Laurie Alice Eakes - [Daughters of Bainbridge House 02]

by A Flight of Fancy

  “He said Lady Whittaker sent him to help, as she wanted no accidents in her fields but didn’t want to stop the flow of progress.” Philip Sorrell grinned like a schoolboy let out on an early holiday.

  “Don’t expect she’d like us here if she knew you were,” Roger Kent added.

  The laborer who looked like Whittaker snorted.

  “Well, I am here, so we can send this fellow away.” Cassandra turned toward the man and reached out her hand. “I can take the torch.”

  “Aye, miss.” He started to hand it to her, then swung away with an abruptness that sent sparks swirling behind him like dancing stars, and stuck the torch in the ground near the first one. Cassandra remained where she was, frozen, her hand still outstretched and shaking. Her mouth felt like someone had rolled a ball of lint over her tongue, and she could not breathe. The stench of pine pitch made her stomach burn. For a moment, sickness rose in her throat. She swallowed and returned her attention to the balloon.

  “It is—” The words emerged as a croak. She swallowed again. “The balloon looks filled now.” That was better, strong and steady. “Shall I untie the lines?”

  “If you can.” Mr. Sorrells leaned over the side of the basket. “Or that fellow can help you.”

  “Balloon’s filling too slowly.” Mr. Kent bounced up and down, making the basket sway. “Let us be on our way before the night is gone.”

  Both men looked so excited, their faces glowing in the firelight, that Cassandra ached to clamber over the edge of the basket and join them. Going up would make her life complete. She would not feel the slightest twinge of regret over Whittaker if she could sail into the heavens. But the men would not let her this time, not on this balloon’s maiden voyage. They thought it too dangerous in the event of a mechanical failure. But at least they said only this time and not never. Whittaker had persisted in saying, “When we’re married, you will never . . .” as though she would lose interest because she bore his name and wore a ring on her finger.

  The man who looked too much like him for her comfort stepped to one of the lines and began to untie the knot. Heart pounding, Cassandra followed suit.

  “Is the tubing tight?” Mr. Kent said above her. “We want to ensure the tube doesn’t come out so we keep the balloon inflated properly.”

  Mr. Sorrells’s sigh sounded loud enough to be air escaping from the silk bag. “For the tenth time, Roger, yes, the tube is tight.”

  Of course it would be. It must be. The tube ran high enough into the inflated balloon that no one could reach it from the basket. A design flaw. Yet the balloon had to be far enough above the brazier and bottle of acid to keep it from catching fire. That had happened and men had died in other flights. Surely a compromise could be worked out, or another method . . .

  “Miss Bainbridge, please.” Mr. Kent leaned down right above her. “Are you going to untie that knot or leave us tilting like a seesaw?”

  Cassandra glanced up. Indeed, with the other ropes untied, the basket tilted dangerously from the tug of the balloon. Coals could spill from the brazier, and vitriol-coated iron shavings could spill from the beaker that, with the heat, created the necessary light hot air for the balloon to work. Her inattention might have caused a disaster.

  In her haste to untie the knot, her fingers fumbled, making amok of the lines.

  “Let me.” The man nudged her fingers away and loosed the rope.

  Cassandra jumped as though splashed with the acid bath. The man’s hands were rough, dry, and cracked, not a gentleman’s hands. Yet their touch sent a jolt through her, heat, a breathless longing. She glanced at him to see his reaction, but he stood motionless, his hands clasped behind his back, his head tilted up to the ascending balloon.

  The ascending balloon! She was not even watching after waiting for this moment for so long, wanton that she was. Her cheeks burned as she gazed toward the heavens. The silhouette of bulbous silk and oval basket was etched against the stars, blurring as the distance went beyond her range of sight, since she had not thought to wear her spectacles. Whoops of joy from Sorrells and Kent floated through the air like a shower of gold rain. Pure joy. And she forgot the man nearby, that mortifying flash of wanting to be touched. Her longing focused on the diminishing sight of something she had helped design.

  She pounded her cane on the sheep-shorn grass. “I should be up there too.”

  “No, my dear, you should not be.” Whittaker’s voice came from the laborer with rough garb and hands.

  She spun toward him. Her cane stuck in the ground, soft from the rain of the day before, and she twisted her right ankle, the one most badly burned. A cry spilled from her lips and tears stung her eyes.

  “Cassandra.” Whittaker caught her. Strong arms, stronger than she remembered, folded around her. “Are you in pain? Stupid question. Of course you are. Shall I carry you back to the house?”

  Ah, the temptation to say yes, to let those strong arms enfold her and hold her against him, to rest her head on his broad shoulder. Yet he had said she shouldn’t be in that balloon, had denied her the greatest desire of her heart.

  She wrenched herself free. “What are you doing here?”

  “This is my field.”

  “You are supposed to be in the Dale protecting your looms.”

  His face twisted. “More than you know. But when I heard you were helping with this balloon launch, I came to ensure you did not go up with them.”

  “You have no right.”

  “You are staying in my house. You are under my protection.”

  “You have odd ways of protecting your guests.” Cassandra curled her upper lip. “You have not once made an appearance. And speaking of appearances, what are you doing dressed like that and—” She wrinkled her nose, aware now that she was close to him. “You reek like sheep and ale.”

  “And you smell like apples. A little sweet. A little sour. So refreshing.” His voice dropped to the low timbre, the smooth pitch, that never failed to send a shiver racing through her.

  It did not fail this time. She clutched her cane like a weapon. If he came near her again, she would . . . she would . . .

  “I am protecting my looms, as you said I am.” He took that step nearer to her.

  She did nothing.

  “And as you see, I am ensuring your safety, my dear.”

  “I am not your dear.”

  “You made a promise you always would be.” He stepped close enough to touch her again but did not reach out.

  She was tall for a female, not like Lydia, but more than Honore and Mama. Yet he was still a full head taller. To look into his face rather than at the top button of his jacket, she had to tilt her head back, as she had done so often when she was his dear, his darling, his love, and he hers, when her face turned up to his meant an invitation almost from their first meeting. Certainly from the first time they found themselves alone together in one of the walkways at Vauxhall. Music and fireworks in the distance. Darkness and quiet around them. The lightest brush of his lips on hers felt like the explosions coloring the skies above the trees. She should have known then that he was not right for her, should have confessed to Mama or Lydia—though neither had been around—that she could not sort out whether she loved him or lusted for him. The trouble caused by the latter had surely suppressed the former.

  “I lied,” she whispered through a constricted throat.

  She should be revolted by the odors of sheep and ale. Yet beneath, she caught his familiar scents, the clean earthiness of leather, the fresh, exotic tang of sandalwood.

  She forced air into her lungs to make her voice stronger. “I mean, I was mistaken. I only—”

  He kissed her lightly, tenderly, so sweetly her eyes burned. Then he turned away from her. “I cannot stay. Without the mills, as you have most likely noticed, Whittaker Hall will fall into rack and ruin, and the scores of men and women and their children who rely on me for a living will be penniless at best, thanks to my wastrel father and gamester brother.”

/>   A difficulty her seven thousand pounds in dowry would have solved without him having to rely on the income from the mills.

  The mills. Luddites. Danger.

  “Whittaker,” she called after him.

  He kept going, his long legs eating up the ground to create distance between them.

  “Geoffrey?” She stumbled after him. “You are not truly in danger. Wait! You cannot—”

  He could not what? Save his livelihood and that of all those who worked in the mills and on the estate? But surely not. An earl hired people to do what needed to be done. He did not go himself. But if he did go himself, the choice belonged to him. She had no more right to stop him than he had to stop her from going up in a balloon. They meant nothing to one another. They were nothing to one another. Nothing. Nothing.

  She rubbed her right thigh. Even through her petticoat and shift and skirt, she felt the ridge of a scar forming where once a row of blisters had lined her leg, blisters that had almost cost her that leg. Mama had warned her. Lydia had warned her. Lydia had married for the infatuation of passion the first time and regretted it for years. Now she had found her love, the man God wanted for her. But then, Lydia was beautiful, perfect, not hideously marked. Cassandra would devote herself to science as much as Father and Society allowed. Whittaker would find another lady, another dowry.

  Cassandra pressed her lips together and turned to the torches. Both threatened to die. She needed to light fresh ones to help guide the men back, if they could get back. They could raise and lower their elevation to find different currents. The sails and paddles might enable them to steer.

  With Whittaker gone, the pitch burned her nose. The night wind roared in her ears like that angry crowd pushing at the carriage, brandishing their torches, demanding more light from the nobleman inside. They were mad. She had been mad, shamed at her behavior. The torches brought memory of pain rushing back so she couldn’t move. In seconds, her friends could die. The field would be dark. The men might not know where to land or even if they landed in the right place.

  Shaking, she lifted one of the sticks with its end dipped in pitch. Holding it at arm’s length and bending from the waist to keep herself as far from the flame as possible, she touched the new brand to the old. It flared at once, a white-hot light shooting into the night. Now she either needed to hold onto it or plant it in the ground like the others. She could not hold it. Her arm ached from the effort of holding it straight out from her body. She could not kneel to set it into the ground. If she did, she might not get up again. She must hold it until she needed to light a new one—another difficulty. She could never hold two.

  Her hand trembled and sparks flew. One dropped onto her sleeve. She screamed, slapped it out with her other hand. The torch dropped from her fingers. It lay on the fortunately damp grass and smoldered, more smoke now than flame, invisible in the dark.

  “This will never work,” she cried aloud.

  She. Must. Get. Ahold. Of herself. Must. Must. Must.

  Teeth clenched, she picked up another torch. Just enough fire burned on the one Whittaker had lit for her to ignite the pitch of the new brand. Before the flame flared high, she shoved the end into the soft ground as she had seen Whittaker do. There, she had accomplished something on her own, overcome one fear. But the wind had changed, stiffened. First the torch flared higher from a gust in one direction, then another. She glanced up, sniffing for rain, straining her eyes for signs of clouds on the horizon or, more importantly, a sight of the balloon with its tongue of fire licking against the night.

  The rain, the tang of salt from the sea, drifted on the wind. Dampness moistened her face, but no clouds showed. The torchlight blinded her from what sailed across the heavens, whether God- or man-created. Rain could prove disastrous. Besides getting poor Mr. Sorrells and Mr. Kent soaked, it could put out the brazier that produced the hot air and make them crash.

  She laughed aloud, more a snort than a true expression of mirth. Of course it would rain. This was England. Yet men ballooned in the Lake District, the lands with the most rain she had ever heard of in England or the continent. They would have to learn to manage if they wanted to make ballooning a practical form of travel.

  Out of breath, her legs burning, she paused to light another torch and felt a drop of rain on her cheek. She couldn’t stay. She couldn’t wait for them. The physicians told her to have a care for her health until she had fully regained her strength. She had a mile to walk back to the house. If she didn’t start back now, she would be drenched. The torches wouldn’t stay lit in the rain anyway.

  Muscles so tense she could barely place one foot in front of the other, Cassandra retraced her steps across the field to the parkland gate.

  “Don’t do it!” Despite being breathless from running across his fields to a horse, followed by a mad gallop to town and then a race through the streets on foot, Whittaker tried to make his voice heard. Above the roar of twenty men bellowing destruction of the greedy mill owners, he doubted anyone heard him. “Destruction isn’t the answer.”

  If they heard him, they ignored him. Hugh had worked the followers of so-called Captain Lud into a frenzy of anger and hatred for anyone who owned, rented, or even worked one of the looms before Whittaker managed to reach the outskirts of the Dale, where his uncle had predicted the future of the weaving industry would lie and thus had built his mills.

  “The days of the small one or two looms in a man’s cottage are done, lad,” Uncle Hern had said before he died.

  And therein lay the trouble. Men working the stocking and cloth looms at home couldn’t make enough money now with the competition of the larger mills that could keep men hired for production all day and all night, where the looms were owned instead of rented. Mills that could afford the latest designs in machinery. Progress was not fair to the men who had done the same work as their fathers and their fathers before them. Whittaker had not created the change, though, and he needed the money too badly to let his uncle’s hard work and sacrifices go up in flames or fall to the axes many of the men carried.

  “If you destroy the mills,” he tried again, “you’ll have no place to work. At the least—”

  “Stubble it, Geoff.” Hugh grabbed his shoulder with a hand like an iron shackle.

  Whittaker stubbled it—for the moment.

  “We gotta teach these mill owners a lesson so’s they pay us a fair wage.” Hugh dropped his hand. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna stop these men outside an army.”

  Which they just might get, and Whittaker was on the wrong side. If only he could tell them he paid a fair wage, took less in profits so the men could support their families. He was not responsible for the numbers of them who drank half their week’s wages before they got home.

  Except that had not been so much of a problem when the men worked at home with their wives and children around them, helping, collecting the fees.

  Whittaker tried another tack. “But surely the Hern mills have guards. These men aren’t armed.”

  “The Hern mills don’t got enough guards.” Rob had come up on Whittaker’s other side.

  Probably not, but Major Crawford knew about the imminent attack. He might send soldiers. Guards with muskets could do more damage than men with axes and cudgels. Unfortunately, they flourished firebrands too. A touch of flame to a bale of cotton fresh off the ship from America, a bundle of flax recently harvested in Ireland, or, worst of all, oily wool from his very own sheep, and the conflagration would destroy his livelihood.

  As fire had destroyed his marriage plans.

  “They’ll hang you if you’re caught,” was all Whittaker could think to say.

  But surprisingly few men had been caught, fewer hanged for their destruction of looms and workshops in Nottingham and Yorkshire. The men around him knew it. They remained too anonymous or too dedicated to the same cause as everyone else to betray one another. The three he could identify for the authorities were not enough, were too unimportant. The authorities wanted leaders, men
whose capture, trial, and execution would matter enough to the others to stop future revolts. No revolutions by the mobs would happen in England.

  He charged forward with the others, seeking faces, listening for names. The men wore caps pulled low to shield their eyes, beards to conceal their facial features, even scarves as makeshift masks on this cold and increasingly damp night.

  Whittaker prayed for rain. A deluge might dampen their enthusiasm for destruction. But the clouds only loosed their water in an occasional shower, leaving enough dry spells for the torches to be relighted and burn brightly, and leaving his prayer as unanswered as had been every one since Cassandra’s accident. Like his father, God punished him by ignoring him or taking away something he dearly wanted.

  “Oh, Cassandra.” He murmured her name like a groan of pain, then skidded to a halt.

  What was he thinking to pray for rain? It might save his mill, but Cassandra’s health was not good enough for her to be out in the rain, soaked to the skin. If she caught a chill after fighting the fever brought on by her burns, she might succumb to a lung fever.

  No, no, God would not hurt Cassandra to punish him. He knew that in his head. His heart ached so badly he could not breathe.

  “Going pudding-hearted?” Hugh called back. He and Rob spun away from the mob and flanked Whittaker again.

  Whittaker pressed a hand to his side. “Stitch in my side is all.”

  “Uh-huh.” Hugh prodded Whittaker forward with something harder than a fist to the spine.

  Rob grabbed his upper arm in sausage-like fingers. “You wouldn’t be wanting to slip off and rouse the authorities, would you?”

  “Not at all.” The absolute truth. He had already warned the authorities. The stitch was real too. He should not have gone to see Cassandra. Yet he could not have risked her going up in a balloon. Recently two men had died when their balloon caught fire and crashed. Cassandra must have nothing more happen to her. He did not know if her friends would protect her. But even if they did, those friends should not be alone with her, two men and one female in the middle of the night. She was not thinking clearly. Or at all.