A Flight of Fancy (37 page)

She glanced up at his entrance and offered him a tentative smile. “After a decade of hating to wear them, I now wish I had not lost my spectacles. Father said I had to pay for them myself if I lost or broke another pair, and that is going to limit my ability to use my pin money to pay for repairs on the balloon.”

“You truly want to go up again after today?” He moved to her side and gazed down at her. “You are either brave or stupid, and I know the latter is untrue.”

“Where would England be if Mr. Columbus had not dared cross the Atlantic? Was he brave or stupid?”

“I think he was greedy.”

“Perhaps I am too,” she said.

He knew he was—greedy for more of her smile, her time, her life.

But Mama sat waiting with a steaming teapot poised.

“Do sit down, Geoffrey.” She poured the tea, added a drop of milk as he liked it, and held up the cup. “Mr. Kent and Mr. Sorrells have already arranged to bring the balloon back here. It is now in the shearing shed until the silk is cleaned and resealed and the tubing replaced. And yes, Cassandra told me how you climbed onto that rope to save yourselves.” The cup rattled on its saucer. “That was brave of you.”

“I am not a good swimmer.” He took the cup, and with the only other seat a settee across the room, he settled on the hearth beside Cassandra’s chair. “Are you well, my dear? Your ankle does not pain you overmuch?”

“Geoffrey, you should not speak of a lady’s ankles,” Mama scolded.

“I am well enough.” Cassandra looked over his head.

Silence fell save for the hiss of the coals on the fire and the clink of china cups against their saucers.

Then Mama drew in her breath with the faintest of shudders. “When Geoffrey wrote me that he had met you and adored you at once, Cassandra, I encouraged him to court you. I did not think a Bainbridge would have a large dowry, though the money would have been good, but I did not want him to think he should marry for anything less than what he wanted so long as she was a lady who loved the Lord. Many people believe love matches are ruining England’s best families, but I think it is more the other way around, as my own marriage was not a love match.” She grimaced. “It was not even a liking match. We scarcely knew one another, but Rupert Giles, the seventh earl of Whittaker, needed money, and my brother had a great
deal of it he was willing to spend to elevate me from the middle class into the nobility.”

“You agreed to the match, though.” Whittaker feared he sounded accusatory, but Mama simply nodded.

“I agreed. I was seventeen and did not care for the suitors I had—other mill owners, most of whom were more than twice my age. And your father was handsome and young. But he disliked me on sight and left for the continent soon after our wedding.”

“So strange that he seemed to like you when I was growing up,” Whittaker said.

“He did. After you were born, things changed between us. But I am getting ahead of myself.” Mama set her cup aside and picked up a book. She thumbed the pages without looking at it as she continued. “As I said, he went to the continent soon after we were wed. He sent me to stay with your grandmother and his younger brother. Your uncle had two friends, Ralph Irving and Lucian Crawford. I was forever in their company, and—and Lucian and I became too close.”

She closed the book, set it aside, and folded her hands in her lap. She lifted her head, but her gaze was fixed somewhere far beyond Whittaker and Cassandra. “When—when I knew I was
enceinte
, I wrote your father and confessed. I had some notion that Lucian and I would run off to America together, but he ran off and married the first female who would accept his proposal.”

“Aunt Giles’s younger sister?” Whittaker asked.

“Yes.” Mama sighed. “But they had no children for many years until Regina came along. Lucian . . . died shortly after that, and his wife married Mr. Irving, who was happy to give his stepdaughter his name and, apparently, his fortune.”

“But how could Mr. Crawford marry someone else so
quickly?” Cassandra pressed a hand to her cheek. “I suppose I am being indelicate to ask, but you were his love and all.”

Mama gave Cassandra a sad smile. “It is all indelicate and wrong, yes, but forgiven if not forgotten. As to why Lucian married so quickly, I believe he feared your father would challenge him to a duel, but Rupert did not care enough for me for that. He wrote that he would accept the child as his and pray it was a girl.”

“But it was a boy—his heir if he did not denounce you,” Whittaker concluded.

“It was a boy.” Mama gripped the arms of her chair. “Your father came home and we tried to find something to like about one another. I went to the vicar for advice, and he told me something I knew but had not really applied to myself—how no sin is too great for the Lord to forgive if repented of. I was certainly repentant and turned my heart over to the Lord. Your father never did, unless it was at the end, when the wasting sickness made speaking too difficult for him to say one way or the other, but he must have seen the change in me. I like to think I became less selfish, more giving of love without receiving it. He never said. He simply started treating me as a wife, and you came along, Whittaker.

“I cannot say we ever loved one another, but we did form a friendship of sorts, and everything went well for several years until, quite by accident, we encountered Lucian while we were in Bath seeking a cure for your father’s illness. He never said a word.” Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. “He simply looked at John, then you, and walked away. I learned later—” She drew out her handkerchief and wiped at her eyes. “I learned later that he rode to Bristol that night and signed aboard a ship bound for America.”

“Madness,” Whittaker murmured.

“Grief.” Cassandra was silently weeping herself.

Whittaker reached up and took her hand in his. “He must have died if Miss Irving’s mother married again.”

“The ship went down in a storm before it was in the Atlantic.” Mama blinked hard. “We will never know what drove him to do something so irresponsible as to leave his wife and daughter behind like that.”

“Grief,” Cassandra said again.

“Yes, grief.” Mama crushed her handkerchief in her hand. “It might have destroyed me too, if I did not have the strength of knowing that God no longer condemned my behavior. Never did I guess that all these years later Lucian’s younger half brother would try to steal my son from me. Can the two of you ever forgive me?”

Whittaker and Cassandra leaned toward her, their hands outstretched.

“If God has, how can we do less?” Whittaker said.

“You are not to blame for their actions,” Cassandra added.

“There are those who will blame me.” Mama clasped their hands in hers. “But if neither of you do, I am well.” She stood and gazed down at them. “And if you can forgive me for being the cause of you two nearly dying, it is time you forgive yourselves for your past.”

Whittaker’s ears felt hot, and Cassandra’s face turned the same delicate pink as her gown.

Mama smiled. “Yes, I know about you two. Lord Bainbridge told me when he last wrote.” She strode to the door. “He warned me never to let the two of you be alone together, but I think that is precisely what you need right now. I will be across the hall in the library.” She opened the door. “What I
did, breaking my marriage vows, was terribly wrong. A hundred years ago or so, I would have been executed for it if my husband chose. But never think there is anything wrong with your passion for one another in the right bounds.” She smiled. “Like marriage.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke. They did not look at one another. Then the coals shifted on the hearth and they jumped.

“Cassandra.”

“Geoffrey.”

They looked at one another then and laughed, though there was an edge to the sound.

“Ladies first.” Whittaker knelt in front of her chair. “Can you forgive me for how I behaved toward you?”

“I never blamed you. I blame myself. It is all part of my rebellion against God.” Her gaze wavered but she did not break eye contact. “I have done everything I knew my earthly father would not like since I was sixteen. Then, when you inherited the title and I did not wish to be a countess, I blamed God and rebelled there too.”

“Are you saying—”

“No, let me finish or I may forget something.” She rested her hand on the arm of the chair a fraction of an inch from his. “Even my ballooning was a rebellion. Yes, aeronautics fascinates me, but I knew you and Father and everyone would disapprove. You and Father would hate an alliance between me and Mr. Sorrells too.”

“And so would you. He’s a fine man, but you—well, I should not say so.”

“I feel nothing for him, no. You are right.” She touched his
hand. “But in the balloon today, when you were repairing the tubing, I realized how my rebellion hurt you—and me.”

“And us together.” He leaned forward and kissed her. At the brief contact of their lips, Guy Fawkes fireworks exploded inside him, and he drew back. “Are you going to keep rebelling and tell me you do not still love me?”

“You know I love you.”

“Then you will marry me?”

“I—” She sank her teeth into her lower lip.

Footfalls pattered down the corridor, and someone knocked on the door across the passage. “You have a caller, milady.”

Whittaker groaned. “Not now.”

“You had best go,” Cassandra said.

“I think not.” He clasped her hand between both of his. “Cassandra, we have both been wrong in our actions. But God has forgiven us, and surely you cannot continue to believe He wants us apart because of them.”

“No, not because of that, because—you cannot wish to wed someone who looks like I do.”

“I think you are beautiful. I always have.”

“No.” She gave her head a vigorous shake. “I do not mean my face. I mean my—my scars. You do not want that when you—if we—in a wife.”

“I do if they are part of you.”

“You do not know how bad they are. Honore was sick the first time she saw them.”

“Honore is sick far too often.”

“Well, true.” Cassandra gave him a half-smile. “But even Lydia was sickened.”

“I promise not to be sick or turn pale when I have the privilege of seeing your . . . um . . . them.”

“This is not amusing.” Her eyes grew suspiciously bright. “You turned pale when I simply told you how bad they are.”

“If so, it was guilt, not the idea of how they look.” He raised her hand to his cheek. “But we were not responsible for that fire. Crawford was.”

“Yes, but it does not change the consequences. They will forever remind you of him.”

“They will forever remind me of God’s saving grace.”

“Well, perhaps.” She blinked and a tear slid down her cheek.

He caught it on his fingertip. “Cassandra, how can you think I would mind your scars when you do not in the least mind my mother’s past?”

“But her past brought her to her knees before the Lord.”

“And your scars have brought us both to our knees before Him. Cassandra, I love you with all your imperfections.”

“I cannot risk you being repulsed after we have spoken vows.”

“Then—” No, he could not. He would not even suggest such a thing now.

But, as had so often happened between them, she knew what he was thinking, for she freed her hand from his and grasped her skirt. “Now tell me you do not want to run from this.” And she yanked her skirt and petticoats up above her knees.

His throat closed. His eyes burned. What pain she must have suffered, his strong, brave, and stubborn lady. The scars marred her pretty skin, but he knew of but one way to convince her he was not repulsed.

He bowed his head and kissed the scar on her right knee. Then he raised his head and smiled at her. “Cassandra Bainbridge, I still want to marry you.”

“I should say so,” her father said from the doorway.

Cassandra gasped and shoved her skirt down.

Whittaker stood and rested his hand on her shoulder, facing Lord Bainbridge and his mother in the doorway. “I never stopped wanting to marry her, my lord.”

“And now I can scarcely say no.” Bainbridge strode into the room and glowered down at Cassandra. “I thought we raised you better than to behave like this.”

“You would not buy a horse without inspecting it first, would you, Father?” Her gaze clashed with her father’s.

Whittaker squeezed her shoulder, a gentle reminder to be respectful.

She smiled. “But of course I could not marry him without your blessing even if I am one and twenty.”

Bainbridge cleared his throat. “I appreciate you honoring me that much. I thought the only way to get you to wed the boy was to forbid it.”

“Get me to . . . forbid . . .” Cassandra spluttered to a halt, then took a breath. “I am sorry I have been that poor a daughter.”

“Just make a better wife.” Bainbridge touched her cheek. “He is blessed to have you.”

“I am,” Whittaker agreed. “Thank you for helping to mold her into the lady she is.”

“Yes, ahem, well—” Bainbridge coughed. “I think she has done well for herself. Unlike her elder sister, who did not get it right until the second time.”

“I think I will never get it right.” Hair hanging in a golden shawl around her shoulders, Honore stumbled into the sitting room, rubbing her eyes. “Papa, I made a fool of myself again. I am hopeless.”

Bainbridge’s face softened. “No, child, you are not hopeless. You will learn.”

“I think not.” She shook her head. “I want you to choose my husband for me.”

“No, you do not,” Mama said.

“I am happy to,” Bainbridge said. “We have a new neighbor in Devon I have taken a liking to.”

“Truly?” Honore’s eyes grew bright. “Is he young? Is he handsome?”

“You will meet him when we all go home for Christmas,” Bainbridge said.

“About Christmas,” Whittaker interjected before he lost Bainbridge’s attention. “I would like us to wed before Advent and not have to wait until after Epiphany. That is less than three weeks away.”

Bainbridge arched his brows. “You expect to wait that long? I was thinking how close the Scottish border is. You could be wed at Gretna Green tomorrow if you are willing.”