Never Vie for a Viscount

by Regina Scott

  “Yes,” Miss Pankhurst said. “So Miss Villers told us.”

  Worth’s gaze swung to hers, and she raised her chin against the challenge in it.

  “If I recall,” Charlotte put in, “you said you’d known for some time, Miss Pankhurst.”

  Her smile was smug. “Yes, well, it wasn’t terribly difficult to determine for anyone with a logical mind.”

  Worth looked a bit shaken by the news, but he quickly rallied. “Nevertheless, we are now at a critical juncture. Today, we begin bringing each of our accomplishments together to see if we can make a whole.”

  “A hole?” Miss Janssen asked. “Why would a balloon need a hole?”

  “To allow the air to enter, of course,” Miss Pankhurst said with a shake of her head.

  “I believe Lord Worthington means that we are assembling the various pieces of the balloon,” Lydia offered.

  “Yes, precisely.” Worth strode around the basket, pointing. “We’ll build the fire here, in the brazier and on the pillar Charlotte and Miss Villers designed. This arrangement will allow us to test the bellows Miss Villers suggested to manage the fire’s temperature. The heated air will fill the envelope that Miss Pankhurst and Miss Villers stitched with your help.”

  Lydia stared at him. Her name, associated with nearly every task? She truly had contributed. Did he know what it meant to her to hear him acknowledge that?

  “We will fill the envelope,” he continued as if he hadn’t noticed the smile that was growing on her face, “then allow the balloon to rise on a tether. Every step must be timed for comparison with future efforts. I’ve asked Mr. Bateman to enlist the aid of some of his colleagues, the ones who helped us test the envelope last week.”

  As if he had been waiting for the introduction, the former pugilist moved out of the house with three others, each more muscular than the last. Miss Janssen goggled.

  Charlotte stepped forward. “You heard the plan, ladies. Miss Pankhurst, Miss Janssen, I will issue you each a watch. Please time the filling of the envelope and keep an eye out for any difficulties as the fabric stretches. Miss Villers and I will monitor the fire itself. Lord Worthington will man the bellows. Once the balloon ascends, we will take shifts in teams of two to watch it until it sinks to the ground again.”

  “Every hour of every day,” Worth added, “noting changes in temperature, wind velocity, and wind direction.”

  “Precipitation as well, I would think,” Lydia mused. “Brilliant.”

  Was that pink creeping into his cheeks? “Yes, we must note any environmental differences that might account for changes in the balloon.”

  “Any questions?” Charlotte asked.

  “Who will partner Lord Worthington on his shifts?” Miss Pankhurst asked. Miss Janssen raised her head.

  Worth’s gaze veered to Lydia, and her own cheeks warmed.

  “I will,” Bateman said with a frown in Worth’s direction.

  “Of course,” Worth said, but she thought she heard disappointment.

  The plan set, they began working. Charlotte had Bateman and his friends build the fire in the footed brazier Lydia had suggested, the contraption mounted on the pressed cork pillar. Lydia kept notes as to how much coal had to be added and how often to keep the fire hot. Worth estimated the amount of heated air filling the balloon. From time to time, he pumped the bellows, making the coals glow redder. Lydia noted that too.

  But no matter how busy she kept herself, Worth dominated her attention. He moved about the inside of the balloon, watchful as a new father over his babe. Long-fingered, capable hands tugged on the ropes to confirm strength, ran along the wicker to test its integrity. The light shining in his eyes mirrored the excitement building inside her.

  The envelope expanded, the scarlet widening as breath filled it. When the crown lifted off the bushes to edge skyward, Worth shot her a grin. She felt it to her toes. Everything they had worked for was coming true.

  By dinner, however, the envelope was only half full by Lydia’s estimation.

  “If only we could fill faster,” she told Worth as he finished pumping the bellows. “When the outside air cools with the night, the envelope will lose heat. There’s too much surface area to do otherwise.”

  “Agreed,” he said, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. Bateman and his friends had long since stripped down to their shirts and trousers as they ferried more coal to the site. By the lift of her nose, Miss Pankhurst found this scandalous. By the look in her eyes, Miss Janssen found it fascinating.

  Now Worth turned to Charlotte. “Can we build the fire hotter to compensate for the night air?”

  “That brazier was designed for a certain heat,” Charlotte answered as Bateman brought more coal from the bin. “I don’t know what would happen if we surpassed it. We could catch fire to the basket and the envelope.”

  “But the night air will cool the brazier as well,” Lydia countered. “It will be a difficult balance, but it might work.”

  Charlotte and Worth agreed, and the work continued. Lydia wasn’t aware that Miss Pankhurst and Miss Janssen had left until Charlotte handed her a watch.

  “You and I will take the first shift,” she told Lydia. “Worth and Beast can take our places at midnight. Miss Pankhurst and Miss Janssen will return around dawn.”

  Lydia wrapped her fingers around the silver-cased watch and nodded. She had seen the work this far. She had no intention of leaving now.

  ~~~

  Worth climbed out of the basket to stalk around the circumference of the envelope, estimating height, width. Based on their progress so far, they had at least six hours left to expand the silk to its full size. Last he had read, the French hydrogen balloons often took the better part of two days to fill. They could stay aloft for only six hours. His team had succeeded in shortening the filling time, even compensating for the cooler air tonight, with a safer design. Had they managed to extend the time aloft?

  “Careful, if you please,” Charlotte was instructing one of the pugilists. “We must know exactly how much fuel we’re using. You can’t just dump it into the brazier.”

  His usually polite sister was beginning to sound testy. It had been a long day. The hair in Charlotte’s bun was coming free—curls teased her ears. And her practical canvas overcoat was speckled with ash.

  Lydia, however, looked as if she’d newly woken and dressed. How she’d kept her overcoat that clean he had no idea. Her pale curls still bounced as she moved around the balloon, gaze on the envelope and watch in her hand. She was so focused, in fact, that she nearly walked right into him.

  “Ahem,” Worth said.

  She glanced at him, clearly startled, then smiled. “Oh, sorry, Worth. I didn’t see you there.” She transferred her gaze to the envelope once more. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

  He refused to be jealous of a balloon. “I’m glad everything is going so well. I’ll be even happier once we beat the ascension record.”

  She slid the watch into one pocket of her overcoat and pulled the journal and pencil out of the other to note something. “How likely are we to achieve that with this balloon, do you think?”

  “I give us one chance in ten,” Worth said. “But it’s a start.”

  Her smile rewarded him, but suddenly faded. “Why it is doing that?”

  Worth glanced up. The envelope was tilting, sagging toward the bushes from which it had recently risen as if wishing to sleep for the night. He ran to Bateman and Charlotte where they stood by the coal bin.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  Charlotte was nearly as red as the envelope. “I don’t know!”

  Bateman pointed toward the brazier. “Who added peat?”

  Worth saw it too. The thick mat of plant material was already smoking as it smothered the heat. In a moment, it would ignite and blaze up, catching the silk on fire as well.

  “It was with the coal,” one of the pugilists said. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Take it out,” Worth ordered. �
�Now. Dump the whole thing if you must.”

  Charlotte caught his arm. “Worth, look!”

  The balloon wouldn’t wait for the heat to be rebuilt. It was continuing its fall, the heavy silk cascading down, straight toward Lydia.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was the most graceful thing. The scarlet balloon bent toward her, for all the world as if it was bowing. Lydia reached up a hand to touch the silk and pulled back her fingers in surprise.

  A moment before Worth leaped on her and dragged her off to one side.

  She blinked to find herself clasped in his embrace. His eyes above hers were wide and wild; his breath came fast.

  “Worth?” she asked.

  He gathered himself and disengaged. “I was concerned the envelope might fall on you.”

  Lydia glanced past him to where the silk puddled around the basket. If all that weight had landed on her…

  “I might have been smothered,” she realized aloud. She grasped his hand and held on tight. “Oh, Worth! You saved my life!”

  “Not necessarily,” he assured her. “I’d give you a fifty percent chance of survival.”

  “I wouldn’t.” She shuddered. “The silk was warm, Worth, as if I had sat too close to the hearth. I didn’t expect that.”

  He frowned at the balloon. “Neither did I.”

  Charlotte rushed up to them. “Are you both all right?”

  Worth merely nodded, but he removed his hand from Lydia’s.

  “Fine,” Lydia told her. “Thanks to your brother.” She reached into her pocket for the watch, a little surprised to find her fingers trembling. She drew out the silver case carefully. “I estimate this mishap occurred at a quarter past nine. Do you concur, Charlotte?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “You amaze me. Once that envelope started slipping, all other thoughts flew from my head. I suppose I should have been tracking how long it took to fall. I’m sorry, Worth.”

  He was studying the balloon, which flopped about as if trying to rise again. “No need for concern, Charlotte. We hardly expected that. But I concur with your estimate, Lydia. Now we must see what this mishap, as you called it, cost us.”

  He was so cool, as if he hadn’t just exhibited the most daring act of heroism. She wanted to throw her arms around him, tell him how grateful she was. He wouldn’t allow it. He couldn’t believe it. He might even discharge her for it.

  She did it anyway.

  “Thank you, Worth,” she said, arms about his waist and head to his chest. For one mad moment, she thought she heard his heat rate speeding. Then she released him, and he stepped back out of reach, where he’d been for the last year.

  Charlotte had obviously gathered her dignity, for her chin was once more high.

  “Things are not hopeless,” she declared. “We’ve removed the peat and are rebuilding the fire. I sent the fellow who added the contaminant home. But what I want to know is why that peat was even in with the coal. I was quite specific in my requirements.”

  Lydia glanced to where the coal pile had dwindled to a few scattered lumps. They had all been so focused on timing the inflation that only Bateman and his colleagues had attended much to the fuel. Yet peat, while plentiful in parts of the country, was uncommon in London. How had a thick mat of it landed in the coal bin?

  “Perhaps Mr. Bateman can tell us,” Lydia said.

  Charlotte cocked her head as if trying to see around the mess that was their balloon. “Where is Beast?”

  “Gone to fetch more coal, very likely,” Worth said. His hands were clasped behind his back, his gaze off in the middle distance, as if he no longer saw the garden, his balloon, or them. “Are you and Miss Villers still prepared to keep watch until midnight, as you planned, Charlotte?”

  Charlotte eyed Lydia, who nodded. “We are,” she told her brother.

  “Good. I have some notes I must record.” With a nod that passed for a bow, he strode for the house.

  “You frightened him,” Charlotte said, watching the door close behind her brother.

  “It was rather frightening to see the balloon fall,” Lydia agreed. “I couldn’t think to move.”

  “I’m not sure the balloon incident is entirely to blame,” Charlotte said, turning for the envelope. It had risen to the top of the basket and sat rather like a mushroom just above the brazier. Only the position of the bellows had prevented the silk from sagging into the coals and catching fire.

  “Has my brother broached the topic of your previous courtship?” Charlotte asked.

  Lydia’s skin felt hotter than the silk of the balloon. “Not directly.”

  “Pity,” Charlotte said. “My impression is that much explanation is needed, on both sides.”

  “Very likely,” Lydia said. “But it wouldn’t change anything. He decided I wasn’t the sort of woman he wanted in a wife. I don’t particularly need to hear all the many ways he thought I was deficient.”

  “Lydia.” Charlotte put a hand on her arm. “You are in no way deficient.”

  “Of course I am.” When Charlotte looked as if she might argue, Lydia hurried on. “I’m not stupid, Charlotte. I know my assets and my debits. I am pretty, but I am not beautiful. I can sing, but no one would ask me to lead a musicale. I am clever, and I remember much of what I read, but I’m not highly intelligent like Worth and some of the other natural philosophers. He must have had high expectations of his bride. I did not meet them.”

  “He’s not perfect either,” Charlotte informed her. “He’s dictatorial and capricious, and he frequently takes those around him for granted.”

  “I know,” Lydia said. “But I don’t mind his imperfections.”

  “You should,” Charlotte insisted. “If he asks so much from you, you should not be expected to settle for less.”

  “No one should ask for perfection,” Lydia said. “But I have found it happens far too often in the marriage mart. That’s why girls purchase hair to thicken their own, use cosmetics to whiten their skin, wear chest enhancers to provide what Nature failed to supply.”

  Charlotte glanced down at her bodice. “Chest enhancers?”

  Lydia shrugged. “Men pad their calves and shoulders too.”

  Charlotte shook herself. “Some men, perhaps. I still say fah to the notion. People should be what God intended them to be.”

  “Amen to that.” Bateman moved out from behind the balloon. When had he returned? Had he heard everything? Her skin heated all over again.

  “We just delivered the next batch of coal,” he told Charlotte. “Care to inspect it before we start shoveling it in?”

  “Yes, of course, Beast,” Charlotte said. “Lydia, would you note the time and amount?”

  “Of course.” Lydia pulled out her notebook and pencil. She felt heavy, and not just because of the long day. For a moment, holding Worth, her dream of marriage for love hadn’t seemed so far away. Her conversation with Charlotte had only served to remind her that that dream would never come true, at least as far as Worth was concerned.

  ~~~

  Coward! Worth paced back and forth before the rear door, as far as the narrow corridor would allow. He’d claimed the need for documentation when all records of this experiment were out in the garden. The only thing that required documentation was his sanity.

  Lydia had wrapped her arms around him, and all conscious thought had vanished.

  He could reason out the sequence now. Fear for her safety had driven him to respond before the balloon fell. Thanksgiving for his action had prompted her to react. He should not read more into it than that. Even if her body pressed against his had awoken feelings he had thought dead and buried.

  Feelings of joy. Feelings of delight. A desire to protect and cherish her all the days of her life. He’d wanted to hold her, kiss those lips and feel them warm against his.

  A daring experiment. He gave it a less than ten percent chance of success.

  And what was success? Love, marriage, a future together? Why did he persist in thinking such t
hings were possible? She didn’t care about him, only about the work they were doing together.

  So, here he was, hiding in the house, while the balloon they’d worked so hard to build expanded slowly skyward.

  Worth squared his shoulders and opened the door.

  Charlotte smiled as he rejoined them. Lydia was consulting the watch, and he shoved off the disappointment that she didn’t smile as well.

  “How goes it?” he asked.

  “We have about reached the circumference and height we had before the mishap occurred,” Charlotte reported, gaze on the fire before her. “That means we’re only off by thirty minutes. Correct, Lydia?”

  “Thirty-six,” she answered, frowning at the watch. “Though I wish we had a more precise way of keeping time.”

  “A shame we haven’t one of Halston’s chronometers,” Charlotte said. “He can register time on a scale of seconds.”

  “Lord Halston has made a study of time and watches,” Worth explained to Lydia. “He claims the Swiss far superior to the English in designing accurate time pieces.”

  “Yes, I know,” Lydia said, studying the watch as if she would find a way to improve it right then and there. “I read his last paper in Philosophical Transactions. Oh!”

  Worth tensed, but her frown was gone when she glanced up, and her eyes sparkled in the firelight.

  “I just remembered,” she declared. “Lord Halston will be lecturing on the measurement of time the day after tomorrow. I saw the notice in The Times. We should go.”

  Quite possibly. He had avoided many of the Royal Institution lectures since the debacle with John Curtis. He didn’t want to hear the fellow’s research praised, nor was he ready to share his own results just yet. But the watches they used barely tracked to the quarter hour accurately, and he would have preferred minutes or even seconds. If Lord Halston had a better approach, he’d like to hear it.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “No need for you and Charlotte to subject yourselves.”

  Her face fell, and the night felt colder, though he was certain the temperature couldn’t have dropped so quickly. “But I’d like to attend.”