Ravishing the Heiress (23 page)

She stilled. Then, slowly, deliberately, she drew her legs up and pulled the blanket over them.

“Good morning,” he said.

She sat up, obviously about to pretend that he hadn’t seen her unclothed almost up to her knees. “Good morning.”

She glanced about the room. Even though he’d put on his trousers and his shirt and was presentable enough to his own wife, she seemed intent on not looking at him. He was not, as a rule, terribly excited by primness in a woman. But somehow, her primness seemed not so much stuffiness as avoidance. As if she herself did not want to know how she’d conduct herself in a more charged situation. And that made him curious: How would she conduct herself?

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

“Passably. Did you?”

“Let’s see. In the middle of the night, I had to get up and go sit in a chair because my wife doesn’t like to sleep with me. How do you think I slept?”

She stared at her knees, now tented up beneath the bedcover. “I would have taken the chair.”

He scoffed. “As if I’d let you sleep in a chair while I took the bed.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Did I do something?”

Her hand had been tracing random patterns on the sheets. She stopped. “Why would you think you did something?”

“I don’t have any precise recollections. But the bed is small and a man’s impulses strong. Besides, you knocked over a glass of water while fleeing the bed. That would be a pretty good indication.”

“It was nothing particularly egregious. Probably wouldn’t have alarmed anyone but an old maid like me.”

“You were alarmed?”

“I fled, didn’t I?”

Why didn’t you give in?

And with that thought came a sudden memory, of arousal, her body pressed against his, her breast in his hand, warm and pliant, her nipple hard with excitement.

He sucked in a long breath. “You know you have nothing to fear from me.”

“Of course not,” she concurred all too readily.

He left the room for her to dress. Then he returned and banished her. “I need to sleep another hour or so.”

He locked the door and laid down on the bed. He would doze some, but not yet, not until he’d exorcised this unwanted lust that had abruptly taken hold of him.

So for now, he would allow himself not only to remember what had taken place during the night, but to imagine what would happen in slightly less than four years, when he’d have her naked and open beneath him.

Just this once.

F
itz, are you there?” Millie rapped loudly on the door. It was ten o’clock, two and a half hours since she left him. “Wake up, I need to talk to you.”

“I’m not sleeping. I’m in the bath. What is it?”

“My mother—” She swallowed. “She is not well.”

“Give me one minute.”

Millie looked down again at the telegram in her hand.

She could not believe it. Not her mother, too—she was far too young. But Mr. Goring, Mrs. Graves’s personal solicitor, would not have taken it upon himself to cable unless the situation was critical.

Fitz opened the door. His shirt clung to his person and he was still toweling his hair, the abandoned bathtub half visible behind a screen.

He took the cable from her hand and scanned it. Giving the cable back to her, he tossed aside the towel and pulled out a book of schedules from his satchel.

“There is a train that departs Gorlago in three hours. If we leave right away, in a fast carriage, we might make it.”

They were twenty miles out of Gorlago. The road was decent, but narrow and steep at times. Three hours seemed a very optimistic assessment.

She did not argue.

“Have Bridget pack our things but we are not taking the trunks—they will slow us. Arrange with the innkeeper to send the luggage and take only what you can carry in hand. I’ll find us that fast carriage. Be ready when I get back.”

He was back in a quarter hour with a lightly sprung
calèche
and a child of about eleven. Millie climbed in with a picnic basket, Bridget followed her with a satchel stuffed with a change of clothes for everyone.

“Where’s the coachman?”

He flicked the reins. The horses eased into a trot. “I’ll drive.”

“What about directions? And the changing of horses?”

“That’s what this young gentleman is for—he will tell us where to go. And when we reach Gorlago he will stay with cattle and carriage until his uncle comes for them. He is six stones lighter than his uncle, so I chose him.”

The boy’s slighter weight and their lack of luggage made the difference—as did the Italian railway’s tendency to run behind schedule. They arrived at the Gorlago station ten minutes after the published departure time for the train to Milan via Bergamo, but had just enough time to purchase tickets and catch the train—Fitz, the last one up, had to run and leap onto the steps.

By the middle of the afternoon they were in Milan. Thanks to the modern marvel that was the Mont Cenis Tunnel, twenty hours later their express train pulled into Paris.

Now they only had to hurry to Calais and cross the English Channel.

S
omeone gently shook Millie by the shoulder. “Hot air balloons—do you want to see?”

Millie opened her eyes—she didn’t realize she’d nodded off.

There were indeed seven or eight hot air balloons in an open field, most of the envelopes still limp tangles of bright
colors, in the process of being inflated. “Is this a competition of some sort?”

“Maybe. Look, there is even an airship.”

“Where?”

“It’s behind the trees now. But I saw it, it had propellers.”

Millie rotated her neck. It rather ached from her nap. “
Calèches
, trains, and hot air balloons, I feel as if we are attempting
Around the World in Eighty Days
.”

“The current record is sixty-seven days, so you will have to do a little better.”

“How far are we from Calais?”

“Seven miles or so.”

The sky was clear, but she could not help worrying. “I hope the Channel stays clear. Last time I had to wait overnight.”

He touched her hand briefly. “You’ll see her again. I’ll get you there in time.”

T
he weather, however, did not wish to cooperate. A heavy fog stuffed the entire channel; all ferries remained in port.

“How long before it lifts?” Millie asked anxiously. Fitz had been talking to ferrymen and fishermen.

“Nobody thinks it will lift today. Half of them don’t expect anything to happen before tomorrow afternoon, and the rest believe it’s one of those that will stick around for at least forty-eight hours.”

Her heart sank. “But we can’t wait that long. She might not last.”

“I know,” he said.

“Why haven’t they built the tunnel under the Channel yet? They’ve only been talking about it for as long as anyone has been alive.”

He gazed back toward the direction they’d come. Then he looked at her, one thumb pressed into his chin. “If you have the stomach for it, we can go above the Channel.”

“Above?”

“Remember that airship I saw? Crossing the Channel in a balloon has been done before. But it’s a dangerous undertaking—especially going from east to west.”

She stared at him for a second. She’d never been on an aerial device before—never even read Jules Verne’s
Five Weeks in a Balloon
. The idea of being thousands of feet above the ground did not hold any particular appeal for her, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

“Well, what are we waiting for?”

T
he airship was very peculiar looking.

Millie was familiar with a hot air balloon’s lightbulb-like shape. But the airship’s envelope looked more like an overfilled sausage. A rectangular wicker basket was suspended beneath. And from the back of this basket, two long poles protruded, each outfitted with propellers at the end, the blades almost as long as Millie was tall.

“Yes, she is safe as can be,” said the pilot, Monsieur Duval, to Fitz, in French. “The propellers are powered by batteries, none of that gasoline engine nonsense the Germans are trying. Just you wait. They will set themselves on fire yet.”

Millie was not sure that was what she wished to hear just now, even if they didn’t have a gasoline engine. She
was beginning to envy Bridget, who’d chosen to stay behind in Calais until she could cross the Channel by steamboat.

“How do you heat the air?” she asked.

“The air is not heated. That is hydrogen inside the envelope, madame.”

“Hydrogen is lighter than air, isn’t it? How will we descend?”

“Ah, very intelligent question, madame. There are two air sacks inside the hydrogen envelope and these we can fill or empty. And when they are filled, the entire weight of the airship becomes slightly larger than the lift provided by the hydrogen and we will come to a very gentle landing.”

She glanced at Fitz.

“Only if you wish to go,” he said. “But you must make up your mind soon. Or it will be dark before we reach the English coast.”

She expelled a long breath. “Let’s hurry, then.”

The moment they’d settled themselves inside the basket, which Monsieur Duval called a gondola, his assistant began tossing bags of earth overboard, while Monsieur Duval coaxed his battery-powered engine to life. The propellers rotated, at first lazily, then with vigor.

The basket lifted so gradually that Millie, absorbed with Monsieur Duval’s handling of valves and gauges, didn’t even notice they were airborne until the basket was three feet off the ground.

“Last chance to jump,” murmured Fitz.

“Same goes for you,” she said.

“I’m not afraid of falling into the English Channel.”

“Hmm, I am quite afraid of falling into the English Channel. But if I jump now”—she looked down; the
ground had receded dramatically—“it is a certainty I’ll break my limbs. Whereas it is only a probability that I will need to swim.”

“Do you know how to swim?”

“No.”

“So you have entrusted your life to this mad venture.”

She exhaled. “I trust I will be all right with you by my side.”

For a moment he looked as if he didn’t quite know what to say, then he smiled. “Well, I do have a compass on my watch. Should we hit water, I’ll know which direction to push the gondola.”

The fog. She’d forgotten about the fog altogether.

Above them was a clear sky, beneath them the French countryside—dotted with sheep, cows, and hamlets. Children pointed and waved; Millie waved back. Two boys threw stones that fell far short; Fitz laughed and shouted something that sounded like French, but did not contain any French words Millie had ever been taught.

The airship kept rising. The livestock were now pinpricks; the land a parquet of tracts in varying shades of green and brown.

“How high are we?” Fitz asked.

Monsieur Duval consulted a gauge. “The barometric column has dropped almost two inches. We are about fifteen hundred feet up—half again as high as the top of the Eiffel Tower—and we are still ascending.”

After some time, Fitz shaded his eyes with his hand. “I can see the fog now. Are we approaching the coast?”

“
Oui, monsieur le comte
.”

The fog was the most spectacular sight Millie had ever seen, a sea of cloud upon which the airship cast its
elongated shadow. The thick vapors erupted and writhed, with currents and climates of its own. And as the sun lowered toward the western horizon, the peaks and ridges turned into mountains of gold, as if they were being given a tour of heaven’s own bank vault.

Fitz draped his coat around her shoulders. “Magnificent, isn’t it?”

She stole a look at him. “Yes,” she said, “in every way.”

“I’d once hoped my marriage would be an adventure—and it has turned out to be just that.” His gaze still on the fog, he placed his arm around her shoulders. “If something should befall us this day, know that of all the heiresses I could have married four years ago, I’m glad it’s you.”

At times she’d wondered how her life might have turned out differently had she been given a choice in the matter of her marriage. Now she knew: There would have been no difference, for she’d have chosen the very path that led her to this precise moment. She gathered her courage and put her arm around his waist.

“I feel the same,” she said. “I’m glad it’s you.”

T
here was just enough light for Monsieur Duval to set down the airship on an empty field, causing much excitement to several Sussex villages. Millie and Fitz arrived in London by midnight.

Millie spent the next week by her mother’s bedside. At first it seemed that Mrs. Graves might make a miraculous recovery, but Millie’s hopes were dashed when her condition further deteriorated.

Mrs. Graves slipped in and out of consciousness, sometimes awake long enough to take some nourishment and
exchange a greeting with Millie, sometimes falling unconscious again before she’d even quite oriented herself.

Mrs. Graves’s sisters and cousins sometimes sat with Millie during the day; Fitz was there every night, keeping her company. They did not speak much during these long nights, each dozing in a chair, but his presence was a source of immeasurable comfort.

One morning, just after he left to have his breakfast, Mrs. Graves came to.

Millie leaped up. “Mother.”

She hurriedly reached for the glass of water kept on the nightstand and fed her mother several large spoonfuls.

“Millie,” Mrs. Graves murmured weakly.

Millie had not meant to, but she found herself weeping. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

“Forgive
me
, for leaving you much sooner than I’d intended.”