A Flight of Fancy (9 page)

Whittaker bit down on his tongue until it hurt to stop himself from protesting. He thought he paid a fair wage, but he wasn’t
running a charity. The men had to work hard, but then, so did he between running the mills and the estate.

“You’ll get the owner’s attention, all right,” Whittaker said. “The attention of a blunderbuss round in the head.”

“Gotta take the risk for the cause.” Hugh sounded cheerful, excited. “But if you are too much of a coward . . .”

Silence fell around the room like the deep twilight outside the window. Nearby an owl hooted, signaling nightfall indeed. Below, the taproom grew louder, boisterous with men arguing over the merits, the dangers, the necessity of rebelling against factory owners of cloth and stocking.

“Let them send more soldiers.” One drunken voice rose above the tumult loud enough to penetrate the floorboards. “They do not scare me.”

“They should,” Whittaker muttered before he could stop himself.

“Coward for truth,” Hugh taunted.

Whittaker shrugged even if the man could not see the movement. “Gotta stay pretty for my lady, is all.”

That made the men laugh. The tension left.

A chair scraped across the bare floor. “Tomorrow night,” Rob said. “We’ve got twenty men. We’ll torch the place.”

Over Whittaker’s dead body. Which, sadly, might be the truth.

He had to get the information to Crawford, who was due at the cottage sometime this night. But Whittaker wanted to see Cassandra first, had to see her, tell her—what? That he still loved her no matter what, in the event he died saving his mills or helping the rebels? He’d already told her and she hadn’t wanted to know. Still—

“Tomorrow night,” the other men chorused, Whittaker included.

They slipped out of the inn via the window, grabbing ahold of a tree and descending into the blackness beneath the spreading branches. Whittaker waited until all the men should have been gone. He wanted none of them to see him heading toward Whittaker land, the woods of the parkland, instead of the laborer’s cottage he now had to call home.

The leaves rustled, dry in the early autumn night. From practice, his feet found purchase without flaw. In seconds he touched the ground, then stood waiting, listening, chilly in the air from the ale-wet sleeve. He could hear nothing of his surroundings over the raucous singing from inside the taproom. He moved away from the tree onto the path leading past the inn, then onto the road. He headed toward his cottage, striding with purpose until the tumult of the men fell behind and the night grew silent save for the wind, light and damp, portending rain, swirling through the hedgerows. In moments, he would reach a gap in that hedge, one he had made himself. Across a ditch and over a field would see him to his own wall. His entire being ached with the need to see Cassandra, talk to her. Surely matters would be different without family present, so he could learn . . .

That she truly wanted rid of him? That it was her idea and not her father’s? Or, worse, her belief that God did not, after all, want them together?

“Surely not, Lord. Surely she is the right woman for my helpmeet, my—” Talking aloud would not keep his movements unobtrusive when the cut in the shrubbery arrived. He had so little time to reach the Hall and return to his temporary home before Crawford’s call.

He found the cut, the hint of a dimple in the even line of branches. He turned sideways to slip through—

And an arm snaked around his neck, a hand clamped over
his mouth, another hand stuck the point of a blade at the base of his spine. “Where are you going, my friend?”

Major Gabriel Crawford, servant of the Crown, lackey of Lord Bainbridge, blackmailer, and, worst of all, barrier between Whittaker and Cassandra. Oh, he had seen how the major had greeted her at the carriage, had watched from an attic window as another man was solicitous, guiding the lady who should have been Whittaker’s wife over the threshold.

But she was not his wife because he had failed to protect her. Because, like his mother, he was unable to control his passions. Whittaker knew it, accepted that Bainbridge was probably right in thinking him not good enough for Cassandra, leading her in the wrong direction as his mother had gone in the wrong direction. And yet he loved her still. He still wanted her as his wife, and no blackguard of a soldier, officer or not, was going to stop him.

“I am going to inspect my estate,” Whittaker said.

“No, you are not.” The blade jabbed without piercing, probably a rapier with a duello practice button on the end, not dangerous at the moment but too easily so. “You’re being followed and will lead the men right to the Hall.”

“Then why not right to you here and now?”

“I was able to detain them before stopping you.”

“But—” Whittaker closed his eyes and counted to ten, ten images of Cassandra—her nose literally between the pages of a book because she refused to wear her spectacles in front of him, Cassandra turning her face up so sweet and pretty in sunlight or candlelight, Cassandra clinging to that bedpost and as pale as the sheets on the bed behind her . . .

He was no good at this game.

“You need someone else,” Whittaker said. “I’ll get caught and killed if I cannot tell if someone is following me.”

“There is no one else we can . . . ahem . . .”

Blackmail into risking being killed. No one they trusted.

“One of the rebels for a price?” Whittaker suggested.

“Family loyalty amongst our better families works much better.” Crawford laughed with the same dry rustle as the wind through the hedge. “Family, country, God, in that order of loyalty. Do you not agree?”

“God first,” Whittaker said.

The words were reflex, though. He hadn’t put God first since Cassandra broke off their betrothal the first time. Or perhaps not before that, or she would not have felt the break was necessary.

He felt as though he deflated like one of those balloons of which she was so inexplicably, dangerously fond.

Again, the autumn-leaf laugh. “If family did not come first, my lord, you would not be here now.” Crawford’s voice hardened. “But you are staying here. You will not be sneaking back to your house under any circumstances. You are being watched and will be stopped.”

“By whom?”

The major did not answer him.

“I have information for you.” Whittaker hoped the abrupt change of subject would disconcert Crawford.

“I thought you might. That’s why I was on my way to your cottage. I will meet you there in five minutes.” Then the major was gone, slipping beyond the hedge and into the ditch with barely a whisper.

Whittaker stumbled back onto the road as though he had stepped into the shrubbery due to illness brought on by an excess of ale. If anyone came close enough, the stench of it
would lend credence to the ploy. But no one came close. He thought he heard voices far behind—drunken, singing voices from the inn.

He arrived at his cottage, little more than a hut with one room downstairs and two bedchambers above with ceilings so slanted from the roof that he could stand upright on only one side. The cottage was on his land. During the day, he tended his own sheep. His shepherd had mysteriously disappeared. Everyone presumed he had gone to Nottingham or Yorkshire to join the rebels there—what was left of them after the military had come in. Lancashire was relatively quiet, the leaders of the Luddite movement against the owners of the mills mostly caught, jailed, and either awaiting trial or hanged already. But pockets of resistance continued. Whittaker was supposed to ferret them out, find the leader, and bring him to justice, while trying to stay alive himself.

Inside his cottage, despite knowing Crawford would slip in at any moment, Whittaker set the fire flaming high enough to boil a pot of water for cleansing his ale-stained shirt, as well as a kettle for tea. Crawford loved tea, requested it with unwonted courtesy on his other visits. Perhaps he would be in a better humor, more willing to let Whittaker see Cassandra just once, if tea preparations were already under way upon his arrival.

When the major strode into the cottage without knocking, Whittaker was spooning bohea into a chipped china pot.

“Very good.” Crawford arranged himself on the room’s sole seat, a settee without cushions. He, like Whittaker, was dressed in a laborer’s garb of rough wool, linen, and leather. “You should not be so clean, though, Geoffrey.” Crawford’s familiarity set Whittaker’s teeth on edge. “Shepherds stink of sheep.”

“Not this one.” Whittaker ladled steaming water into the
teapot. The tannic fragrance of black tea wafted from the spout. “You’ll have to bring me more sugar if you want it.”

“I do not.” Crawford grinned, too relaxed, too pleased with himself. “Your betrothed—or should I say your former betrothed—is rather a pretty girl, isn’t she?”

Whittaker said nothing. He poured the tea into an earthenware mug and managed to hand it to the major, not dump it into the man’s lap. Whittaker had done too many things of which the Lord would not approve. He did not need to add to his piles of sins. Especially not now.

“But the younger sister is a stunner,” Crawford continued, raising the cup to his lips. “All that yellow hair and lively spirit. She and her ladyship are planning a dinner party for your neighbors.”

“Miss Honore is a charming young lady.” Whittaker took his own mug of tea and propped one shoulder against the mantel shelf so he could look down on the major, his only advantage—height while the other man sat. “A bit of a featherbrain compared to her sister.”

“Bluestocking.” Crawford curled his upper lip. “All Miss Bainbridge talks about is aeronautics. I made the mistake of telling her I flew in one of those contraptions once.”

Whittaker stiffened. “You did not.”

“But I did.” Crawford laughed and even colored slightly. “Admit I unmanned myself by being sick over the side. Good thing I chose the Army over the Navy, eh? No high places for me. She is so determined to go up in one herself.”

“She will not. I mean, she cannot up here. Her friends are back in London.”

“Ah, but they are not. Now, what news do you have for—”

“What did you say?” Whittaker leaned over Crawford, his
cup of scalding tea tipping the liquid precariously close to the lip. “Her London ballooning friends are here?”

“They called on Miss Bainbridge this afternoon. I had to assist Miss Honore with arranging the blue drawing room for dancing and met the gentlemen.”

Gentlemen indeed. Barely.

Whittaker set his cup aside before he broke it. “About the news I have for you.”

“Of course.” Crawford sipped at his tea with a delicacy that would have been effeminate on a less well set-up man. Miss Honore was probably forming a
tendre
for the major already. “But I thought you’d want to know that these gentlemen with the balloon plan to take it up tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” Whittaker’s jaw hardened. “They cannot.”

“Of course they can. Now, about that information?”

“From where are they launching it?” Whittaker demanded.

Crawford shrugged.

“Do you want your news?”

“Your south pasture.” Crawford smiled. “With her ladyship’s permission, of course.”

“We shall see about that.” Whittaker spoke between clenched teeth.

“You cannot go there, you know.” Crawford yawned. “Now, do please get on with things. I am ready for my bed.”

“News.” For a moment, thinking about how he could stop a balloon launch that very well might include Cassandra, Whittaker could not remember what he needed to tell the major. The single room of the cottage ground floor spun out of focus, the fire turning into a conflagration tumbling from the sky, his lady smashing to her death. It had happened to others.

Surely, after her experience, the fire needed to make the air
for the balloon would stop her from going up. Then again, Cassandra would think of them separately, the fire of a thrown torch, the coals in a brazier for her latest passion.

“News,” Crawford snapped.

Whittaker jumped, speared his fingers through his now overly long hair. “The Hern cotton mill is their next target. Tomorrow night. Twenty men intending to torch it.”

The mill, whose income was saving Whittaker Hall from ruin and from rebuilding the destroyed mill, now that he did not have Cassandra’s dowry. As Major Crawford gazed at him, green eyes wide and mildly amused, Whittaker felt like someone had run his guts through a spinning machine.

He could stop Cassandra from a balloon launch, or he could save his mill and the livelihoods of two dozen families.

8

Cassandra sat at the desk in the sitting room she shared with Honore and smiled down at the note she had found beneath her counterpane her first night. Somehow, seeing those words lessened the pain in her legs and renewed hope to her soul. Somehow, somehow, Roger Kent and Philip Sorrells had bribed a servant to slip her the message.

In the event you’ve been forbidden to see us or something
, Mr. Sorrells had written.

No one had forbidden her. Whittaker wasn’t there and could not forbid her even if he were. She could see the men openly. They were educated gentlemen from good, if not noble, families. Their birth kept them on the fringes of Society but not out of it. Lady Whittaker would not object to their calling on Cassandra in the open. So she wrote them at their lodgings in the Dale and awaited their visit.

It came immediately, though their visit had to wait until the Hall was not crowded with other guests so Cassandra and her friends could discuss ballooning freely. Those were weeks of so many calls from neighbors wanting to meet the Bainbridge ladies that Cassandra did not have to feign the fatigue that kept her to her room in the between times, even
taking a few of her meals on a tray. They were days in which Lady Whittaker never found the opportunity to speak with Cassandra alone.

Could she manage that until Christmastide? Doubtful. Her legs would be healed by then, the physicians assured her. Healed except for the scars that would never leave.

But Mr. Kent and Mr. Sorrells had managed to have a few private words with Cassandra while she showed them the orangery and Honore entertained the major with asking his advice on room arrangement for a party the following week.