A Flight of Fancy (4 page)

All that house belonging to her former fiancé.

“How do you know he will not be there?” she asked Honore.

“His mother told me.” Honore picked up a silver-backed brush and began to draw it through her shimmering hair. “She said he charged into the house a week after the fire, told a
manservant to pack his things, then departed in the traveling coach. It returned several days later, but he did not.”

Cassandra’s heart stopped. “Are you saying they do not know where he is?”

“They know he is well.” Honore leaned forward to brush the underside of her hair. It fell to the carpet in a waterfall of golden silk. “They receive messages from him, but he says nothing of his whereabouts.”

“Hiding, the coward.”

Anger mixed with envy clutched at Cassandra’s belly. He, as a man of independent means, even though those means were limited due to his father’s and brother’s excesses, could hide from the scandal they had caused. She, however, had to go stay at Whittaker Hall, where his mother seemed prepared to pretend all was well, that all Cassandra needed to do was recover fully and the wedding would take place. Perhaps she should walk—hobble—into the Hall and pull up her skirt to show them her legs. No one would want her for his wife then, after he fainted, as Mama had the first time she saw Cassandra’s burns. Even Lydia, strong and competent, had been sick after seeing the blisters. She too easily could have looked like that—or, worse, both Lydia and Honore—after the fire they had barely escaped in June.

But Honore was a spoiled child taken in by a wrong yet charming man. Cassandra should have known better. Cassandra did know better. She had lectured Lydia about faith in God. Now she knew what happened to hypocrites.

“I cannot face them, Hon.” Cassandra started to grab her cane and rise, but a knock sounded on the door, and she flopped back into the corner of the chaise.

Honore bounded to her dainty feet and scampered across
the room with a fluid grace that sent her flounced skirt floating around her ankles and her hair swirling around her shoulders. She was so lovely no one at Whittaker Hall would notice Cassandra. She could take to wearing her spectacles all the time, those octagons of magnifying glass that distorted her eyes into something grotesque. Lady Whittaker would be writing to her son to find a bride who was not quite so flawed.

At the door, Honore spoke to someone, then returned with a tray. Fragrant steam wafted from the silver coffeepot and milk pitcher. Cups and a bowl of freshly grated sugar nestled around a plate of coconut macaroons. Cook, a stolid Englishwoman who had arrived after two French chefs had left their post without notice, tried to fatten Cassandra up at every opportunity. Food cured everything from broken hearts to broken bones, according to her.

“She sent five macaroons,” Honore announced. “I believe I am to have two.”

“We will not be having any if you do not keep your hair out of them. Why did you take it down?”

“It was giving me a headache pinned up and we are staying in tonight, so I see no reason for suffering. Cream and sugar? I shall do the honors.” She giggled. “Mama says I need practice. I dropped a lump of sugar in some duchess’s lap the other day.”

“Better than spilling the tea in it.” Cassandra grasped the cane propped against the arm of the chaise and hoisted herself to her feet. With care, noting from the corner of her eye how Honore avoided looking at her, Cassandra crossed the room to her desk, dragging her right leg behind her. Putting her full weight on it still caused her to grit her teeth to stop herself from crying out.

“Will you bring my coffee to me here?” She lowered herself onto the chair. And stared at the blank parquetry surface before
her. She should have designs spread out there, not a coffee cup and plate of biscuits. But her balloon design had disappeared. She had dropped her reticule the night of the fire and lost her plans. Now she must re-create them.

“I cannot work at Whittaker Hall,” she protested aloud. “Lady Whittaker expects me to embroider and knit or do something useful and boring like that.”

“Or read to her with that lovely voice of yours.” Honore set the coffee before Cassandra, then remained beside her chair, one hand on her elder sister’s shoulder. “But I think you can work on your silly Greeks or balloons or whatever you like. I’ve been thinking about it.”

Cassandra glanced up sharply. “You have?”

“I do think of things besides ball gowns and new parasols, you know.” Honore’s lower lip puffed out. “Especially when there are not any balls to attend or sunshine to keep away.”

They both glanced out at the bright September day and laughed.

“All right, no one to go out walking with,” Honore amended.

“You do not have any gentlemen callers? I cannot believe that.” Cassandra picked up her coffee cup but looked at her sister rather than drinking.

Honore shook her head, a strand of her hair narrowly missing Cassandra’s coffee. “No gentlemen. I’ve gone off gentlemen for now. After thinking I was in love with a scoundrel. I mean, I did not think he was a scoundrel. I thought I was in love. But it was just his looks, and he was not like the country lads I’d met before and thus fascinating.”

“So you want to go to Lancashire to find a country lad after all?”

Honore grimaced. “I want to go to Lancashire to avoid
Scotland, where it is truly cold this time of year, and . . . well, I am going to write a novel.”

Cassandra stifled her laugh of disbelief behind a too large gulp of coffee, followed by a coughing fit.

Honore flounced away. “I know you are laughing at me, but I mean it quite seriously. I am going to write something far better than—than Miss Burney or—or Mrs. Radcliffe.”

“Or Henry Fielding?” Cassandra asked dryly.

Honore frowned. “Who is Henry Fielding?”

“Never you mind. How do you propose to avoid Lady Whittaker to write?”

“The same way you will avoid her—I confided to Lady Whittaker that you will need a ground-floor room because steps are just too much for you, so she is converting the parlor right off of the orangery for your exclusive use.”

“Indeed?” A flicker of excitement surged through Cassandra’s veins.

Orangeries had doors to the outside. She could slip outside whenever she liked, walk with others not knowing. And perhaps even find a way to get her balloon up to Lancashire.

That would be difficult without funds. Of course, Cassandra had spent nothing of her quarterly pin money, and Father being Father, he would ensure they were given extra so as not to shame him with the impression that he was either too poor or too miserly to be generous with his daughters while they visited at the home of one daughter’s fiancé.

Former fiancé. She had called off the wedding permanently, even if no one else acknowledged the fact. Whittaker knew it or he would not have made himself least in sight. So she could write to her ballooning friends and ask if they could manage
to get the machine to Lancashire. She was part owner, after all, and hadn’t yet been able to fly in it . . .

“You can pretend to rest all you like and have easy access to the library,” Honore prattled on. “And I will keep you company and write my book. And I’ll never tell Lady Whittaker that you are slipping out at night.”

“You do not know if I will.”

Honore sniffed most delicately.

“All right, Honore, I’ll go without a struggle, but if you do not help me, I’ll—I’ll—”

“Yes?” Honore shot Cassandra a mischievous grin from across the room.

“I’ll get her to matchmake you with Whittaker.”

Honore shrieked, threw her hands over her head, and fled from the room.

Cassandra turned to her balloon plans. She must get them to Mr. Kent and Mr. Sorrells at once so they could begin the work needed for modifications to the current design they had worked on all summer. As gentlemen of independent means, surely they would help. Otherwise, she must start from the beginning, and that would take too long. She would never manage to fly across the Irish Sea or travel from the Dale to York by air if she did not have her balloon built to her specifications. If she could make one or the other journey work, others might wish to travel that way, soaring through the heavens . . .

When Barbara and two housemaids entered an hour later, Cassandra ignored their presence, Barbara barking out orders, the maids mutely obeying, armoire doors and drawers slamming, trunk lids snapping down. Cassandra calculated and drew and pretended none of them were there. She had gotten good at pretending no one was there during the worst of her illness. If
she so much as opened her eyes, people asked about her pain, which immediately brought her focus to it. She kept it at bay by thinking of balloon dimensions and a way to keep the silk of the inflatable from leaking air, finding something that would not catch fire.

She was going to have the best balloon in England, win a race, and prove that females could be more than wives—they could be scholars and inventors too. She could avoid Lady Whittaker’s machinations to maintain the engagement. Renew it, rather. Yes, renew. Cassandra had made it clear to Whittaker that this time was permanent. He could not stride into her life and take her into his arms, declaring undying devotion as he had in June, and have her melt like gold in a crucible. If she managed things well enough, she might persuade Father to give her dowry into her care eventually, or at least give her an allowance. As a male, he would surely understand why no man would want her now. She wasn’t a beauty, terribly charming, or an heiress.

If only her insides did not feel so hollow—hollow yet not desirous of food. Like the pain, like her love for Geoffrey Giles, Earl of Whittaker, like the annoying interruptions of packing and preparing for the trip north, the hollowness would pass.

So would the seemingly endless journey in an entourage of carriages and outriders and taken in slow stages for Mama’s sake. Wearing the spectacles Mama despised, Cassandra stuck her nose in a book no one would want her to read aloud to them along the way, and avoided conversation as much as possible. When they reached the Carlisle Inn, where Cassandra and Honore’s roads would diverge from the rest of the family the next morning, their brother Beau joined them from where he had been visiting friends. A year younger than Cassandra, he bore the same golden good looks as Honore, but in a well
set-up, manly way even at twenty. He was wearing the sober garb of a blue coat and fawn buckskin breeches, not something fanciful and dandyish as too many young men sported even in the country. He swept Honore into an enthusiastic embrace but touched the ends of his fingertips to Cassandra’s proffered hands.

“Your face is still as pretty as ever, Sis,” he greeted her.

“You are too kind to say so.” Cassandra wrinkled her nose at him. “And I am not contagious like the chicken pox, you know.”

“Well . . . uh . . . no.” Beau reddened. “I did not want to . . . uh . . . hurt you or anything.”

“You’re such a ninnyhammer,” Honore cried. “You’ll hurt her feelings if you do not hug her too.”

“No, he will not.” Cassandra retreated to the inn bedchamber she would share with Honore and Barbara for the night.

But of course he had hurt her feelings. Beau had been her childhood friend. Close to her in age, he had been happy to catch frogs and caterpillars with her to examine them under a magnifying lens. Bugs and other creeping and crawling insects never frightened Cassandra off as they did Lydia or Honore. If Beau would come to Whittaker Hall instead of fishing with Father in Scotland, they could have a grand time of it. He would go up in a balloon with her without a fuss.

At least, she might be able to persuade him to after a while.

She laughed at herself as she removed her pelisse and began to repair some travel damage to her hair before a scrap of dim mirror affixed to the wall. She hadn’t even been up in a balloon yet. She might discover that she hated being a thousand feet off the ground. But she doubted it. In the basket, she would be weightless, or feel like it. She would be moving without her cane or pain or—

A rap on the outer door of the Bainbridge rooms in the inn yanked her from her floating imagination, and she jammed a pin too hard into her scalp. Likely the new arrival was a servant with tea or some bit of luggage Mama had left in the carriage, or with word of a lame horse or loose wheel.

“Cassandra?” Honore’s voice rang through the door. “Are you—”

The door flew open hard enough to smack against the wall, and Whittaker strode across the space between them and reached out his arms. “I did not think they could persuade you to come.”

4

Cassandra stared at Whittaker, her mouth too dry for her tongue to form words, her limbs too stiff for movement. Not that she could go anywhere. The room was a trap. Whittaker stood between her and the door. Honore stood in the doorway. A host of people ranged behind her, and the window offered a twenty-foot drop to a cobblestone yard.

The yard sounded like a good prospect. Broken, her legs would not look much worse. But then she had thought her broken heart could not feel much worse either.

She found her voice. “You lied to me.” No expression, just a flat statement. “I was told you weren’t going to be at Whittaker Hall.”

“I am not. I am staying in Manchester to learn more of spinning machines and things until . . . until . . .” He took a step closer to her, his eyes nearly black, not deep brown in the dimly lit room—dark and bleak. “Cassandra,” he said in a murmur meant for her ears alone, “did you think I could stay away from you?”

She gripped the edge of the stand that served as a dressing table and set her jaw. “You have managed to for a month. You’ve managed to stay away from your family for a month. I should not think I would be any more difficult to dismiss. Probably less,
considering I am now—” She could not bring herself to say it, admit aloud that she was now grotesque and lame. She looked down at the cane propped against the stand.

His gaze followed hers. Behind him, the others watched in silence as though expecting a climactic ending to some Elizabethan drama.