A Flight of Fancy (25 page)

“How would they know that?” Whittaker asked, rising also.

“You’re watched.” Jimmy strode to the door and opened it.

Slightly colder air rushed into the room, along with the noisome smells of the lane. The shepherd’s hut would feel like a palace when Whittaker returned.

He wished it were a fortress.

If someone wanted him dead, he could not go back to Whittaker Hall and risk the lives of the inhabitants. Yet staying alone in the cottage sounded just as foolish.

Except that entailed risking only his own life. His own life and the mills.

If Jimmy was telling the truth.

“Why are you telling me this?” Whittaker asked as they reached the road.

“I don’t know why you joined us, and sometimes I think what
you say makes sense. And I hear you’re a fair employer. Your workers won’t rebel.”

“I know what it’s like to have—”

What was he saying? That he knew what not having money was like? What a lie. He had no idea what being poor felt like. Cassandra had not walked away from their betrothal because he was poor by noblemen’s standards. He never worried how he would eat or whether or not he would be evicted from his house without warning. His mother didn’t look twenty years older than her age because of a lifetime of hard work and too little joy.

Jimmy knew all those things too well. And apparently he knew a great deal more.

Whittaker took a deep breath and did something he never before thought he would have—ask advice of a man who ranked amongst the lowest of classes. “What do you propose I do? Leave the gang?”

“Not unless you plan to go to London and out of their reach. If you’re staying here, they’ll get you for knowing as much as you do.”

“Which is why I’m not sure I believe you.”

But he did, of course. Seeing the shepherd’s cottage a hundred yards up the lane, Whittaker suppressed the instinct to dash inside and lock the doors until morning.

“Why would they keep giving me information and letting me come along with them?” he pressed.

Jimmy shrugged. “Easier to find an accident to kill you.” He rested a hand on Whittaker’s shoulder, halting him. “You don’t have the power to stop this rebellion even if you take down their leader—whoever gives Rob and Hugh orders—so watch your back and your mills. I want to work there one day.” Speech
delivered, he slipped away into the darkness like a shadow, like a chimera.

Whittaker did not return to the cottage. He turned his steps toward the Dales and the Hern mills. Hiding in the cottage looked like cowardice. If these men or someone higher than them in the rebellion wanted him dead, he would remain out in the open and give them a fight.

And he would die protecting the future for his heirs and for men like Jimmy, who deserved to be able to support their families on the twelve hours a day they worked.

21

Cassandra could not sleep. Every puff of wind, every creak of the house, every rustle of bare branches, brought her startling awake for fear that rain had begun to fall, a gale had blown in, someone was coming to stop her. Added to the fear of sleeping too late, she found herself pacing the floor at four o’clock in the morning, rubbing her legs where the scars pulled on her skin, wondering if she would be too tense and clumsy to climb into the balloon basket.

If only females could wear pantaloons and Hessian boots like men, then getting about would prove so much easier. Skirts hampered one dreadfully. But she dressed in a proper gown, an old and warm one of heavy linen with one woolen petticoat beneath and a velvet pelisse on top. For extra warmth, she draped a shawl around her shoulders and rounded up a pair of knitted mittens, then put them back. She needed as much use of her fingers as possible to open and close the valves on the balloon, to ensure the fire burned consistently as needed, to hold on if the basket rocked. She settled for soft leather gloves and slipped out of the house before first light. Honore would tell everyone she would not be coming out for breakfast, and
no one would expect her for the morning rides that Miss Irving insisted everyone but Cassandra enjoy each day.

“Miss Irving.” Cassandra ground her teeth on the name. “Mushroom.”

Unfortunately, the nabob’s daughter may have been produced in the obscurity of the bourgeoisie, but her father’s fortune certainly helped her spread out at the highest echelons of Society, at least in Lancashire Society. Everyone included her in the parties to which they invited the Whittaker Hall guests because of her connection with the family, however remote, through the two boys. The table in the great hall, where the mail waited for Lady Whittaker to collect and sort and deliver, always held more cards for Miss Irving than for Cassandra.

No matter. In less than an hour, she was going to fly.

She stepped through the gate on the other side of the parkland and into the field. In the distance, light flickered through tendrils of morning mist. Rain might stop her from going up. Mist would not. It would burn off before she landed. Even though October had slid into cold and wet November, morning fog did not last the whole day.

As best she could, she hastened her steps. Her leather-soled slippers slid on the damp grass stubble. She should have chalked the bottoms of her shoes like dancers did. Too late now. Her cane helped her keep her balance, and nothing rubbed against her still-healing ankle.

And she was going to fly.

If possible, she would have leaped her way across the field, cavorting and shouting with glee. Instead, she approached at a quick but sedate pace and lifted a hand in greeting to her comrades in aeronautics. Her friends for certain, for all they were gentlemen.

They lifted hands in response, and Mr. Kent shouted something unintelligible, for he munched on an apple.

“It’s all ready for you,” Mr. Sorrells announced as Cassandra drew within earshot. “Are you ready to go up?”

“Beyond ready, I think.” She smiled when she wanted to laugh.

He smiled too. “Very good. Are you certain you wish to go up alone? One of us can go with you, you know.”

“I think one of us should.” Mr. Kent lowered his apple. “We haven’t yet gone up alone ourselves and aren’t certain one man—er, woman—can manage on her own.”

“I have thought something about it.” Cassandra gazed at the balloon, the silk bag coated with the new mixture of birdlime, turpentine, and linseed oil, expanding as the fire pushed the gas into the tube leading into the silk. It was a sight far more beautiful to her than all of Miss Irving’s jewels. “I want to be alone my first time.”

“But if something goes wrong and you need assistance,” Mr. Sorrells pointed out, “such as you having to land in a field far away, you might be too far away to walk.”

“Not that we think you’re infirm,” Mr. Kent hastened to add. “That is . . . um . . .”

“I am a bit lame.” Cassandra grinned at him. “Let me climb into the basket and see what I think once there.”

With the balloon nearly filled, the basket bobbed a foot or more off the ground, tugging at its mooring ropes. That made the top of the basket at her shoulders. She could climb up like mounting a horse. It was not even as high as a horse’s back. But then, with a horse, her left foot would be in the stirrup to give her a bounce up. Perhaps she should add something to the sides, at least loops of rope into which one could slip one’s foot. Until then . . .

Her cheeks a bit warm, she turned back to her friends. “I will need a bit of a leg up, if you please.”

“Of course.” Mr. Sorrells approached her.

“I thought perhaps we should bring a box or something,” Mr. Kent said around another bite of apple, “but we couldn’t find anything appropriate that was moveable.”

Cassandra shrugged. “No matter. A strong hand will do.”

Mr. Sorrells’s hands looked strong enough to give her the boost she needed to clamber over the side of the basket. It would not look elegant. She did not care.

Heart racing, she rested her hand on the top edge of the basket and placed her left foot in Mr. Sorrells’s cupped palms. “Ready?”

“I’m ready.” He nodded. “One. Two. Threeee.”

She gave the bounce one would for mounting a horse as he lifted. But she bounced off her right foot. Pain shot through her right ankle and up her thigh, and she staggered instead of lifted. She fell against the side of the basket. The balloon bounced, the basket swayed, and Cassandra and Mr. Sorrells landed in a heap on the ground.

“I say, are you all right?” Mr. Kent tossed his apple aside and ran to them. He clasped Cassandra’s hands and hauled her to her feet. Not until she stood again, shaken but otherwise unharmed, did she notice that her skirts had caught up in her pelisse on one side, and the line of puckered red flesh from mid-thigh to knee shone in the misty gray light of morning.

Face as hot as the fires fueling the balloon, she yanked the fabric loose from the clasp on which it was caught and let her petticoats and skirt fall. “I should have realized getting into the basket would be difficult for me.”

She thought she might be sick right then and there. They
were going to send her away, tell her it was unsafe for her to fly, as Whittaker did. A lame female could not be an aeronaut.

Philip Sorrells took her hands in his and gazed down at her from rather fine gray eyes. “Miss Bainbridge, we should have been the ones to think. Why do I not climb in first, then lift you in? Would that be amenable to you?”

“Yes. Yes, I think that will work fine.”

“And I can catch you if you fall,” Mr. Kent added.

“Thank you.” Cassandra bit her lower lip. “I think perhaps, Mr. Sorrells, you should stay with me, if you are amenable to that.”

“Gladly.” He continued to hold her hands. “I’d be honored to escort you on your first flight.”

He continued to gaze at her with a kind of awe and wonder, as though he found her . . . important, perhaps even pretty. And he had seen her scars.

“Will you find me lifting you in offensive, Miss Bainbridge?” Mr. Sorrells asked.

“No, I think not.”

Offensive, no. Mortifying, yes. She wore stays beneath her gown, simple ones she could lace up the front herself, so she barely felt his hands on her waist, strong hands lifting her up and up until, with a flick of the hem of her skirt to get it and her right leg over the edge of the basket, she half-stepped, half-tumbled into the balloon gondola. It bucked and swayed. Like a tower, the balloon rose above her, just out of reach, bulbous and tall with its sack of hot air.

“The power of air,” she murmured, gazing up and up at the colorful sphere against the grayness of the morning, its top lost in the mist. “Glorious.”

“It is.” Mr. Sorrells stood in the basket beside her.

“Shall we be off?” Cassandra peered over the edge. “Oh, you have added hooks to the lines instead of knots. How clever! So much easier to release them.”

“Yes.” Sorrells ducked his head. “It was my innovation. This way a body can go up all on one’s own. See, you can reach the hooks from here.” He leaned over the side and released one of the ropes mooring them to the earth.

Cassandra did the same on her side. They bounced and tilted a bit, then Mr. Kent released the other two hooks and the basket began to rise as silently and smoothly as smoke from a chimney on a windless day. Mist swirled past Cassandra’s face, cold but soft fingers mingling with the heat of her tears. Happy, joyful tears. She wanted to shout, sing, perform a jig.

But she did not wish to disturb the silence, the peace. A world of gray fog surrounded her. Below her, the earth existed as no more than a layer of pale gauze. Above and around, wrapping her in its gentle embrace, clinging to her lips and lashes, the cloud sheltered her from the world. No matter that she could not ride now. No matter that she could not dance now. She could do something far better.

She could fly.

“Miss Bainbridge.” Mr. Sorrells’s voice broke the silence.

She jumped and turned. “Yes?”

“Look up.”

She looked up. For several seconds, nothing happened. Mist continued to slide over her like damp fingers. Then a miracle occurred. One second they floated in a cloud. The next, sunshine washed over them like heat and light after a walk through darkness and rain, like the first flower of spring, like the gold separated from the dross.

Her throat closed, robbing her of speech, of breath. Her lips
parted in a silent exclamation of wonder. Below her, she left behind the clouds. Above her, the sun reigned.

“God is up here,” she managed to say at last.

“And everywhere else,” Mr. Sorrells added. “But I agree that one feels closer to Him here.”

“I suppose we should turn down the fire.” Cassandra turned to do so.

Mr. Sorrells did the same. They collided in the confined space of the basket, laughed, and both said, “Go ahead.”

“You should practice,” Mr. Sorrells said. “Not too much. We don’t wish to lose altitude.”

“No, not until the cloud burns off.”

Cassandra adjusted the damper on the brazier so less hot air would flow into the balloon and they would climb no higher. Reports said people who went too high found breathing difficult and even suffered some peculiar disturbances of their minds. Too much she wanted to enjoy this sensation of floating, of being as graceful as Honore or Miss Irving. She liked feeling closer to God, a place she had not been since the night of the fire. He had given her this precious gift. She had lost the man she loved because of her sinful behavior, but she had been given something precious in return.

As well as two good friends, friends who had not gone pale at the mention of her scars, let alone the sight of them. They did not try to stop her from what was most precious to her.

She slanted a glance at Philip Sorrells. Not as good-looking as Whittaker, but far from unpleasant to set one’s eyes upon. He was intelligent and kind and possessed a comfortable competence to live on. If Father insisted she wed, she could do far worse.

She smiled at the notion and peered over the side again. “Oh, look, the mist is burning off.”

“Have a care.” Mr. Sorrells touched her elbow.

Had that been Whittaker behind her, her body would have reacted in ways she knew were wrong, ways that led her into misbehavior. Mr. Sorrells’s touch once again caused no tingling rushing up her spine, no hollow, yearning aching for more and more and—