A Flight of Fancy (6 page)

With this in mind, he plunged out of a spring rain and into an Oxford Street bookshop in search of something to explain
ledgers and something talking about looms. Instead, he ran straight into a young woman with her arms loaded down with a stack of volumes that surely weighed as much as she. The books scattered. Her heavy, dark hair tumbled from beneath her hat and onto her shoulders, and thus the Honorable Mr. Geoffrey Giles met and began his courtship of Miss Cassandra Bainbridge. Three months later, he asked her to marry him. A week after that, his older brother went riding after a heavy rain, tried to jump a stream with a muddy bank, and landed head down in the water, his neck broken against a rock.

Mere the Honorable Mr. Geoffrey Giles became the ninth earl of Whittaker at two and twenty, and the wedding to Cassandra was postponed for a year, then called off, then set for the end of August, and now . . .

Much to his dislike for the pall of pipe and cheroot smoke and yeasty stench of ale surrounding him, Whittaker sat in the inn’s taproom, trying to relax on a hard wooden banquette beside Lord Bainbridge and two men in scarlet regimentals with officer insignia on their shoulders.

“You are in a unique position to help us, my lord,” said Major Gabriel Crawford, a man of perhaps thirty with an Etonian accent, probably a scion of one of England’s “great” families. “You were most helpful last spring when the uprisings were at their worst. You can be even more helpful now.”

“I have an estate to run.” Whittaker tried to use logic on the men.

“You have a capable steward,” Bainbridge pointed out. “I saw to that.”

“Yes, my lord, you were quite helpful.” Whittaker sighed, now suspecting his lordship had been a bit too helpful in that area. The steward rarely consulted Whittaker regarding anything, yet
the land prospered. At least it brought in more income than it had under his father and then his brother’s management. So he let the man do his job. “I would, however, like to be home now.”

“That is out of the question.” A white line formed around Bainbridge’s mouth.

He did not, he would not, say it in front of the officers, but Whittaker knew why—Cassandra was there. Mama had sent the invitation, knowing that Whittaker Hall was a day’s travel from the new home of Cassandra’s sister, before she learned from him that Cassandra insisted she could no longer marry him.

The memory sent a jolt of pain through him. Did she think a scar or two would stop him from wanting her? No, the problem lay in the wantonness of his wanting.

With an effort, he resisted the urge to hang his head in shame and grind the heels of his hands into his eyes until the ache behind them turned into pain so great it would blot out all thought and feeling.

Instead, he looked each officer in the eye. “I will not again go into the kind of danger I endured last spring.” He turned so he could look Lord Bainbridge in the eye the longest and hardest. “Until I set up my nursery. I as yet have no heirs.”

A tic pulsed at the corner of Bainbridge’s jaw, and a light flashed through his dark eyes, eyes so like Cassandra’s that looking at them hurt, but he said nothing.

“You have an uncle and cousins,” the other officer pointed out. “An heir and a spare.”

Whittaker stared at the man as though he had suddenly started foaming at the mouth. “My uncle has expressed no liking for the title and estate, and my cousins are only twelve and ten.”

“But they are heirs in the direct family line,” the officer persisted.

“We would not even suggest you help us again,” Crawford finished. “We value the continuation of our best families as much as you seem to do.”

“Which is why I intend to marry,” Whittaker began.

“You will have protection,” Crawford added.

Bainbridge snorted.

Whittaker realized the older man had wedged him between himself and the wall, making escape impossible. He could not even vault over the back of the banquette, something he might have considered regardless of how foolish he would look, had it not abutted a wall as well. Outmaneuvered. Outsmarted. He was no match for experienced officers and a wily politician like Bainbridge. At the same time, in the social sense he outranked two military officers and a baron, even if he was younger than all three. They could force him to do nothing.

In the spring, they had asked. With Cassandra having doubts about their marriage, he had agreed. He needed an outlet for his frustration and pain. Now, however, he feared being away from her. Being away from her in May had carried her into friendship with those two men who led her into the lunacy of aeronautics.

Flight, indeed! Whittaker could tolerate, even understand, her interest in Homer and Virgil, and even some of the less respectable Greeks and Romans. But wanting to leave the ground? He did not like looking out windows more than three floors up, let alone thinking of nothing beneath him but air. She was going to get herself killed if he did not go back to Whittaker Hall to watch over her movements and stop her from trying to fly with nothing more substantial than a gas-filled bag of silk and an oversized basket. Not to mention the fire. One would think the chit would be afraid of the fire needed to keep the balloon filled
with hot air. But not Cassandra. In the name of science, she would overcome her fear.

Which was one reason he loved her so much.

He set his shoulders back and his chin firmly. “If you gentlemen will excuse me for being vulgar enough to say so, you cannot force a peer of the realm to take on a role he does not wish to shoulder.”

Silence. At least at the table. The rest of the taproom had grown crowded and noisy with farmers and carters, stable hands and herders, who had carried the sweat of their toil to mingle with the smoke and ale.

As he watched the three men exchange glances, the stench of the room added its discomfort to the pain of Cassandra’s rejection, and his guts roiled. He’d rarely been ill a day in his life and never been jug-bit from intoxication, so this discomfort sat on him with the force of a roof beam. He feared he would disgrace himself in front of these older, wiser men and the hard-working country folk, when he needed to behave like the member of the House of Lords he was, like the leader he was supposed to be.

But his love, his lady, had sent him away, and that took the stuffing right out of the middle of a man.

He took a deep breath to fill himself with something other than anguish. “In the event you are forgetting, I do outrank all of you, and you are not in a position to force me to do anything.”

“Oh yes, but we are.” Bainbridge spoke in an undertone barely audible amidst the hubbub of the room, a murmur that sent a chill racing up Whittaker’s spine.

He kept his face blank and arched his brows. “Indeed, my lord.”

“Indeed.” Bainbridge’s face also was expressionless. “We have information regarding your mother.”

Whittaker’s breath snagged in his throat. His hands balled into fists on his thighs. He said nothing for fear he would give away a trace of emotion. But they had to be lying. His mother was a Christian lady, devout in her faith, if a bit too involved with dissenters for the liking of the local gentry. Even so, that was nothing anyone did not already know, and Mama did not care that they either knew or disapproved. He should not fear knowledge these men might have.

“Regarding the paternity of your brother,” said one of the officers, the younger of the two, with a salacious glint in his eye. “It could not have been your father.”

“You are accusing my mother of being unfaithful to my father?” Whittaker managed a credibly scoffing laugh. “What a faradiddle.”

“We know,” Bainbridge said, “we have witnesses to the fact that your father, the seventh earl, was not home for eleven months, at the end of which your brother was born.”

“Even if I believed you—” Whittaker had to pause to swallow against a dry mouth. “Which I do not, the law says that a child born in wedlock is presumed that of the husband. So you would have a difficult time making anyone believe such a tale about my mother.”

“Not particularly.” Crawford drew a cheroot from an inside pocket of his scarlet coat and lit it from the candle.

“The child is presumed legitimate unless the father is out of the country—or, as in this case, away from the estate, which the wife did not leave—for more than ten months.” Bainbridge waved a hand in front of his face. “And put that thing out.”

“I beg your pardon.” The officer stubbed out the cheroot at once.

Though smoke still swirled around the low ceiling beams of the taproom, the cloud over their table dissipated.

“You cannot possibly know that thirty years later.” The calmness of his tone pleased Whittaker.

“But we can.” Bainbridge’s complacence wasn’t feigned. No one could be that good an actor. “Your father was on a diplomatic mission with France thirty years ago.”

“But my brother and I look—” Whittaker stopped, but the damage was done.

He and his brother looked alike because they took after their dark-haired, brown-eyed mother, not their blond-haired, blue-eyed father. They possessed her curved brows and solitary dimple when they smiled. John’s height and breadth of shoulders could have come from anywhere, anyone.

Mama an adulterer, though? It wasn’t possible.

“But you do not dare test whether or not we are bluffing,” Bainbridge said.

“You know I do not.” Whittaker did not care how it appeared. He scrubbed his hands over his face, wishing he could scrub his entire body with harsh soap to eliminate the filth about his mother they had just poured over him. She was a new creature in Christ. God had forgiven her sins.

But Society would not, however old they were. They did not like being duped, and they would feel so. It would spill over into her present life. Even some church friends would shun her.

And Cassandra by being there.

So that was why the Bainbridges insisted Cassandra accept Mama’s invitation, even though they now objected to the marriage. No wonder they objected to the marriage.

Whittaker managed to hold his head up and keep his voice steady as he asked, “What do you want me to do this time?”

They spent an hour telling him. By the time the taproom began to quiet as the patrons drifted out in ones and twos or
groups, Whittaker learned what role they needed him to play in the game to stop, or at least damage, the Luddite rebellion in the northern counties. He was young enough to appear genuinely involved with men who had already demonstrated they would not hesitate to kill. And if he got in the way of a pistol ball or a knife, his uncle would inherit title and lands.

“Have you not considered that people will recognize me in Lancashire?” He tried to dissuade them at one point with utter logic.

“How often have you been there since you were eight years old?” Bainbridge returned.

A direct hit. He had been sent to school at eight years, then went to university, then was either in London or in the Dale or, for a few weeks before he learned of his brother’s death, in Devonshire. Yes, he resembled his mother, but that could be disguised easily for men who were not necessarily Lancashire men, or even locals who saw what they expected to see.

What they would expect to see would be the earl dressed like a gentleman, clean-shaven and young. A dusting of powder in the hair, a few days’ growth of beard, and rough garments, and even he admitted it was unlikely for anyone to know him.

Once the men finished giving him his instructions, they too slipped out of the taproom—the two soldiers, then Lord Bainbridge. Whittaker remained staring into the untouched glass before him until the candle guttered on its chipped saucer of a holder and the barkeep began to give him glances of annoyance. Then he rose and walked into the damp and chilly September night and paused beneath the gallery, allowing the mist to wash away some of the smoke stench from his clothes and hair. Nothing would wash the stain of family dishonor from his heart.

Above him, someone paced along the boards, a hesitant,
dragging step accompanied by a thud. An old person with rheumatic joints keeping them awake, or someone with an injured—

His head jerked back. “Cassandra?”

He headed for the steps. She was outside. She was alone. If he could talk to her when she was by herself, look into her beautiful eyes—

A hand landed on his arm, an elegantly gloved hand with a firm grip. “You are not going up there,” Lord Bainbridge said.

“Unhand me.” Whittaker pulled his arm free but held his ground. “I should call you out for what you said about my mother, but you are more than twice my age.”

And it was most certainly not the Christian action to take.

Bainbridge chuckled. “I would not take the challenge.”

Above, the footfalls had ceased. Because Cassandra had gone into her room at the sound of voices, or because she was listening? He prayed for the latter. To know she still cared enough to listen helped ease the pain of losing her.

“I will be rather good with pistol and rapier if I continue to practice,” Whittaker pointed out. “Father saw me well-taught in the event I chose the military life.”

Above, a footfall dragged. A door opened and closed. Cassandra gone inside beyond earshot.

Whittaker turned on the older man. Though his voice remained low, his tone held savagery. “How dare you blackmail me into risking my life? If I thought I did any good in the spring, I’d have gone willingly without you fouling my mother’s good name.”

“Not such a good name, is it? And you have done worse than that to my daughter. She is practically a cripple and in constant pain because of your actions.”

She hadn’t been protesting his advances in the carriage. On
the contrary. But he would not blame her. He would take full responsibility.

“I am still willing—” He stopped, realizing how bad that sounded. “I still want to marry her.”

“And a fine dowry your estate and mills will need if you do not stop the Luddites from assaulting your property and destroying it further.”

“Keep the dowry if that’s what it takes to prove to both of you I want her beyond anything else.” Whittaker swallowed. “Or is it my mother’s past that stops you from wanting the marriage now?”