A Flight of Fancy (34 page)

“No.” Cassandra turned back to him with a bright smile and noted his white knuckles again. “The gas inside the balloon needs to stay warm and lighter than the air outside to keep us aloft, so I need to feed it from time to time, as it leaks out.”

“I thought that is what that foul-smelling substance was for.”

“It was, and I am still perfecting the formula. So do go on.” His tale-telling distracted him from their height, which was increasing now, enough that she thought she could indeed see the Pennines to the east and an expanse of the Irish Sea to the west. “You played spy, then came back south and convinced me I should wed you. The riots seemed to quiet down up here in the north.”

“But have only quieted. They are not over.”

“No.” Feeling as sick as he had looked once he realized they were hundreds of feet off the ground, she said, “Someone has learned who you are and wants to kill you for it.”

“It is far worse than that, Cassandra.” His gaze slipped past her. “Are you planning to sail us to Ireland?”

“Not today. Now continue.”

“I would rather continue on the ground.”

“I think perhaps we are safer up here if someone is trying to harm you.”

“No one would expect me up here. But I get all out of order.” He took a long, shuddering breath, loud in the stillness of being aloft, and continued to look past her rather than at her. “Your father did not withdraw his approval of our marriage because he thought I dishonored you and would therefore not be a good husband to you.”

“I know.” Cassandra rubbed at her right thigh. “He blamed you for my—my scars that make me unmarriageable to any man for a dowry no larger than mine. I would have to be an heiress like Regina—”

“Stubble it,” Whittaker barked. “A man who truly loves you will have no care about scars.”

“And you care.” She made it a statement, not a question.

He had looked as sick upon learning about her scars as he did upon leaving the ground. Well, she had accepted the end of their future together, had she not?

She gazed at him with her spectacles on, a rarity, took in his strong silhouette against the rising sun, and understood why she had rejected God at the same time she ensured the betrothal would not continue—guilt, plain and simple. Regardless of punishment from God or whatever the cause of her physical suffering, she had not for a moment repented of her behavior with this handsome, kind, intelligent man. Looking at him now stirred up memories and thoughts she knew to be wrong, and the knowledge burdened her with guilt. In no way could they begin a marriage with guilt weighing her down.

And him too. His unwillingness to look directly at her spoke volumes about his regret over their past. No wonder he cringed at the mention of her scars. They were forever a reminder of their improper behavior with one another. Yet knowing she had lost him forever was no reason for not repenting, for rejecting the truth of God’s will for her life and His grace. His will was perfect. If God did not want her married to Geoffrey Giles, Earl of Whittaker, then He had a better plan for her life. She knew that. She had believed it in the spring, and then Whittaker came back only to have her behave abominably once again, against all her moral understanding, because she was too sure she knew what was right for herself and did not truly trust that God did.

“I understand,” she added. “It is all right.”

“No, Cassandra, you do not understand.” He took a step toward her. The basket swayed a little, and he halted, paling again. “I am going to sit down if I may.”

“Yes, but the view is better standing.”

He smiled tightly. “I know.” He seated himself cross-legged on the bottom of the basket and still gripped the side with one hand. “A bit better. Now, what was I saying? Yes, you do not understand about your father and me, and—and he—” He took a long, deep breath, then let it and the words out in a rush. “He knew about my mother, that my elder brother was not my father’s son, and that I have proven I have too much of her temperament of disloyalty and dishonor, and with your tendency to rebellion, I should not wed you.”

“What did you say? No, no”—she waved her hand in the air—“do not repeat it. I heard you. I simply mean—” Her legs wobbled, and she sank to her knees before him, the brazier a soft hiss behind her, the balloon a bulbous shadow above, and the glorious open sky a blue and gold canopy around them. They might have been the last two people left in the world. “Your mother committed . . . against your father, and because we were . . . indiscreet, my father withdrew his consent to our marriage? I thought he blamed you for my accident.”

“He does. I led you astray because I have my mother’s—”

“That is preposterous.” She grasped the sides of the basket to keep herself from the foolishness of springing to her feet and probably stomping her foot right through the floor of the car. “I was just as complicit. I encouraged you. I have done everything others did not wish me to do since I was at least out of my cradle, if not sooner. I am the one with the rebellious heart, and you are the one bearing the shame.”

She never before admitted the truth of her rebellion, and she saw it for what it was now—the author of her pain, her isolation, her losses.

“You are not to blame, Geoffrey. Not for any of this. How could my father, knowing me, believe such a thing of you?”

“I am not without guilt, my dearest one.” He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, then held it, stroking it between his thumb and forefinger. “We both lost our sense of right and wrong to some extent after I became the earl. We were angry with God for tossing us into a future neither of us wanted, instead of accepting it as God’s will for our lives and learning how He could use us.”

“And the consequences are of our own making.” Cassandra bowed her head as though she could see through her skirt and petticoats to the marks on her legs. “I have been blaming God and my father has blamed you, and—”

“Used his knowledge about my mother to blackmail me into joining the rioters again.”

“He is blackmailing you into danger like that?” That plummeting feeling punched her middle again.

No, they were sinking, far too quickly. She glanced up to see the balloon dimpling from air loss.

“Wait a moment.” She kept her voice calm. “I have to fill up with more air.”

She scrambled to her feet and applied the bellows to the brazier. Flames licked at the coals, raising the temperature. The vitriol bubbled, sending its light gas hissing up the tube to the balloon.

But the creases in the balloon did not diminish fast enough. The basket continued to sink toward the ground. Air continued to hiss . . . hiss . . .

Hiss too loudly.

Cassandra tilted her head back and squinted at the balloon. She saw nothing wrong.

“Geoffrey,” she asked through stiff lips, “will you look at the balloon and tell me if you see anything odd?”

He stood close behind her, one hand warm and strong on her shoulder. “What am I looking for?”

“A tear,” she admitted, though her throat was almost too dry for speech. “I believe we have a tear and the balloon is losing more air than it is getting.”

28

Whittaker glanced from Cassandra’s stricken countenance to the ground to the balloon that did look less turgid than earlier. The earth was not precisely rushing toward them, but it appeared far closer than it had the last time he had looked, when it had barely been visible. Anything greater than ten feet off the ground was too high for him.

Another wave of vertigo washed over him, and he closed his eyes. “Can it be repaired?”

“It will have to be.” Cassandra still spoke in that voice of icy calm. “We are going to crash onto the ground if we lose too much air too quickly.”

“What can I do?”

“Toss out ballast to make us lighter. One or two bags of sand, I think, for now.” She suddenly sounded far too cheerful. “And I will climb up and wrap my shawl around the tear in the tubing.”

“The tear?” Whittaker looked her in the eye.

She offered him a half-smile. “You had not reached the part about someone destroying the balloon, had you? Was it because I warned you about the assassination attempt?”

“That was not the excuse, but yes, I think as much. I will finish if—when we get out of this alive.” He stood and gazed
up at the balloon, a colorful sphere above them. “But how will you reach the tubing?”

“I thought to stand on the edge of the basket.”

“You will do no such thing. If you slip—no, I will never let—” He stopped, and despite the sinking sensation in his middle and feeling that his head was lighter than his body, he laughed. “Perhaps I can reach it. I am taller than you by at least a head.”

“But I know what I am doing.” She reached for one of the ropes tethering the balloon to the car in which they stood. “If you hold on to me . . .”

“You will still be too short to reach it.”

She cast a frown from him to the balloon above. “We need a ladder. Yes, that will do.” She grew animated, reaching past him and drawing a knife from the basket of provisions in the rear of the car. “If I cut the mooring lines from the sides, we can tie them around the tether ropes and make a ladder like rigging on a ship. I should have thought of this sooner. It should be a regular part of the balloon’s configuration for such incidents. This surely cannot be the first time a balloon has needed repairs in flight.”

“But you cannot climb it.”

Foolish thing to say. The fastest way to get Cassandra to do something was to tell her she could not. Yet she would respond to logic.

“Cassandra, your skirts. The fire. Unless we douse the coals.”

She shifted her gaze from him to the fire to her plain but long gown, and paled. “If we douse the fire, we have no means of filling the balloon with hydrogen again.”

“But can we not let out the air slowly for landing?” Even as he asked the question, Whittaker looked down and noticed what lay beneath.

At their current level of elevation, they had caught a strong breeze sweeping them out over the sea. Waves swelled and sparkled, creamy white at their tops. Not a calm sea. A sea rough enough to swamp the little balloon basket in minutes.

“How—” He swallowed. “How did that happen so fast?”

“Different wind currents and velocities at different heights.” Cassandra leaned over the side of the car and came up with a length of rope. “If you take that end, I will get this one.” She handed him the length of light hemp.

He took it and began to secure it to the mooring line.

“There,” she said, “it is high enough not to catch my skirt ablaze.”

If she did not slip. Too few inches lay between her standing on that makeshift ladder rung and the brazier.

“You need another step too,” he pointed out. “It will still be too low for you.”

“We have four mooring lines.”

“Yes, but—” His stomach rolled at the thought of what he was about to say, let alone the offer or the action. He swallowed against the sourness of apprehension in his throat. “I will do it.”

“You?” Her eyes widened. “You—you have no idea what to do.”

“I have been repairing looms for two years. My brain wraps itself well around mechanical devices. This cannot be all that different, can it?”

“No, but you—that is, it—”

He smiled and touched his fingertip to her lips. “You are trying to spare my pride.”

“Or your life.”

“I would rather spare yours.”

“But if you fall—” She yanked off her spectacles and scrubbed at her eyes. “I love you.”

“I know.” He kissed her lightly, quickly. “And you should know that I love you too.”

She shoved her spectacles back on and handed him her shawl in response. “Have a care.”

“I will.”

If nothing else, he could not slip and fall to his death, simply to have time to persuade her that he still loved her, regardless of her scars, regardless of her lack of dowry now, regardless of any harsh words between them.

Mouth dry, heart racing, he grasped one of the mooring lines and hoisted himself onto the line they had stretched across the basket. The line dipped. The basket tilted.

“Brace a foot on either side,” Cassandra commanded. “Now.”

For a heartbeat, he could not move. The basket tilted more.

“Geoffrey.” She laid her hand on his back.

He dared not glance back and down but knew her conformation well enough to guess that she must be standing far too close to the brazier than was safe in order to reach him. The knowledge yanked him from his paralysis and he shifted his feet.

“Step back, Cassandra,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “I truly am all right now.”

Her hand left him. Cold touched him where it had been. Heat flooded the rest of him, heat from the fire below and the tubing in front of him. Hot air wafted into his face. Dizziness and sickness washed through him like a draft of poison. He turned his face for cooler, fresher air, and all he saw was sea and sky—blue, green, gray, and foaming streaks of white.

Swallowing hard, he looped one arm around the mooring rope for balance and began to twist the silk shawl around and around the slit in the tubing.

“Knot it tightly,” Cassandra directed him from the basket.
“It will impede airflow into the balloon but will also keep it from escaping.”

The sound of her low, smooth voice soothed him, calmed him, and he completed his task. No more hot air wafted into his face. Only the cool, sweet draft from the sea.

“Come down slowly,” she continued. “Hold on to the mooring lines and bring this foot first.” She curved her hand around his booted ankle. “Step back toward me.”

Slowly, hesitating every time the basket tilted, he lowered himself to the relative solidity of the floor. His knees demanded that he keep lowering himself until he sat, but then Cassandra wrapped her arms around him and rested her head against his back. Her trembling shuddered through him, shaking off his fear and filling him with peace.

“We are stronger together,” he said.

She released him. “We will drown together if I do not get gas back into that balloon.”

She now sounded as calm as he felt. More so. She sounded brisk and efficient. Her action proved the truth of her tone. She slipped past him and began to feed the fire. Within moments, the balloon began to lose its crumpled appearance. The sea retreated, flattened with distance. The sky grew broader, more vast.