah! She smelled it before she saw the long table, globe, and shelves through the half-closed door—the library.

Without any books.

She could not resist stopping to push the door wide and look inside. Though two of the walls bore row upon row of shelves, not a one held a book. The only book in the room was an enormous Bible open on the table. The rest of the shelves were either empty or laden with decades of periodicals.
The Gentleman’s Magazine
,
La Belle Assemblée
,
The Ladies’ Monthly Museum
.

“But Whittaker reads.” The words burst unbidden from Cassandra’s lips. She clapped her hand to her mouth, smacking herself in the chin with her reticule.

“But of course he does.” Lady Whittaker paused a yard away and turned back. “He has his own library in the master suite on the other side of the house.”

And up a floor, no doubt.

“This is the ladies’ library,” Lady Whittaker continued. “My husband, God rest his soul, gave me a few copies of
The Gentleman’s Magazine
when it held articles he thought I would find of interest and not objectionable to a lady’s sensibilities, and I have simply scores of sermon pamphlets I do intend to have bound soon.”

“I am certain those will do us a great deal of good,” Cassandra managed past a strangled throat.

The truth. They would be a tremendous help getting her to sleep should she have difficulty—if she did not fret about all Whittaker’s lovely books out of her reach unless she got herself well enough to climb steps.

Realizing Lady Whittaker was smiling at her as though she
had granted Cassandra a great gift, she smiled back. “It’s a lovely room.”

Which was the truth.

“Whittaker may have told you that I am interested in a bit of engineering, so that table will come in quite conveniently.”

“It does.” The proud mama nodded and simply glowed. “He uses it himself for his drawings.”

His drawings? What drawings? Surely she hadn’t been betrothed to the man for a year and more without knowing he drew . . . anything.

“You will find all the paper and pens you need in there.”

“And I can read to her while she calculates.” Honore winked at Cassandra behind Lady Whittaker’s back. “We may make her a fashion plate yet.”

“She is very pretty as she is.” Nothing but sincerity shone in Lady Whittaker’s glance from Cassandra’s crooked hat to her crumpled hem. “Rich colors suit you better than pastels, do they not?”

“So Honore tells me.” Cassandra looked down, too conscious that what lay beneath that hem was anything but pretty—as opposite as it could get.

“But we are embarrassing you, are we not?” Lady Whittaker turned abruptly and bustled ahead.

Cassandra hastened to follow, afraid in the dimly lit corridor that her ladyship would turn yet another corner and she would be too far behind to see her and perhaps fall down the steps as she had that one night in the theater.

Whittaker hadn’t been offended by her looks in the spectacles that made her eyes appear like something from the ocean that fishermen would toss back for sheer ugliness. He’d kissed her in the library to prove it. And kissed her, and . . .

A hand clamped on her arm. “Stop,” Honore hissed between her teeth.

She stood on the near side of a doorway Cassandra had been about to pass. Now that she had stopped and light streamed through the open doorway, Cassandra noted a short flight of steps down to another door. The faint aroma of oranges and lemons wafted through the air.

“Is that the orangery?” Honore asked a little too loudly, as though that were her intent in stopping Cassandra.

“Yes.” Lady Whittaker came back to the doorway. “We have oranges and lemons in there, so it is kept quite warm, a pleasant place in the winter, rather hot in the summer.”

And a convenient exit without traversing the entire house.

“The gardens are beyond.” Lady Whittaker sighed. “Not what they once were, I am sure, but still lovely in the spring. Everything is dying now.” Her face grew wistful. “One day we’ll repair the other glass house and I’ll have strawberries all year round too. Now I settle for them in June and bottle as many as we can. But you can see all that tomorrow. We keep country hours here, so I am afraid you missed dinner, but I’ll send in some refreshment and you can rest until supper. Miss Honore, your room is right next door here. You see, it was no trouble to turn these into a lovely little suite of rooms, as we still prefer to use the old part of the house for entertaining. Larger rooms. My father-in-law built these for warmth, not large gatherings, so the family uses them in the winter, though they are a bit far from the kitchens and—”

She broke off and laughed. “Now listen to my tongue running on wheels. I’ve been so looking forward to your visit, though the circumstances . . .” Again that melancholy droop to her lips, the lower one full yet firm like her son’s, though she had to be
at least Mama’s age, as Whittaker’s brother had been several years his senior. “I’ll send in Betsy to serve you right away.” With a swish of her skirts, she spun on her heel and hastened down yet one more corridor.

“I am going to get lost,” Cassandra said.

“Just sniff for the oranges, though you might want to wear your spectacles.”

“You may be right in that.” Cassandra entered her chamber. Soft carpet deadened her cane and footfalls. The scent of lavender hinted at sachets set around to keep the moths from velvet curtains and bed hangings. Everything was blue or green or a blend of both—Cassandra could not tell in the fading evening light. She would ask the maid for candles to be lit. No, she would simply lie down.

“I am so weary.” She stumbled toward the bed.

Honore sighed. “But then you will not sleep tonight. And a maid is bringing refreshment.”

“I am not hungry.”

“Cassandra, you know what the physician said. You must eat well and get plenty of exercise as much as you can . . .”

Her sister’s lecture, sounding more like managing Lydia than frivolous Honore, faded to a buzzing in Cassandra’s ears, a higher-pitched echo of the blood suddenly roaring through her skull.

She reached for the edge of the quilted counterpane to turn it back and felt something crackle beneath her fingers. Embroidered satin coverlets did not crackle. But paper did.

Someone had left a letter inside Cassandra’s bedclothes.

7

Darkness crept across the room where the last rays of dusk grew too weak to penetrate the grimy windows and the proprietor proved too cautious to light candles. Nonetheless, Whittaker knew the faces of the men around the table sticky with spilled ale. As he knew they had with him, he had made certain to see them each in enough light to identify them later. Their likenesses, poor an artist as he was, lay in papers he had managed to sneak into his rooms at Whittaker Hall one night while the household slept.

He had tried to sneak farther into the Hall but had failed to reach Cassandra’s rooms. Too many servants scurried about, even with Mama’s economies. But his rooms were sacrosanct, out of reach of the maids and safe for him to enter with no one the wiser, including his keeper, Major Gabriel Crawford.

Whittaker’s fingers balled into fists on his thighs at the idea of that man staying in the home Whittaker had inherited. His rightful home, his inheritance, his legacy, the home in which his future wife resided. At least the lady he still intended to be his wife, God willing.

Which He did not seem to be.

His hands tightened until the muscles in his arms bulged
against the coarse linen shirt he wore under a leather jerkin. Cassandra was the woman Whittaker had prayed for all his life. He knew it mere days after meeting her. So why, a week before their wedding, would God destroy that intended union?

And place him amongst men who stank of sweat and ale and worse? He would not allow any of them near his looms and cotton and silk fabrics. No one would buy such befouled fabrics. Whittaker felt unclean in the same room with their vulgar tongues and murderous spirits. He prayed for nothing more than to get out of this house and back to Whittaker Hall, try to figure out a way to see Cassandra, talk to her, convince her—

“So are you with us or not, Geoff?” The tone of the man was sharp, impatient. Hugh, with an accent more that of East Anglia than Lancashire or any of the other northern counties. A suspiciously long way from home. But then, they raised sheep in East Anglia, so perhaps the crisis with the loss of work amongst the weavers did affect him, as he claimed—affected him enough to drive him to leave his work and join the Luddite rebellion.

“Are you going to help us make sure it doesn’t die out?” Hugh persisted.

“I am here, ar—ain’t I?” Whittaker tried to hide his educated accent.

Rob, a broad-faced Yorkshire weaver out of work now, snorted. “You haven’t listened to a word we’ve said.”

“Woolgathering.” Whittaker chuckled at his own joke.

“It’s a woman,” said the last man in the group, Jimmy, a silk stocking weaver from Nottingham who’d helped destroy his master’s looms back in the spring.

Whittaker, needing an ally, had stopped Jimmy from getting caught and jailed, if not outright hanged.

“Always a woman when a man woolgathers.” Jimmy chuckled.

Whittaker laughed too. “Aye, it is a woman. Can’t help but think about the silk of her hair when we’re talking about silk weaving. It’s so—” He stopped himself from describing Cassandra’s midnight tresses. “Like you could spin it into gold.”

“Well, ain’t you the poet.” Hugh’s tone held a sneer. “Let’s get our work done and you can go have yourself another look at it.”

“If you pay attention,” Rob added, “we can get it done faster.”

“Beg pardon.” Whittaker picked up the tankard one of the men had set before him earlier and pretended to drain it. In fact, the contents went down the sleeve of his shirt, a maneuver he had practiced for hours with glasses of water. The reek of ale left behind revolted him. It seemed to seep into his pores and taint his blood.

“Don’t you think it a bit risky going after the Hern mills?” he continued. “They’re not just two or three looms in a cottage. They’re a whole factory with guards.”

He’d made sure of the guards as soon as the trouble began a year earlier. Not enough at first, and one shop fell to the axes of the rebels.

“Someone is likely to get shot,” he concluded.

“Worth the risk.” Jimmy picked up the pitcher on the table and filled each mug as easily as though a branch of candles stood in the center of the table, instead of it being cloaked in darkness. “If we can bring the Hern mills to a halt, the owners will pay attention to our need for fair wages and stop fixing the costs of renting looms.”