A Flight of Fancy (2 page)

Cassandra dropped her reticule so she could bury her fingers into Whittaker’s thick, dark hair. “Only a week,” she whispered.

“Too long.” He drew her closer.

Her hair tumbled over his hands. His cravat and her gown would be hopelessly crushed. Mama and her companion, Barbara, would lecture about proper conduct for a young lady. Her younger sister, Honore, would give her sly glances and giggle. Father would scowl at Whittaker and draw him aside for a “manly” conversation about propriety and dishonor. Cassandra did not care. Whittaker loved her despite her need to wear spectacles most of the time, despite her eccentric interest in Greek poets and flying machines. Surely once they were wed, he would understand she would die of boredom overseeing the household and stillroom and all those country housewife things, or, worse, being the London hostess for a member of the House of Lords. She accepted his proposal when he was plain Mr. Giles, a younger son. His becoming the earl due to an unfortunate accident to his elder brother did not change her. It certainly did not change his feelings for her. Alone in
the carriage, every time they were alone, he made that amply clear. Marriage would be even better. So much—

The carriage rocked again. More drunken voices shouted through the panels. The door handles rattled.

Cassandra gasped. “Geoffrey.”

“Stay down. I’ll fetch my pistols.” He started to rise. A strand of her hair caught on his cravat pin, halting him for a second.

And in that moment, the window glass shattered.

Cassandra screamed and ducked. Whittaker grabbed for his pistols. His feet tangled in Cassandra’s skirt, and they fell against the door—the door at which several revelers tugged. With their combined weight pushing and the bacchanalians pulling, the latch gave way. The door burst open.

And Cassandra tumbled into the arms of a torchbearer.

2

The ruffian dropped his torch and ran. Blazing pitch landed against Cassandra’s skirt. Delicate muslin smoked, flared. She screamed, leaped back, fanning the fire.

“Don’t move!” Whittaker grabbed her arm to hold her fast with one hand, tore at the buttons of his coat with the other. No use. Too slow. Coat too tight to remove without help. No choice. He flung her to the street, thick with mud, droppings, nameless detritus. He rolled her in it, smothered the flames with his own body and then a horse blanket someone tossed over them.

And the screaming continued—women from the crowd and terrified horses. Crowd and horses bolted.

Cassandra lay in the street silent and still. Too silent. Too still. Gorge rising in his throat, his eyes burning from smoke and moisture, Whittaker knelt over her. He touched her cheek, so smooth beneath the soot of tar fire. Despite the heat of the night and the fire, the smoothness felt as cold as shaded marble. Too cold. Too—

“No! God, You would not do this to me.” His voice emerged in a hoarse whisper yet sounded loud in the hush that had fallen over the remaining onlookers.

“God does what He wills,” someone murmured a yard away.

Others hushed the woman.

Whittaker slid his fingers from Cassandra’s cheek to her neck, that silky skin he forever thought of kissing. A pulse, faint, irregular, fluttered beneath his fingers. “Thank You, God.” He glanced up and saw the footman and coachman glancing back from the carriage, now a hundred feet away, as they fought with the team lunging and flailing their hooves, making the vehicle rock. Even with the distance, their faces shone ashen in the carriage lamps.

“Samuel, come down here,” he shouted to the footman. “We need to get her into the carriage and get her home. Then you can run for the apothecary.”

“Best let ’er die,” a man in the throng said. “She gonna wish she were dead if you bring her ’round.”

Whittaker gritted his teeth against the cruel truth of the man’s words. Charred shreds were all that remained of Cassandra’s gown and pelisse. Little more of the blanket held together, along with the blackened remains of a man’s coat. His coat. He did not recall finally removing it from his shoulders. He did not want to remove it from Cassandra’s legs. He did not want to see what lay beneath. Blistered, reddened flesh, burns serious enough, painful enough for her to have lost consciousness. He prayed she would stay that way.

She did not. The moment he tried to lift her, her face contorted. She moaned and struggled in his arms.

“I am so very sorry, my dearest.” The moisture in his eyes scalded, threatened to spill down his cheeks. He blinked to remove it. He tried to speak. A fist seemed to have lodged in his throat, robbing him of speech.

“Le’ me ’elp you, milord.” A wizened little man with breath reeking of spirits took hold of Cassandra’s ankles. “She be better off iffin we carries ’er ’ome and not to t’carriage. ’Ow far?”

“I do not know.” Whittaker glanced around, disoriented. The once overly bright and crowded street now appeared dark and deserted.

“It’s a block or two, milord.” The footman had leaped from the rocking carriage and reached their side. “Better to carry her with the nags so restless.”

“Less jostling,” the old man agreed. “Iffin she ain’t too ’eavy for you.”

Cassandra too heavy for him to carry a block or two? He could carry her a mile or two, a league or two, however far necessary to get her help.

“My dearest,” he murmured. Aloud, he said, “I can carry her. Samuel—”

But the footman had slipped into the crowd, and the coachman had charged off with the horses and vehicle. Surely gone for help, not fleeing in fear.

“’Tweren’t their fault, milord,” the old man said. “’Tweren’t nobody’s fault.”

“No.”

Except his, for taking liberties he knew better than to allow, going home alone with her with the full intent of taking those liberties.

His gut wrenched and twisted as though between the blazing tongs of a blacksmith. He loved her so much, adored her so intensely, he could not stop himself from touching her. And with the marriage a week away, surely a few touches weren’t unacceptable. And if they were, why would God punish her? Whittaker should be the one burned, groaning and gasping in agony as Cassandra was. She should have remained unconscious, oblivious to the pain.

“She should not be hurt at all, God,” Whittaker cried aloud.

“God ain’t got nothin’ t’ do with it,” the old man said, puffing between each word.

Like her elder sister, Cassandra was not a small female, slender but tall and broad in shoulders and hips, blessed with womanly curves. The more they jostled her over the rough cobbles of the street, the more she cried out and struggled in their hold.

“We need a third man.” Whittaker glanced around for someone to recruit. Other than a few shadows hidden in the darkness of areaway steps, no one showed himself. Torches had gone. Houses and shops lay in darkness. Only the remnants of the burned carriage lent illumination to the scene. No one wanted to be blamed for injuring a lady.

“Where is Cavendish Square?” Whittaker asked. “I do not know London.”

He’d spent too much time in the wilds of the north of late, too much time away from Cassandra. If she died . . .

“This-a-way.” The old man released Cassandra for a moment to gesture to the right.

She cried out and began to struggle. “It hurts. Make it stop. Make it stop.” She was sobbing now, gulping wails that echoed off the tall, deserted houses.

Whittaker could not stop the moisture from forming in his eyes again, a few droplets from trickling down his cheeks. He saw little of the path before him, heard Cassandra’s whimpers and wails in turn, felt the ripples of chills racing through her body, her fading efforts to push away from him.

“Go to sleep, my love,” he said in a soothing tone, as though speaking to a child. “Sleep.”

“She needs a good dose o’ gin,” the old man said. “Kills t’ pain every time.”

“I would never give her gin.” Whittaker realized how haughty
he sounded, condemning the man who stank of the spirit, and added more gently, “Her mother will have laudanum at hand.”

“What’s the difference?” The man shrugged, making Cassandra shriek in pain. “Gin or opium? Both’ll kill ye.”

So could burns. Gangrene. Sepsis. Amputation.

Cassandra without one or both of her legs?

Whittaker choked on something suspiciously like a sob. His hands shook. His body shook. He feared he might be sick like a drunkard. He stumbled along like a drunkard, gut churning, heart racing, conscience . . . Oh, his conscience stabbed him like a rapier in a duel he had lost. He’d come too close to dishonoring Cassandra, justifying it with the closeness of the wedding.

“Lord, please do not let her die, suffer, be scarred because I was careless,” he mouthed to the night. “Dear God, please.”

He feared his words reached no higher than the mostly blank chimney stacks of the houses. Then the buildings parted to reveal the round, grassy area of Cavendish Square and Number Sixteen close at hand, brightly lit in front, unlike most of its neighbors. Scarcely anyone was in town right now, but Lady Bainbridge wanted at least one of her daughters married in St. George’s Hanover Square. Lydia had avoided that twice. Cassandra would not be so fortunate.

“If she had gotten herself married at her parish church in Devon,” Whittaker cried aloud, “this would not have happened.”

But other things may have. The countryside afforded so many opportunities for privacy.

His conscience twisted in his chest, and he gasped as though he were the injured party. Cassandra seemed to have lost consciousness again—a blessing.

They reached the bottom step of Bainbridge House. The door flew open and what seemed like a dozen people swarmed out of
the opening—porter, housekeeper, butler, Lady Bainbridge, and her companion, Barbara Bainbridge. They knew. The apothecary was on his way. A bed had been prepared. Someone had sent for Lydia and Christien . . .

Information, instructions, and people swirled around Whittaker and Cassandra. Then suddenly she no longer lay in his arms and the little man had disappeared. Coatless, his shirt and waistcoat dotted with scorch marks and burn holes, Whittaker stood in the center of the entryway like a beggar seeking a favor from Lord Bainbridge. They had removed his lady from him, leaving him feeling as though the most precious part of his life had been wrenched away.

“Come into the library.” Lord Bainbridge spoke from the depths of the hall behind the staircase. “Let the apothecary do his work while you tell me what happened.”

Whittaker’s ears heated beneath his hair, which was too neglected and shaggy for fashion. He intended to have it barbered before the wedding, though Cassandra loved to bury her fingers in it—

His whole face grew hot. The dimly lit entryway might disguise his blush. No matter. Bainbridge was no fool, and Whittaker had learned this past spring that he himself wasn’t the best of liars. He had honesty too instilled in him to play the role requested of him. How Christien had kept up his work for a decade, Whittaker could not imagine.

“You will not help her standing there catching cold.” Bainbridge strode toward the entryway. “And the womenfolk will never let you near her.” In the candlelight now, the older man’s face appeared gray, haggard, the lines on either side of his mouth more deeply etched than earlier that day. “We need a coherent explanation of what happened. The coachman arrived babbling like a lunatic.”

“The unruly crowd.” Whittaker’s voice was hoarse and tight from the smoke he breathed and the tears he would not shed in front of another man. “May I have some tea, my lord?”

“Already ordered.” Bainbridge gripped Whittaker’s shoulder and steered him toward the library.

“I am all over mud and soot. I’ll ruin the furniture.”

“One of the maids is bringing down a sheet. We can place it—ah, here she is. That’s a good child.” Bainbridge took the sheet from the pale maid and continued into the library. With a firmness that suggested no one should open it without his permission, he closed the door, then flung the sheet over a chair. “Now sit before you fall. Are you in need of the apothecary?”

“No, my—Lord Bainbridge.” Whittaker’s right arm began to throb, blaze with the raw pain of a burn. He ignored it. It was nothing compared to Cassandra’s hurts. “Sir, I must know . . . It looked so bad . . .”

“All in good time.” Bainbridge pushed Whittaker into the chair. “Start from the beginning. Why did you not leave the party with Lydia and Christien?”

Whittaker met his future father-in-law’s dark gaze without flinching—much. “We have not been alone together in weeks.”

“No, and with good reason.” Bainbridge smiled, but tightly. “The two of you seem to exercise little self-control when you are alone together.”

“No, my lord.” Whittaker wanted to close his eyes and avoid the hard, dark eyes with their gaze that probably set the new prime minister, Lord Liverpool, quaking in his Hessian boots.

“Have you dishonored my daughter?” Bainbridge inquired in a deceptively quiet voice. He still stood, his fists clenched against his thighs.

“No, my lord. That is—” Whittaker’s face heated again, a flush that spread down his torso. “Not as I think you mean.”

“I see.” Bainbridge stalked across the room and stood at the curtained window without parting the draperies. He clasped his hands at the small of his back, and the knuckles gleamed white in the lamplight.

“We were ignoring the roughness of the crowd,” Whittaker began. “Then someone threw something through one of the windows and Cassandra fell out of the door. She collided with one of the rioters with a torch, and he dropped it against her skirt.”

“An accident?”

“What?” Whittaker shot to his feet. “What are you suggesting?”

“That you have enemies, Geoffrey Giles of Whittaker. You did not make friends in the north this past spring.”

“But they would never attack Cassandra.”

Yet they had pushed on the carriage, had mentioned his lady inside, had thrown the missile through the window, knowing she was there. And all the while, he thought of nothing but having his hands on her.

Bainbridge turned on him so swiftly Whittaker had to clench his own fists against his thighs to stop himself from jumping back. “I should call you out for this, if what you are implying is true. I should have called you out last spring when you and Cassandra were too close in this very room. But you are less than half my age and, I think, not skilled with weaponry.”