A Flight of Fancy (7 page)

“Not at all. I’ve always known. I was with your father on that mission as an extremely junior attaché about your age. I know how long he was gone. But he pretended a journey home so as not to dishonor her, and I assume the bloodline wasn’t corrupted all that much.”

The bloodline, the first mention of the identity. Whittaker should have wondered. He’d been too stunned to consider the identity of his brother’s true father. He did not want to know but now suspected the man might have been his uncle. Mama had been with her brother-in-law and his wife around that time, and they were close in age. But surely Whittaker’s uncle would not cuckold his own brother.

No wonder Mama encouraged him to marry young. She must have seen how he felt about Cassandra, that irresistible pull to be close and closer still.

His eyes burned. His throat closed. He stood like a mute beneath the gallery, the mist swirling around him like his sins creeping through his bones to conquer his very soul.

“Then why?” he managed to choke out. “Why do you come between us now?”

“You both blame yourselves for her injuries. That’s no way to start a marriage. If I do not keep you apart, you will never grow beyond that blame and your marriage will be poisoned from the start.” Bainbridge’s tone softened. “I let my first daughter marry unwisely the first time and had to watch her suffer for years. I will not allow that to happen to Cassandra.” He touched Whittaker’s shoulder, a comforting, fatherly gesture this time. “You both need to find someone with whom your passions do not run so high. And if I keep you apart, you will.”

“Cassandra may, but I never will.” As he spun on his heel and strode off for the stable to awaken a sleepy hostler to saddle his horse, he heard Lord Bainbridge laughing like a man with a secret he enjoyed keeping to himself.

6

Though Cassandra closed the door loudly enough for the men below to hear the latch click, she opened it again with a gentleness only someone close at hand would recognize as being other than the normal night sounds of a settling wooden building or the whisper of a cat slipping through the night. Behind her, everyone slept. Below her, Father and Whittaker talked in low voices that nonetheless drifted upward on the swirling mist, taut with anger on Whittaker’s part, scornful on Father’s. She missed a few words here and there, but not enough to miss the gist of the dialogue.

Father believed she and Whittaker could never be happy together because their passions ran too high. They were both quiet people, comfortable with silences between them, yet never lacking in conversation when they chose. But always that fire blazed between them, a rope of fire insisting they touch a hand or a cheek, a look that promised so much more. More and more they succumbed to temptation until a fire in fact stopped them from committing the ultimate act of betrayal to their upbringing and faith. Now she bore the scars of her folly. Father was right, and Whittaker must have agreed or he would not have walked away with such determination.

He strode out of her life like he could not wait to get away, ultimate proof that he was glad to be rid of her without a fight about promises broken. She was now free of him and his disapproval of her aeronautics.

So why did her chest ache like someone had removed her heart by force?

She slumped onto a chair. It bore no cushion, and one of her not yet wholly healed burns rubbed the edge. She sucked in her breath to stifle a cry of pain that would awaken everyone. They’d spent enough sleepless nights because of her, certain for the first week that she would have to have both legs amputated. “Let me die if you must,” she had pleaded with the physicians. “I’d be better off dead.”

They hadn’t amputated, though the pain and wounds grew worse. She figured they agreed with her—she would be better off dead than a lady without legs. She could not imagine life spent in a bath chair or being carried when the chair would not fit through doorways or go up steps.

She had healed, though, thanks to a young physician Father called in, who insisted on cleansing tinctures that burned with their high content of spirits, then the burning soothed with applications of cold compresses. Ice compresses. The apothecary and other physicians told him he was beyond his reason and her death would be on his head. But she lived. The burns healed. Her life returned.

But not to normal. Normal would be marriage and children. Not for Cassandra now. She would have books and balloons. Those gave her a reason to live—the prospect of flying especially now that walking was painful still.

“I will fly from the Dale to York,” she vowed in a murmur. “I will view York Cathedral from above.”

If the wind wasn’t fickle and sent her across the Irish Sea to Belfast instead.

She smiled at the notion and made her way to bed. She would think of aeronautics instead of Whittaker. In time, as Father predicted, he would forget her in favor of another girl, a pretty, vapid girl who would make him an excellent countess and a mother to his heir and a spare.

Her mind drifted like a balloon on a summer breeze, but sleep eluded her. Her legs itched and burned. Barbara snored. Honore kept murmuring an incomprehensible name in her sleep, probably the name of the man who had come too close to ruining her in the spring. Poor child. To think she had loved a man with a pretty face and some charm, who used her for his own ends and—

The outer door closed, then the one into the room Father shared with Mama. Cassandra endured the need to lie still in the broad bed for another quarter hour, according to the chiming of a distant church tower clock, and then rose, donned her dressing gown, and entered the parlor. One candle still guttered in the candelabra on the table. Hearing nothing from her parents’ room, Cassandra lit the other candles and carried the branch of lights to a small desk in the corner, where pens, ink, and paper lay for the convenience of the best guests who could afford to purchase a set of rooms for the night.

She drew one sheet to her, checked the trim of a pen, and opened the bottle of ink. She did not have Lydia’s skill with drawing likenesses of people or even the scenery around her. Cassandra drew machinery, things that coiled through her brain like those electricity machines. Or her brain worked through formulas like recipes poured out of that pretty little cook who had graced Bainbridge House for several weeks in the spring. She was
an artist. Cassandra was a chemist. They’d once discussed how the two weren’t all that different. Only the ingredients changed.

“Vitriol versus vinegar,” Cassandra murmured.

Deciding the paper was too small for a good detailed design, she began to work on one of her formulas, a way to make the silk of a balloon more airtight. She knew many used a mixture of birdlime, turpentine, and linseed oil, but that could prove highly flammable and needed more than one coat on either side of the silk. Doing so would take days, and how would she manage to find a place where she could boil a pot of something so odorous, let alone dangerous? Not to mention stretch the silk for the balloon. Surely it would make the fabric too stiff to properly inflate and deflate as needed. Elastic gum, perhaps? No, heavier still than the birdlime. She would adjust the amounts of the birdlime concoction first, since it was so common. Perhaps no linseed oil? Birdlime was oily enough. Yes, that might work. She still encountered the difficulty of where to melt it . . .

Her musings and calculations kept her awake through the night so that she slept in the coach, annoying Honore, who wanted to chatter about how much she would enjoy autumn in the country.

“Lies,” Cassandra managed to mutter at one time. “You will despise it.”

She would too, if she ended up confined to afternoon calls from dull neighbors or evening parties or, worse, that favorite country house party activity of acting out a play.

“I will not hate it in the least. London over the summer was quite, quite dull.” Honore launched into a list of things Lady Whittaker had promised they would do.

Cassandra went back to sleep, and Honore woke her when the Hall was but a mile or two off so she could tidy herself.

“You have creases on your face,” Honore announced. “And your hair is a disaster.” She smoothed a hand through her own perfectly coiffed golden locks. Even her traveling gown seemed to have remained wrinkle-free.

Cassandra’s looked like jacquard, so many lumps and ridges had it formed without her moving. And her hair was a disaster, slipping from its pins. Good. The worse she looked, the less likely her ladyship would be to want Cassandra for a daughter-in-law.

“I am certain she’ll understand.” Honore set her beribboned straw hat at a jaunty angle. “Lady Whittaker, I mean, as to why you look so crumpled. You have been ill, after all. I’d say you are still very much an invalid.”

Cassandra yawned. “Do, please, say so.”

Except how could an invalid go for the long walks she would need in order to find a place for the balloon? And how would her aeronautic friends write to her without everyone knowing? So many details. She would rather be back in Devonshire or, better yet, at Lydia’s little cottage in Tavistock. Except Lydia had sold the cottage, saying it reminded her of painful times after her husband left for the war.

The carriage slowed. For the first time since climbing into the vehicle, Cassandra glanced out of the window. On the other side of the outriders, a high wall ran along the road. Behind it, trees towered in autumnal profusion of heavy, dark green and touches of gold where the leaves began to turn. Iron gates stood open in welcome, and a drive stretched long and straight ahead in a dim tunnel between the oaks and pines. A rather smooth and well-maintained drive for a family allegedly pinched for funds. Beneath the trees, though, lay telltale signs of neglect—piles of
last year’s moldering leaves and a tangle of brambles that would make walking through the parkland uncomfortable at best. The lawn, curving beyond the tree line, also demonstrated a lack of consistent care with irregular mowing and several bare patches.

In contrast, the house gleamed in a blend of gray stone and red brick, mullioned windows, and shining squares of glass in creamy frames. Clean glass caught the sun like gemstones.

“It looks old.” Honore spoke in a whisper as though the occupants could hear her. “I do hope it isn’t drafty.”

“It’s bound to be.” Cassandra clutched her reticule containing new balloon plans, ones she had made while lying in bed for weeks.

She stroked her reticule, this one blue velvet to match her pelisse and slippers. In the wee hours of the morning, she thought perhaps she had solved her coating problem. That left finding a place to purchase a quantity of birdlime and a cauldron and build a fire . . .

One difficulty at a time. The current one lay before her in the form of a tall, middle-aged footman lowering the steps of the carriage and holding out his hand to her. Of course he reached out to her first. She was the elder. As far as most people knew, his future mistress of the manor. But if Honore went down first, she could distract everyone from Cassandra’s awkward descent.

“Honore, you first,” Cassandra directed. “I do believe I’ve dropped my . . .”

Because she could not think of anything she might have dropped, she simply bent forward as though searching. A lie. Shame on her. Lying to preserve her dignity, or what dignity remained to her.

But not a lie. She had dropped a tear. Out of nowhere, her eyes burned and the droplet splashed onto her knee.

“You are so slow,” Honore said brightly. Affectionately. Too brightly. Never too affectionately. For all her foolishness, she was the kindest of sisters.

More burning, another tear.

Cassandra dashed her sleeve across her eyes as the footman lent his support to Honore, who began to chatter as though he were a friend long missed instead of a servant. Cassandra swallowed, blinked, and picked up her cane. By the time the footman extricated himself from Honore, Cassandra was on the ground with three steps to climb up to the front door. Only three. She could manage three, especially if a groom or footman came to her aid.

She started for the house in Honore’s wake. Her cane sank into the soft earth that formed the carriageway, and she teetered, her weight coming down on her worst leg. She gasped in pain.

A hand slid beneath her elbow. “Miss Bainbridge, allow me.”

She froze at the unfamiliar voice, so cool, so clipped, so obviously the product of a fine school upbringing. Eton or Harrow, perhaps. The hand was strong, holding her upright with a palm beneath her elbow. Slowly she glanced up to eyes the color of the English Channel after a storm—gray-green and cool. He wore no hat, and his hair gleamed honey-blond in the sunlight, a bit darker than Honore’s golden locks. And he was in uniform. The red coat did not suit him, draining his naturally pale complexion of color. But for that flaw, his fine bones made for an attractive countenance.

“We have not been introduced.” A bit rude, perhaps, but he was being familiar for a stranger. “I beg your pardon, but you appeared in instant need.” He smiled.

She forgave his uninvited contact.

“Gabriel Crawford.” He removed his hand from her elbow so
he could bow. “Major Gabriel Crawford at your service, Miss Bainbridge. And I suspect you need that service up these steps.”