A Flight of Fancy (33 page)

A common practice. Many persons followed balloon flights on horseback, jumping over walls and streams to keep the flying machine in sight. Thinking of her two friends below warmed Cassandra. She experienced no anxiety about her flight and took comfort in knowing she would not be completely alone.

Pulse beginning to race like the wind, she approached the wooden box they had set beside the tethered basket. “Then let there be no more delay.”

“Let me lend you a hand.” Mr. Sorrells held out both his hands.

Cassandra took one to give her stability as she stepped onto the box. She needed the other hand to manage her skirt and petticoats. From there, climbing into the basket proved easier than mounting a horse. Inside, she found a flask of water and half a dozen apples, a hunk of soft cheese, and a loaf of bread.

“I thought you might get hungry,” Mr. Kent admitted, “if you make this a long flight. I know I did the last time I went up. It’s all that fresh air.”

“You are so thoughtful.” Cassandra leaned over the side of the basket to offer him her best smile. “I had no breakfast, and I rather like the idea of having it a mile off the ground.”

“We’ll get the ropes then.” Mr. Sorrells strode to one end of the balloon and loosed the first rope.

Mr. Kent went to the diagonal corner. The basket began to bob and sway with the inflated balloon tugging upward, its filling of hot air anxious to lift up and up.

“This is glorious!” Cassandra cried out and lifted her arms. “If we cannot create wings for men to fly themselves, then this is the next best way to go into the air. It is positively—”

Hoofbeats thundered across the field at a speed too fast for the lack of light in the sky and the roughness of the terrain. “Cassandra, do not go!” a shout carried on the wind. “Do not—”

“Quick,” Cassandra said, doubting she was strong enough to unhook the ropes herself now that the balloon was rising. “Loose the other ropes.”

But neither Mr. Sorrells nor Mr. Kent did so. They stood watching the approaching rider.

“Cassandra, come out of there.” Geoffrey Lord Whittaker reined in a dozen feet away and flung himself from the saddle.

“Now,” Cassandra commanded.

Perhaps her voice held authority. Perhaps they simply did not want their morning’s enjoyment spoiled by someone who did not appreciate their balloon travel experiments. Whatever the reason, Mr. Kent and Mr. Sorrells sprang into action, unfastening the last two ropes. The balloon began to rise.

“Cassandra, you cannot.” Whittaker sounded desperate. In the torchlight, his face gleamed pale, tense.

“I cannot stop it.” Cassandra started to lean toward him,
realized she was not rising all that quickly and he might still manage to pull her from the basket. “It truly is safe, Whittaker. Never you—”

“But it is not. Cass—” With a noise rather like a growl, Whittaker leaped onto the box she had used, grabbed the edge of the rising basket, and half-dragged, half-rolled himself over the edge. “How do we get this to land again?”

“We do not.” Cassandra glared at Whittaker, her tone hard. “You are here for the duration of the journey.”

“But you do not understand.” Breath coming in gasps, Whittaker scrambled to his feet and caught hold of Cassandra’s shoulders. “It is dangerous today. After the other morning, I’ve learned some things. I warned you that you were in danger.”

“While with you.” She smiled at the glorious expanse of the sky arching around her. “Alone, or rather, with my aeronaut friends, I am perfectly secure.”

“But you are not. Jimmy, one of the Luddite weavers—oh my.” His eyes went out of focus. His face turned green. “We’re off the ground,” he said in a strangled voice.

Cassandra glanced at the diminishing figures on the ground, growing blurry to her even with her spectacles on. “About two hundred feet. No more than that, I expect.”

“Two hundred? Two—”

“Standing is better in a balloon, but kneel if you are going to be sick, preferably over the edge.”

He sat. He lowered his head to his knees. “I dislike looking over the gallery into the great hall. That is only twenty feet. Two hundred . . .”

Cassandra resisted the urge to kneel beside him and offer comfort. “You got in of your own free will.”

He raised his head, perspiration beading his brow and upper lip. “I thought you would land it again.”

“Because you ordered me to? I am your mother’s guest, not yours. And, as you admitted yourself, our betrothal is most definitely over; therefore, you have no control over my actions.”

“I do if I am trying to save your life.”

“The risk I take coming up in a balloon is my risk to bear.”

“No, you do not understand.” He rose, shaking visibly, and grasped the edge of the basket behind him. “Cassandra, this is more than you simply going up in a balloon. I learned a few hours ago that the rebels intend to stop you from flying today so you do not see their activities this morning.”

“Stuff and nonsense.” Cassandra brushed past him to inspect the apparatus that kept the balloon afloat.

Just enough fire burned in the brazier to heat the vitriol and iron shavings in a glass beaker suspended above the flames. Heated, the iron and acid produced hydrogen. From the beaker’s mouth, a canvas tube coated in wax led up to the balloon to carry the hydrogen gas and give them buoyancy—all a marvel of chemistry and physical science, the newest joys in Cassandra’s life.

All seemed well. The balloon and basket continued to rise, swooping upward on a current of air. To the east, what had been a band of bright light now shone as the first rays of a pink and gold sunrise. To the west, the sea sparkled like a dark diamond shot with fire.

“Look.” Cassandra pointed to the east. “Besides the fact that we are already a quarter mile off the ground and out of range to all save military guns, making stopping us nigh on impossible, is it not worth being up here?”

Whittaker barely glanced at the sun. “Cassandra, I have no
idea how they plan to stop this flight, but they do. I heard the plans with my own ears and would have been here sooner had I not been delayed by . . . I am such a fool.”

He looked so distraught, so shaken and pale, Cassandra could no longer maintain her air of indifference or her true anger for his interference. “You are not and never have been a fool, Geoffrey. Unless it is getting into this balloon when you hate to be off the ground.” She tried to smile at him. “But as long as I am sensible, we are in no danger. Mr. Kent and Mr. Sorrells are following our progress on horseback. You might be able to see them on the ground. You know I cannot see that far away, which is a disadvantage for me.” She touched the metal frames of her spectacles. “But I know they will be there, so no one—”

“Be quiet and listen to me,” Whittaker snapped. He took a deep breath and added, “Please. I would have tried to stop this flight even with someone else aboard. I do not know enough about these contraptions to know what the rebels can do to stop you, but they intend to because of the other morning.”

Cassandra wrapped her shawl more tightly around her. “They who? What are you talking about?”

“The trouble I am in. Blackmail. Luddites.” He released the side of the basket long enough to shove his hand through his hair, then paused, his hand on his head. “Are we not moving?”

“Quite quickly, I expect. Perhaps as much as fifteen miles per hour. It’s a bit too fast for the horses to keep up with us. Why?”

“I feel no wind.”

“That is because we are traveling with it, not going faster or slower than it. If you look down, you will have a better idea.”

Whittaker shuddered. “No, thank you. I’d rather not shame myself by shooting the cat in front of you. I have done enough to shame myself, but apparently it runs in my blood.”

“What are you saying, Geoffrey? Truly, I have heard that sometimes being up high in the air can make a man a bit mad, but we have not gone nearly that far off the ground. That is up miles and miles and—”

“Stop.” He was looking greenish-white again. “I have to tell you this. Will we be here awhile?”

“That depends on the wind. If—” She changed her mind before she said that she would set them down before they reached the sea itself. She did not wish to humiliate him by making his fear of high places cause him to be sick over the side. He seemed shamed enough already.

“I think,” she said, “you had better tell me everything if you want me to set this balloon down before we have been up more than a quarter hour.”

“Yes, but—eh.” He turned his head away from her, must have caught a glimpse of the earth far below, and closed his eyes. “I cannot think up here. How can you like this?”

“Be still a moment and stop thinking about how high up we are.”

He took a long, deep breath and kept his eyes closed. First his hands loosened on the basket edge enough that the knuckles did not gleam white through his skin. Then his jaw relaxed, the knot of muscles in the corner smoothing out. Finally he opened his eyes and looked at her. “I have never seen you more beautiful than you look right now with the sun shining on your face.”

“I have my spectacles on. I must resemble some kind of insect with the sun shining on the lenses.” She snatched them off and the world beyond the basket grew blurry.

Whittaker smiled. “I told you six months ago I find them charming. I still mean it. Cassandra, when will you believe me when I tell you I find you beautiful?”

When she stopped loving him so much she wanted to believe him. When she knew he understood the worst of her scars and did not look repulsed even at the mention of them.

“When you are honest with me about everything else,” she said.

“I intend to be.” He glanced down at the small basket of food at his feet. “I expect one advantage of being up here is that no one will interrupt us—so long as we are safe. That is, if the soldiers in Manchester took action after I rode there to tell them.”

“We are safe right now.” Though a glance up at the balloon told her they needed either more of the iron shavings inside the beaker, a new coating of sealant, or a better formula, as the balloon was losing too much air and their elevation was dropping more than she liked.

She turned her back on Whittaker and applied the bellows to the brazier. Fire licked at the coals. The vitriol bubbled and the balloon expanded again. Up they climbed, first a little jerk as the balloon tugged on the basket, then the glorious sensation of floating, like gliding on a quiet pond, only better because one was not fighting against the folds of a bathing dress to stay afloat.

She faced Whittaker and caught a gleam of admiration on his face. “You are so unsure of yourself in Society but completely at home up here.”

“Yes, it is why I am not an appropriate countess for you. I am a bluestocking at best. It will do nothing to advance you as a member of Parliament.”

“You know I have no political ambitions, Cassandra. I go because my title obliges me to. I listen to the speeches. I vote for what I think is right. It is my duty as a nobleman. Beyond that, I want a wife and family. But if I am right, I am not going to live long enough to enjoy either.”

“Yes.” Cassandra found her knuckles white against the dark wood of the basket. No longer could she avoid being his confidant. “We are quite safe here now, but why did you think someone wanted to stop the balloon? Why did someone throw a knife at you?”

“Or shoot me?” His smile was tight, the dimple nowhere in sight. “It started six months ago. You ended our betrothal because you thought then we were not following God’s will for our lives.”

“And you quite happily walked away without a fight.”

“I learned that one of my weaving mills had been destroyed by the Luddites. I had to find out about the damage and set repairs in motion. The riots have been senseless and harming no one save for the weavers themselves.”

“And owners like you who were losing money.”

“Yes, it was a financial blow.” He glanced away. A shudder ran through him, and he returned his focus to her face. “Do we have to be quite so high?”

“No, but it is more peaceful up this high. One cannot hear a thing from the ground, and if you fear someone may shoot at us or something, the higher we are, the safer we are.”

She wanted to be higher, high enough to see the Pennines, but the balloon was not cooperating this morning. Perhaps one of the men had mixed the vitriol incorrectly and the gas inside the balloon was not quite light enough.

“Safe a thousand feet or more off the ground?” Whittaker snorted. “Ah, Cassandra, you may consider yourself a bluestocking, but you are not a tediously dull one. Never once have I found your company tedious.”

“Thank you, I think, but return to your story. You assessed the damage to your mill.”

“Yes, and grew angry enough to disguise myself as a weaver and join the rioters to learn who was behind it.”

“You never—” Her stomach dropped as though the balloon had lost all its air and plummeted them toward earth. “Geoff—Whit—did you want to kill yourself?”

“No, I wanted to find a peaceful way to end the riots.” He speared his fingers through his hair, still long and shaggy like a man without the means to—

“The hair!” she cried. “You are doing it again.”

“Yes, but not by my free will. Last spring was enough of a taste of the violence for me. I escaped detection but managed to give the Army the names of two of the ringleaders and see them brought to justice for killing loom owners.”

“You, my quiet, bookish fian—I mean—” She stumbled to a halt. He was her nothing, then or now.

But he smiled. This time the dimple showed. “I was taught how to shoot and use a sword, you know.”

“Yes, but that is spying. I should think you too honest to want to participate in a deceptive act of espionage.”

“But not so honest . . .” He shook his head, and his shaggy hair lifted on a downdraft.

Frowning, Cassandra turned back to the balloon to blow more air into the bag. It seemed to be losing the gas far more quickly than it should. But she could see nothing wrong except that her formula for sealing the silk was imperfect.

“Is, um, something amiss?” Whittaker sounded a bit strangled.