A Flight of Fancy (18 page)

“It is quite simple, my lord.” She bobbed a curtsy on the formal address. “You should court Miss Irving. I know she is little more than a cit.”

“Miss Honore, such language.”

“It is merely cant for a city merchant’s daughter, is it not? It is not a curse. She is not quite gentry, but she is very pretty and—”

“My mother,” Whittaker interrupted in repressive accents, “was the sister of a mill owner, and now I own mills. The days of making money from the land alone are falling behind us, Miss Snobbery.”

“Well, of course.” Miss Honore trotted beside him in silence
for several moments, her face flushed and pinched beneath her deeply brimmed bonnet.

Whittaker relented. “More than one gentleman or lady has wed beneath his or her social order to procure a fortune.”

“Some would say Cassandra is beneath you.” Miss Honore sounded subdued. “Now that you have the title, you could aim much higher than a baron’s daughter.”

“Or much wealthier, if that was my aim, yes. Neither is.”

Cassandra was his aim, and he saw her across the meadow, moving at a far slower pace than they were going but employing her cane less than he had seen her do earlier.

“Sometimes I think Cassandra—” He remembered who his companion was and refrained from the rest of his observation.

Miss Honore clasped his hand. “It’s true. She does think herself beneath you now that you are the earl. And she—well, the silly chit thinks she is ugly.”

“I know. The spectacles.”

And she must have a scar if her ankle suffered a bad enough burn that the medical men considered amputation. A minor thing to him. But Cassandra, with her two beautiful sisters, would feel uneasy about her attractiveness to him. As if he had not shown her often and too well how he felt about her.

He speared his hand through his ragged hair and picked up his pace again. If she was meeting Sorrells and Kent in someone’s meadow, Whittaker would rather catch her and stop her before she had reinforcements for whatever she was doing. He should write to her father and tell him to somehow curtail Cassandra’s actions before they got her hurt or killed. But a letter would take weeks, and Whittaker wasn’t supposed to be around her enough to know with whom she met. He was supposed to stay away from the Bainbridge ladies even in his own home.

“It is because she thinks she is not pretty that you should court Miss Irving,” Miss Honore was saying beside him.

Whittaker glanced down at her. “I thought you said Miss Irving is beautiful, and she seems to me a young lady who knows it.”

“She is not in the least young. She is at least five and twenty.”

“Heaven forfend such an age. Almost in her dotage.”

“Do not tease me, Whittaker. It is not nice. You know very well I was thinking about Cassandra.”

“Yes, of course you were. I apologize. But surely you do not think I should try to court a lady two years my senior.”

“If a man will marry a lady of inferior social class for her looks and money, he will marry one of superior age for the same.”

“But I want her for neither.”

“No, you do not, but you want Cassandra to think you do.”

“I want no such thing.”

Ahead of them, Cassandra had stopped. She cocked her head as though she heard their voices but could not make out who they were, or perhaps she could not see them.

“It is just pretend,” Miss Honore protested.

“In another four days, I will be gone again. By the time I return, Miss Irving and my cousins will have completed their visit.”

“Oh no, no, you must not leave.” Miss Honore still gripped his hand, squeezed it hard. “Not if you want Cassandra back. Do not leave her to more calls from Mr. Sorrells and Mr. Kent. They will lead her astray.”

Whittaker had led her astray. He could not guarantee that he would not do so again, as much as he knew he should not. If she could love him again, he would get a special license or carry her over the border to Scotland so they could marry immediately
and not have to wait the three weeks required under the English Marriage Act. But he had never endangered her life like these aeronauts—until the night of the riots.

And he needed to spend time with her if he was to win her. She was too adroit at avoiding him.

“Tomorrow night,” Miss Honore prattled on, “when we all go to the assembly at the Golden Fleece, you must flirt outrageously with Miss Irving.”

“Miss Irving has shown no interest in me, child.”

Ahead of them, Cassandra began to climb a stile. She held her skirt up with one hand and balanced herself on her cane with the other. The wind caught the edge of a flounce, flipping it up to reveal she wore no stockings, but slippers too flimsy for walking across the fields in late October.

“Does the girl not even know how to dress to take care of herself?”

“Stockings hurt her, um, ankle,” Miss Honore answered.

Stupid. He should have realized that.

“Then she cannot come to the assembly.”

Alas, another opportunity gone unless he too found reason to stay home from the public assembly, which was held at one of the neighborhood’s finer inns for the local gentry or anyone with the price of a ticket. It would be a respectable and mildly entertaining evening with good food and often better music, some dancing, and a great deal of flirting amongst the young people. It would be an excellent time to meet up with Cassandra, get her alone to talk at last. But if she refused to go . . .

“She will go,” Miss Honore said. “Your mama and I have made her promise because she simply cannot stay home alone with the servants until the bellpull in her room is repaired.”

“Yes, the cut bellpull.” Whittaker squinted through the fence
to see if Cassandra had succeeded in making a safe landing on the other side of the stile. “Very odd, that. It is not as though she constantly demanded attention.”

“She tries to avoid attention. Oh dear, I think she has—”

Whittaker was already running, sprinting the last twenty yards to the stile. He bound up and over the steps to find Cassandra sitting on the bottom one on the far side, rubbing her knee through a now muddy gown.

She glanced up, squinted a moment, then sighed. “I should have known it was you. And Honore too? May a lady have no peace?”

“Even in the country, perhaps especially in the country where you do not know your way,” Whittaker pronounced, “a lady should not be walking about on her own.”

“I am still on your land, am I not?” She stood, wobbled a moment, then regained her balance and her poise. Without another glance at him, she set off.

Whittaker leaped to the ground. A groan escaped his lips as the landing shot pain through his arm, but he caught up with Cassandra. “Your conduct in traipsing about the land, mine or not, without escort is appalling and imp—”

Miss Honore kicked him on the back of the leg. Unlike her sister, she wore stout little boots, and the blow nearly knocked his knee out from supporting him. He staggered to catch his balance and she grabbed his arm—the injured one again, the minx.

“You sound like Father,” Miss Honore said. “Such a tyrant.”

He did, bless her for pointing it out.

“I am responsible for your safety, is all,” he concluded—a lame excuse.

“Thank you for your concern.” Cassandra sounded anything but thankful. “Now, if you will excuse me, I am meeting friends
here. That is, somewhere. Ah.” Her nostrils flared, and she turned toward the smell.

Whittaker sniffed and his nose burned. Someone was burning pungent oils. Pungent oils were flammable.

And there they were. Beyond a low-lying hedge, he caught the flicker of a fire with a pot suspended above it. Steam or smoke or both roiled above the cauldron.

“That is horrible.” Miss Honore held her handkerchief to her face. “I want to go home.”

“You are welcome to.” Whittaker gave her a cursory glance. “You are perfectly safe between here and the house in the daylight.”

“But Cassandra should not be here with three men,” Miss Honore protested.

“It will not be the first time.” Cassandra grasped a handful of the hedge and lifted it to make an opening. “They are honorable.” She glanced at Whittaker. “Most of them.” She slipped between the shrubs.

He deserved that one, and it hurt like a rapier thrust.

“Miss Bainbridge.” Sorrells and Kent greeted her with too much warmth.

“The birdlime is ready for the mixing,” Sorrells added.

“What, pray tell,” Miss Honore asked Whittaker, “is birdlime?”

“It is a white, sticky compound made of holly and various other oils to make birds stick to tree branches. Quite unsportsmanlike for hunting, in my opinion. But I doubt that is what your sister wants with it.”

Whittaker had made a point of learning that birdlime could be spread on cloth to keep water from going through it. Or air, apparently. But it burned all too easily, consisting mainly of oil
mixed with turpentine. And Cassandra walked right up to the fire and took a long-handled ladle from Mr. Sorrells.

Leaving Miss Honore to either follow him into the clearing or go home on her own, Whittaker shoved his way through the hedge, heedless of breaking branches, and snatched the spoon out of her hand. “You are far too close to the fire. If any of this spills, it will make the fire flare up and likely catch your gown ablaze.”

“We didn’t think of that.” Kent reached out his hand for the ladle. “And we have to throw some onto the fire to test that it has cooked enough before we measure in the turpentine.”

Cassandra said nothing. Nor did she move. Silence circled the fire, the bubbling, oily cauldron, the meadow. In the distance, a sheep baaed and someone rang a bell. But no one moved or spoke for a full minute that felt like a full day to Whittaker, as his tone, his words, his actions played through his head like a drama, with one scene enacted again and again and again.

He stepped back and inclined his head as a demonstration of humility. “I am sorry, Miss Bainbridge. I am being overbearing again, am I not?”

“Considering that this formula is mine,” she responded with a bit of chill but not coldness, “you are.”

“He’s only considering your safety,” Kent said, beginning to stir vigorously, sending billows of noxious steam into the air.

“We all are concerned for it.” Sorrells was gentler, his look at Cassandra tender. Loving?

If he had not intercepted that glance, Whittaker might have left Cassandra with her friends. They fully intended to look out for her safety in the mixing of this brew. But if one of them felt more for Cassandra than friendship born from the mutual
interest of aeronautics, Whittaker could not afford to leave her to their care alone.

He could, however, afford to take an interest in her knowledge of chemistry.

“I did not know you were interested in chemistry,” he admitted to Cassandra.

“I never thought about it before.” Her face lit up. “I mean, I never could have experimented with more than a few herbs and cordials at Bainbridge House. But when I was . . . ill, I got some books and began to read about how to keep air from escaping from the balloon and about the problems with what had been tried thus far.”

“What about oil of turpentine? No cooking,” Whittaker suggested.

“Burns too quick,” Sorrells said.

“And doesn’t work,” Kent added.

“I decided we needed something thicker, stiffer when it dries, but not too stiff and heavy, of course.”

And there was Cassandra as he knew her—beautiful in her animated speech of something that interested her, that used her considerable intellect. Whittaker watched her face, the brightness of her eyes, the mobility of her lips. He drank in her words like nectar, as though she spoke of love to him, fool that he was.

She did not speak to him alone; she spoke to all of them, explaining the process, the texture the birdlime must be, how despite being an oil, it had to be of a dryness to burn when dropped onto the fire before one poured in the turpentine, or it would not work.

“If it works,” she concluded her lecture, “one can have a lower fire beneath the balloon and have less risk when in the air.”

“If it works,” Whittaker mused aloud, “one could make a lining of it for cloaks and keep people dry in the rain.”

“You are right, Whittaker, you could.” She smiled at him. Their eyes met across the fire and steaming pot of sealant, and for that moment, their old camaraderie restored itself.

Heart feeling as though it had fallen into that boiling pot and melted with the birdlime, he swallowed, looked at the balloon instead of Cassandra, and asked, “May I help or at least watch?”

“Not until tomorrow.” Kent spoke first. “It’s laid out now because it got sorely wet the other night and we needed to dry it out.”

“Fortunately,” Cassandra added, “the weather has cooperated.” Her gaze shot to the horizon, where a line of darkness portended imminent rain.

They could not work on the balloon in the rain. Cassandra could not use smelling of turpentine and birdlime to keep her from the assembly. Then again, she might keep to her room and out of his reach for the day.

“You may use my shearing shed tomorrow. It is not being used this time of year.”

The expression of gratitude on Cassandra’s face lent the offer more value to Whittaker than to the aeronauts.

“I’m still wondering if we should use elastic gum instead of birdlime.” Sorrells bent over the cauldron. “It wouldn’t smell quite so bad and surely works as well.”

“I think it is too stiff and heavy for the silk.” Holding her skirt tightly against her legs with one hand, Cassandra took the ladle with the other and lifted up a bit of the mixture, then let it trickle back into the pot. “Douse the fire and cover this from rain. It need set for only a day and we can use it.” She handed
the ladle to Mr. Sorrells with a smile, then stepped away from the fire.

Whittaker released his breath, not realizing he had been holding it until he did. “May I escort you home, C—Miss Bainbridge?”

“We have a cart,” Mr. Sorrells announced. “She won’t have to walk.”

“But we need it for the vat of oil,” Kent pointed out.

Sorrells’s long face grew longer. “I forgot. Well, tomorrow then. Where’s the shed? Is it big enough?”