Love's a Stage (16 page)

The Sunday afternoon air was light and soft, with dry clouds that soaked in the sunlight and sent it to the warm earth in pale yellow streams. Leaves were delicate with new green and the roads damp from the spring rains. It was too early in the year for the dust to rise in the choking white mists that would later coat a drab layer on the thick growth in the laneside hedgerows. Blue violets were in bloom, and the flowering peach. Daisies cut a dash under the hazel’s spreading branches. Brooks gurgled, orange-brown butterflies skimmed over the tender grass; the thrush sang from her nest in a young, ivy-laced elm. It was a pleasure to breathe in the fresh spring, a pleasure to sit upon the cozily bumping wagon bench listening to Captain Zephyr rattle away about the beauty of ballooning. Frances was glad Henrietta had talked her into the Prussian-blue Witchoura mantle with fur trim at the hem and high-standing collar. It wasn’t too warm, as Frances had earlier feared, and her matching satin bonnet with its curving fur brim was no more and no less than was needed to fend off the slow, clean breeze.

They arrived at the daffodil-dotted meadow shortly after Richard Rivington and a company of four companions began to spread the balloon. It’s bold red, blue, and gold silk was a vivid streak of color against the sweet-smelling green clover carpet where two thick, woolly sheep were munching contentedly.

As they drew closer, Frances saw with a start Lord Landry among the men working on the balloon. He was dressed casually in buckskins, and was hatless like the others, his golden hair lightly disheveled by the wind. He looked up, saw Frances, and smiled. She hadn’t expected to see him and felt a tightening in her throat. How odd it was that in the first snap of recognition, the surprise should seem a happy one.

Captain Zephyr, who had followed the line of her gaze, surprised her by saying:

“Does that worry you still, my dear? I will say something to him, if you like. Not that I can guarantee that he’ll listen to me.”

“No, no. No, thank you. In fact, I’m used to him now. Almost. I shall just go on in a natural way.”

Captain Zephyr gave her an enigmatic smile.

“You’ll do,” he said as he drew in the rein and locked in the gilt-oak brake handle.

The wagon’s jerky halt disturbed Mr. Bilge, who screamed a protest and flew to the handbar beside Frances, stretching his leash to its farthest extension. As Captain Zephyr clambered down his side of the wagon, Frances saw Lord Landry rise with negligent grace from his position beside Rivington and come toward her. As Landry reached the wagon, Mr. Bilge cocked his powder-white head and cased the man with an inquisitive stare.

“Pretty boy,” observed Mr. Bilge, in a particularly accurate copy of Frances’ voice.

Lord Landry laughed and stroked the parrot’s chest feathers with the back of one finger. “Thank you, sir,” he said, “but I’m afraid you’re a flatterer.” Eyes green as a fairy’s coat smiled at Frances. “Lord, what a pleasant surprise to see you! Has Uncle Zeph kidnapped you for the day?”

Unaccountably, and rather bewilderingly, Frances felt shy. “I’ve never seen the balloon inflated. I’d not considered, of course . . . that is, I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“I don’t spend all my time at Chez la Princesse.” Landry’s eyes sparkled wickedly as he put his hands on her waist and lifted her to the ground.

Captain Zephyr walked around the carriage, in front of the horses, and clapped Landry on the shoulder. “Ah, David, you made it. Good boy! Yes, take Frances over to the balloon. And Frances, don’t worry about Mr. Bilge—he’ll be quite comfortable here! I’m going to unhitch the team and hobble them so they can graze. But mind, David—give Frances a hand. There might be rabbit holes.”

Frances’ lips curved reluctantly into a smile. “I beg your pardon, sir, but I’m not so fragile. Have a care what you say or Mr. Bilge will lose all respect for me. He takes pleasure already in telling me that I am paltry.”

“He doesn’t know you the way I do,” said Landry, taking her elbow with easy gallantry.

Lifting the skirts of her mantle with tan leather gloves, Frances set off toward the balloon beside Lord Landry. She could feel the softness of the ground through the soles of her kid half-boots—it was earth beginning to feel the touch of spring but not yet sobbing from it; the clover greens were crisp and sweet. One of the sheep regarded them curiously and then returned to its munching. Rivington, who had been kneeling beside the balloon straightening the inevitably tangled lines, rose to his feet to greet her.

“Frances, how lovely you look!” he said. He took her hand. “Were you glad to wave good-bye to the city for a day?”

“Immensely! As we cleared the last house of the last outlying district, I turned back and saw the veil of chimney smoke that huddles over London like a shroud. I don’t know how we breathe there.”

Rivington smiled. “Don’t raise the issue to my father or he’ll invent a fearsome face mask and expect us to wear it in defense of our lungs. I’m going to unload the gas. David, why don’t you introduce Frances?”

A fair-haired man had been stretching the netted guide ropes over the far end of the balloon bag. He looped a rope through a final knot, tested its strength, then stood and came toward Frances and Lord Landry, bending to test an occasional binding on his way. There was a painful snap in Frances’ chest as she recognized the tall, slim man as Sir Giles, the cousin of Lord Landry’s that she had encountered at Chez la Princesse. In vain had been her prayers that she might never see anyone who could recognize her from that dreadful place! The hope that he might not remember her died instantly; as he looked at her, she saw recognition and a rather incredulous curiosity.

Frances was unable to raise her gaze from the ground as Lord Landry introduced Sir Giles to her with what she felt was the most heartlessly cheerful nonchalance.

Sir Giles’ first words were not, as she had feared, to question the advocacy of bringing a doxy to a balloon ascension. Instead, he said merely: “Hello, Miss Atherton.”

Since Frances was worried that any voice she might produce to return his greeting would be high and squeaky with embarrassment, she didn’t answer him immediately. Sir Giles gave her a moment and then bent his knees, bringing his face level with hers. Tapping up her chin with an index finger, he repeated:

“Miss Atherton. Hello.”

Sir Giles gave her that particular burning smile that Frances was beginning to recognize as a family trademark, the smile that reached such a seductive brilliance in Lord Landry’s wanton green eyes.

“Hello,” said Frances, in what she felt was perilously close to a croak.

“My God, I must be intimidating today!” Sir Giles laughed gently. “Please look at me, Miss Atherton. I won’t eat you.”

“That,” said Lord Landry, a good deal amused, “is patent. She’s more likely to eat
you
. Miss Atherton’s timid demeanor is no more than a temporary aberration. Mostly, she spends her time threatening to haul hell-born knaves before the magistrates.”

Recovering a little, a becoming color high in her cheeks, Frances said, “Yes, but this is my day off.”

Sir Giles let go her chin. She couldn’t imagine why, but somehow she seemed to have pleased him. “Are you such a fire-eater, Miss Atherton? Just David’s style! Have you met Jean-Pierre Annonay?”

“The second person to make a balloon ascension in Denmark,” said Landry, “the second man to cross the English Channel by balloon, the second man to ascend carrying a rooster and two molting hens. You don’t want to miss Jean-Pierre. Think nothing of it if he gets in a blistering quarrel with Captain Zephyr—there’s a heated scientific rivalry between them.”

Frances allowed Lord Landry to escort her around the outside perimeter of the unfurled balloon, at the same time trying to fortify herself with the largely fallacious notion that though Sir Giles might have formed a very poor notion of her character from the locale of their first acquaintance, she cared not a whit what anyone in this rather overpowering family thought of her.

Monsieur Annonay, when they reached him, was pounding furiously with a sledgehammer upon the splintering head of a hooked anchoring peg. A small, dark man with a beaked nose and crooked lips, he hurled the hammer to the ground and spread wide his arms to exclaim:

“Ah, the beauteous mademoiselle! I kiss you hands.” He snatched Frances’ hands from her sides, and did so with great energy. Then, apparently satisfied, he stood back, hands on his hips, to admire her while Lord Landry effected the introductions. Annonay thrust his forefinger into the air in a mighty spearing gesture and exclaimed, “Ah, the emotion that fills me—what courage for one of the weaker sex to assist in the rearing of a balloon! To brave the dangers of the so-explosive hydrogen . . .”

“The explosive hydrogen!” ejaculated Frances, turning involuntarily to look at the tanks Rivington and Captain Zephyr were unloading from the wagon.

“Not since the death of my dear wife Madeleine have I been one of a ballooning party that included a female. Poor Madeleine—the greatest female pilot of our time!’Twas ten years ago this April that a sad accident put a period on the sentence of her life. She was making a solo ascension at the Champ de Mars in Paris, delighting the crowd below with a display of fireworks . . .” He fell back a few steps, gesturing toward the heavens as if to conjure up a vision of the fearless Madame Annonay. “Gold and silver rain poured from her basket—a cascade of sparks. Below, the crowd cheered with excitement, thinking it a part of the act. But no, the basket was on fire! The balloon began to plummet earthward. As it reached the level of the rooftops, a current caught the car and flung it against the chimney of a house in Rue de Provence. Madeleine fell to the street and spoke to me her last words: ‘Ah ha, I have broken Monsieur Bibot’s record for rapid descent.’” On Monsieur Annonay’s head was a high-crowned beaver hat with a curious pair of canvas earflaps dangling from the brim to his shoulders. He yanked the hat from his head and held it soulfully to his breast; poking out from his head came a mass of short fat braids trussed with spirals of wildly jiggling copper wire. Frances gave the kernel of a shriek, and stared agape at the bizarre coiffure.

“Monsieur, your hair!” she said.

“You noticed, mademoiselle!” said Annonay with what Frances felt was a rather maniacal grin. “This is the ceromancy—I have the metal woven into my hair, the better, Miss Atherton . . .” Annonay lowered his voice and gestured her closer with a crooked finger, “to conduct my bodily electricity.”

Because Frances’ contact with lunatic inventors had been of the most restricted nature, she most unwisely made the comment that she didn’t think the body had electricity, and if it did, that it would conduct itself very well on its own accord. Thus Frances exposed herself to a full half hour of a stern and enthusiastically delivered essay pertaining, but not limited, to bodily electricity, acupuncture, and Hindu levitation, and was preparing for an alarming plunge into the diagnostic values of examination of the tongue, when he was called away by Captain Zephyr to participate in transferring the gas into the balloon bag.

Frances turned to Lord Landry, who had been, so it seemed to her, deriving enormous enjoyment from listening to Annonay’s discourse. Had she been told that Landry’s approbation stemmed instead from watching her response to Annonay, she would have been amazed, even though Landry had demonstrated a certain interest in debauching her. She had been reared to habits of self-confidence, but also modesty; no one had ever told her how delicate and beguiling was the perplexed curve of her lip, how bright her well-opened hazel eyes, or how entrancing was that expression that designed her features when something happened to flabbergast or fascinate her.

She delighted Landry further by saying to him:

“Do you think it’s true what Monsieur Annonay said about holy men in India being able to float in the air? I’m sure my father is as holy as any men in India and
he
never did so.”

“Great as my respect is for the British imagination, I don’t think we’re a nation that would tolerate much floating on the part of our clergy,” offered Landry. “Don’t brood over Annonay. He’s quite non compos mentis. Last summer he designed a parachute shaped like an inverted umbrella, and has tried times out of number to talk someone into piloting a balloon from which he can jump.”

“An inverted umbrella? I’ve a very small understanding of physics, but I shouldn’t think that would work,” said Frances.

Landry grinned. “It would best Madeleine’s record for rapid descent. Come by the wagon; I’ll put down a blanket and you can sit to watch the balloon inflate.”

Frances was situated in time to see Captain Zephyr attach a hydrogen cask to the balloon bag with a snaky leather hosepipe, which began a mechanical monotone hissing. The puddle of blue, red, and gold that lay on the ground began to take form and rise, first in waving bulges, then taut and full, transformed into a live, beautiful semicircle that sat on the clover like an uncanny dome. Suddenly, it lifted from the ground to bob slowly, persuasively, at the tethered gondola beneath. The sun shimmered and broke like a wave on the rounded sides of the fully inflated balloon, casting a long, fanciful shadow on the soft sea of clover.

The peace was broken by M. Annonay and Captain Zephyr, who had been engaged in a terse disagreement about the proper adjustment of the bag’s valve. Zephyr shouted that M. Annonay was a jackass and was overfilling the balloon. M. Annonay retorted with a string of French expletives so graphic that Lord Landry asked Frances if she spoke French. When she said no, Rivington raised his eyebrows at Landry and laughed and said, “Good thing, too!” Before the combatants could go to again, Lord Landry draped an arm around his uncle’s shoulders and showed a blithe disregard for the truth by telling him that Miss Atherton had been bemoaning her lack of opportunity to closely inspect the finished balloon.

Frances was pulled to her feet by Captain Zephyr and brought to admire the neat arrangement he and Rivington had made of the basket suspension cables. Not to be outdone, Annonay interrupted to draw attention to the difficulties of his share of the experiment, which had been to prepare in his workshop the hydrogen gas. To a ton of iron shavings and water, M. Annonay and his assistants had added a half ton of diluted sulphuric acid to generate the gas. The stench of the sulphuric acid escaping from the barrel! The corrosive fog! A scene of Stygian drama!