by Candace Camp
The question, of course, was why? And who? Most important, how was she going to deal with it on her own?
Chapter 11
The next day Eve accompanied Lily and Camellia on their visit to the farmer’s wife who had been newly delivered of a baby. Lily was eager to see the new baby; Camellia was less enthusiastic about the child but welcomed any opportunity to get out of the house and onto a horse. They were escorted by Fitz, who went to congratulate the father, one of Oliver’s tenants, and Neville, who declared that with everyone else gone there was nothing to keep him at Willowmere.
Eve was keenly aware of Fitz’s presence. He treated her politely, but there was a reserve to his manner that had been missing before. He did not ride beside Eve, gradually dropping back so that the two of them were riding behind the others, as he usually did when the group went riding. Instead he rode beside Camellia at one end, while Neville rode beside Lily at the other end, with Eve sandwiched in the middle. Though she was not excluded from the conversations, neither was she an integral part in either of them, and she realized with some dismay that for the first time she felt like a chaperone, in the group and yet not of it.
She could not keep from glancing Fitz’s way from time to time. The bright blue eyes, the classic profile, the elegant way he sat on his horse all stirred her viscerally. It seemed the height of irony that now that he had acquiesced in her demands not to pursue her, she found him even more desirable. She realized suddenly that she was sitting there gazing at him like a moonstruck fool, and she jerked her eyes away. It was clear that he had no trouble treating her like an acquaintance; she told herself that she could do the same.
The visit to the new mother and child went off smoothly. Lily showered the baby with compliments and even asked to hold him, pleasing the new mother, and both girls were so unaffected and naturally friendly that when they left both Mrs. Whitfield and her mother agreed that they were true ladies even if they were Americans.
They rode home along a track that skirted the fields. As they cut through a meadow, involved in a lively conversation, suddenly Camellia pulled her horse to a stop, pointing up above the trees in front of them.
“Look!”
They all obediently lifted their eyes. There, wafting gracefully toward them, was a large, brightly colored balloon, a basket dangling below it.
“Oh!” Lily gasped, her eyes shining like stars. “I have never seen one, only drawings.”
As they watched, hands shading their eyes against the sun, the bright blue balloon grew lower and lower as it sailed toward them. They could see a figure on board now, scurrying from one side to the other, and as he worked at the basket, things dropped from it.
“What’s he doing?” Camellia asked.
“Tossing off ballast, I’d guess,” Fitz said. “I’ve seen them before. He’s losing altitude, so he’s getting rid of the weights, trying to give the balloon more lift. He’s worried, I imagine, about running into the trees.”
“With reason,” Neville put in, as the basket swept across the top branches of a tree.
Unconsciously Eve edged her mount closer to Fitz as they waited tensely, watching the basket skimming the treetops. The figure had apparently given up tossing off the ballast and was now pulling on some ropes. Eve’s horse danced nervously as the large object grew closer, as did the other animals, and she tightened her grip, murmuring calming words to the mare.
The balloonist managed to clear the woods, but he could not avoid the lone tree that lay a few yards past the others. The gondola crashed into the oak’s branches and was dragged further into the tree by the force of the balloon. The basket turned and bumped down through a few more branches. The man inside it came spilling out and tumbled the rest of the way through the tree to the ground.
Lily let out a shriek as Neville muffled a curse. Fitz spurred his horse forward toward the balloon, and the others followed suit. The wicker basket was wedged in the tree, tilting precariously, one side crushed. Some ropes dangled free; others were still attached to the huge silk balloon, now deflating on the grass beyond the tree.
Fitz jumped off his horse and ran to the figure lying on the ground. The man was quite still, his eyes closed, and one leg was bent awkwardly beneath him. Eve held her breath as Fitz knelt beside him.
“He’s breathing,” Fitz reported.
“Thank heavens.” Eve slid off her horse, as did the rest of them, and hurried over to Fitz and the balloonist.
“He’s unconscious and bleeding from this wound,” Fitz said, looking up at her. “And unless I’m mistaken, that leg is broken.”
Eve pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to Fitz as she sank onto the grass beside him. Fitz folded the cloth into a pad and pressed it against the bleeding wound. They all stared down at the injured man. His skin was tanned, and dark stubble dotted his square jaw and chin. His hair was a mass of wild black curls. He let out an inarticulate groan and moved his head. All of them leaned forward. His eyes popped open, eyes almost as dark as his hair, and he stared at them blankly for a moment.
“Mon dieu,” he said softly, and closed his eyes again.
“He’s French?” Camellia asked as she, too, dropped to her knees.
The stranger opened his eyes again and started to sit up, clapping a hand to his head and letting out another groan. Then he began to talk, spewing out French.
“What’s he saying?” Camellia asked.
Eve looked at Fitz. Her schoolroom French had mostly vanished through lack of use. The best she could do was recognize the language.
Fitz looked back at her and shrugged. “French was never my best subject. I think he’s asking about someone.”
They all looked up at the basket hanging above them, clearly empty.
“Was there someone else?” Eve asked. “What happened to him?”
It was Neville who said, “I think he’s talking about his balloon. He keeps calling it ‘his beauty,’ but I don’t think it’s a woman. He asked if it’s ruined.”
Neville began to speak in French to the man, his words halting. The man responded with another torrent of impassioned verbiage as he struggled to sit up. Neville looked blank, the flood of French obviously too much for his abilities.
“Excitable sort,” Neville commented.
Fitz put a hand on the Frenchman’s chest, firmly pressing him back to the ground. “Yes, that’s all very well, but you need to lie down. You’ve been injured. You’re going to hurt yourself further.”
With a groan, the man stopped talking, sinking back and closing his eyes. Neville began his halting French again, but the man shook his head.
“No, no. Please. Enough.” The balloonist raised his hand to his head. “I need—how you say—give me a moment. My head, it is—” He made a soft but explosive noise, pulling his hands apart dramatically.
“Your head hurts,” Camellia offered pragmatically.
“Oui. Merci. How is she? How is my balloon?”
They all turned to look at the huge collapsed bag of silk.
“Um. Well, it’s deflated, I’m afraid,” Fitz began.
“Good. That’s good. It won’t go—” He made a floating motion with his hands.
“No. That’s right. Monsieur . . .”
“Leveque. Barthelemy Leveque.” He tried to push himself up onto his elbows again. “I must get up. I must see—”
“No. I’m afraid you cannot. Besides this rather nasty cut on your head, which I don’t advise reopening, I am very much afraid that you have hurt your leg.”
“No. No. I must—my gondola—” Again he pushed up on his elbows, and this time Fitz relaxed the pressure of his hand. Leveque came halfway up before he paled and sank back down. “Yes. Well. Perhaps I rest . . . a little.”
Fitz stood up and turned to Neville. “Ride to the house and bring back some servants and a wagon. Tell them we’ll need planks or a door to put him on.”
“I’ll go with you,” Lily volunteered. “And get some bandages
.”
Eve started to protest but held her peace. It would not help to bring it to Lily’s attention that Eve did her best to keep Lily and Neville from being alone together. It would, she suspected, only make the girl start figuring out ways to evade her chaperonage. And there was little likelihood that there would be any loverlike exchanges on a fast ride back to the house for help. To suggest that Eve accompany them would seem odd; Lily scarcely needed help to get the man bandages.
So she said only, “Tell Mrs. Merriwether to prepare a bedroom for Monsieur Leveque.”
Lily and Neville rode off, and the other three settled down to wait with the injured Frenchman. He was restless, craning his head and frequently muttering to himself in French. Fitz stripped off his jacket and laid it over Leveque, who shivered a little and offered Fitz a faint smile.
“Merci. I am a little cool.” The Frenchman sounded rather surprised by the fact.
Eve leaned in closer to Fitz, murmuring softly, “Will he be all right, do you think?”
He turned to her, his brows knitting. “I’m not—” He stopped abruptly, and something flared in his eyes, then was quickly tamped down.
Eve realized suddenly how close her face was to his, and she stiffened, her cheeks flooding with color. “I—excuse me.”
She stood up and moved back. Fitz rose lithely and followed her. But his manner and tone were stiff as he went on in a low voice, “I cannot know for sure. If a broken leg and that cut are the worst of it, I think he’ll be fine. But who knows what damage has been done inside him?”
“Of course.” Awkward with Fitz now, Eve fell silent and looked back to where Camellia sat beside the Frenchman.
“Did you come all the way from France in your balloon?” Cam asked.
The stranger nodded. “Oui, from Paris. You know Paris, mademoiselle?”
“No. I’m from the United States.”
“Ah. I go there one day.”
Fitz shifted, then moved back to stand beside the Frenchman. Eve remained where she was, very aware of the distance between them. She wondered if it would always be like this now. Firmly she tried to suppress the little pang in her heart that the thought caused.
“You mean, you’re going to the United States in a balloon?” Cam asked in an awestruck voice.
“But yes! It has been done. Now I am traveling across the English Channel and up to Scotland.” His face fell. “Or I was.”
“It looks terribly exciting,” Camellia went on. “I’ve always wanted to go up in a hot-air balloon.”
“No. No.” Leveque looked distressed. “Is not hot air. That is old. Mine is gas balloon. Hydrogen. Much better. More control.”
“Camellia, perhaps we shouldn’t question Monsieur Leveque,” Eve began.
“No, no!” Leveque protested, waving one hand around dramatically. “It helps to talk. It take my mind off the, um—”
“The pain?” Eve asked sympathetically.
“What? No, no.” The Frenchman shrugged off his apparently broken leg. “It is ma belle—my balloon. Does it have, what you call them, rips?” He twisted his head.
“I shouldn’t think so,” Cam told him cheerfully. “It didn’t catch on the branches. When the basket caught, the balloon deflated. It’s spread out on the field.”
“Good. That is good.” He turned to look at Fitz. “You must be very careful when you fold it up.”
“Must I?” Fitz raised an eyebrow.
“Oui. Is very important. It is silk coated with rubber.”
“Don’t worry,” Cam hastily assured him. “I’ll oversee the work myself. We can put it and the basket in a barn. Right, Cousin Fitz?”
Fitz sighed. “Yes, I suppose we will. We cannot leave the thing lying in the field.” He turned a quizzical eye up to the tree. “Though I’m not so sure about the basket.”
“Sacré! It is ruined?” Leveque groaned, twisting to try to see up in the tree.
Things continued in this manner as they waited for Neville to return with the rescue party. Camellia was surprisingly good at calming down the Frenchman, responding to his instructions about the welfare of his equipment with assurances that all would be followed to the letter, then distracting him with more questions about ballooning.
Before long Neville and Lily returned, having ridden back faster than the wagon and servants. Lily had brought bandages and water, and they started to clean his wounds.
Neville pulled out a surprise of his own from the canvas sack they had brought and held it aloft. “I thought you could use a bit of medicinal brandy to get you through the process.”
Leveque’s dark eyes lit up. “Ah! Merci, monsieur.” He took the bottle and drank from it.
Eve began to bandage Leveque’s scrapes and cuts, and Fitz moved quickly to help her. She cast a grateful glance at him, and he smiled back, and for that moment, at least, things were as easy between them as they had always been.
Leveque continued to medicate himself liberally, holding out the bottle in invitation to Neville. Neville dropped down beside him and took a swig from the proffered bottle, offering it to Fitz.
Fitz rolled his eyes as he declined. “Perhaps one of us should still be sober while we get him into the wagon.”
Neville and Leveque had no such worries, and by the time the wagon arrived they were companionably singing songs in French—at which Neville apparently was more proficient at than speaking.
Lily and Camellia, watching Neville conduct an imaginary choir as they roared out the unintelligible words, giggled, and even Eve could not help but smile, though she added with a small sigh, “I cannot believe that this is what Lord Stewkesbury was envisioning for his cousins’ outings.”
“Oh, Cousin Oliver’s not really so stuffy,” Lily told her. “He can be quite nice when he unbends.”
“Better for Leveque to be foxed when they lift him into that wagon,” Fitz put in. “Just be glad that the girls don’t understand French.”
Eve smiled faintly. “I am aware of the use of alcohol to dim the pain; it’s a practice favored by military men. I am only surprised that you are not joining them in the medicating.”
“I am quite taken aback by it myself.” Fitz grinned. “I think I must be becoming a dull fellow. One hopes that Oliver will return soon, before I slide irredeemably into a life of responsibility.”
The head groom, a man accustomed to broken bones, directed the footmen and grooms as they picked up the Frenchman and laid him out on the door they had brought along. Despite their care, Leveque paled beneath his tan, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Better that way,” Neville commented, standing up and straightening his cuffs.
He did not, Eve noticed, appear nearly as inebriated as he had moments earlier when he sang with Leveque. His eyes twinkled a little as he smiled at her. “One has to keep up the patients’ spirits, doesn’t one? I’m sure Fitz will tell you that I have the hardest head in Christendom.”
The party rode back to the house, where the butler supervised carrying the wounded man up the stairs and into a room at the end of the hall. Leveque had awakened during the ride back to the house, and from the ashen color of his skin and the drops of sweat that dotted his forehead, Eve suspected that he wished he could have passed out again.
The doctor arrived and inspected the patient, then announced that, as they had suspected, Leveque’s leg was broken, though, he added cheerfully, at least it was his lower leg, not his thigh, and only one of the bones.
“Much better. Much better. Easier to keep the leg from shortening.” Then he shooed the women out of the room, keeping Fitz and Neville to pull the leg back into place.
“Well!” Camellia looked disgruntled as they left the room and walked toward their own rooms. “As if we couldn’t stomach seeing a leg set.”
“Thank you very much, my dear, but I think I would prefer not to see a leg set,” Eve replied.
As if to punctuate her words, there was a loud cry behind the closed door, followed by a stri
ng of French words that could only be curses.
“Me too,” Lily agreed with a shiver.
Even Camellia looked paler. “Still . . . I resent him assuming I couldn’t stand it.”
Eve chuckled as she stopped at her bedroom door. “I am sure you do.”
A few minutes later, after she had washed and changed into one of the muslin dresses she had inherited from Rose, Eve emerged from her room to find Fitz coming down the hall.
“How is our patient?” she asked.
“Asleep. The doctor left him a draught for the pain, so at least Carr won’t have to drink him under the table again tonight. Dr. Adams assured me it would be at least six to eight weeks before the man’s leg heals. He’ll be laid up in bed the whole time so the splints can keep his bone in place, else they’ll knit wrong. I hate to think what Stewkesbury will say to having a French houseguest for the next two months.”
“Mm. Well, there was no way you could avoid his crashing here.”
“I suppose not. Though somehow I cannot help but think that if Oliver had been here it would not have happened.”
“He causes the wind to blow?” Eve asked lightly.
Fitz cast her a sideways grin. “Sometimes I think he might. Things run more smoothly when Oliver is around.” He brightened a little as he added, “Although I must say that since the Bascombes arrived he’s had his challenges.”
“Camellia has volunteered to keep Monsieur Leveque entertained, so that should help. She seems rather fascinated by balloon travel.”
“Camellia is fascinated by anything that involves movement or danger. Best, I assume, is both of them together, so that should make ballooning a favorite.” He turned toward her. “Do you think it’s likely Cam is going to start suffering the pangs of love, too?”
Eve shrugged. “I have not seen her pay such attention to any other man.”
Fitz let out a small groan. “Now I shall have to investigate him, won’t I? Make sure he’s not married or a lunatic—well, I mean, more of a lunatic than any other balloonist. Oliver really will have my head if I let Cam develop a tendre for some lowborn French madman.”