by Regina Scott
A shame the new chronometer hadn’t arrived, or they’d know to the second. Still, at half past seven, they’d beaten their previous record for inflation.
The floor under her tilted higher, and Lydia slid to fetch up against the center pillar. A coal tumbled down to lay on the thin wood floor. Without thinking, she seized it and flung it out of the basket. Then she clutched her smoldering glove to her chest as pain shot up her arm from her hand.
Her colleagues must have noticed the change in the balloon, for they reacted more strongly.
“What caused that?” Worth demanded.
“That rope,” Miss Pankhurst cried. “It snapped. Miss Villers threw a coal at it.”
That made no sense. She’d thrown the coal because of the tilt. And her glove was merely blackened. A single coal, carelessly tossed, couldn’t have burned through a rope so quickly. She struggled to rise, and the basket reared on the opposite corner.
“There goes another one!” Bateman shouted.
“Get Lydia out of there,” Worth ordered.
Lydia scrambled to find purchase even as Bateman’s face appeared over one side of the basket.
“Really, Miss Villers.” Miss Pankhurst sounded sufficiently alarmed. “Leave the ropes alone.”
With a twang that sent the twine whipping past her, the balloon broke free and leaped skyward.
~~~
On the other side of the basket, Worth felt as if someone had rained coals on his head. No time to determine how the balloon had come loose.
“Do you have her?” he shouted to Bateman.
“No!”
Nothing for it. With a leap, he snagged his fingers into the rising wicker. The container tipped, and Lydia cried out. So did Charlotte as she disappeared below him. Worth pulled himself hand over hand up and over the rim to slip down inside.
Lydia was sprawled on the floor, canvas coat bunched about her, face puckered.
“The weight’s wrong,” she said. “We didn’t account for two.”
Despite himself, Worth started laughing. “That’s your concern?”
Once more the basket tilted, and she slid across to collide with him. Worth righted her.
“Stay low,” he said, then he eased himself up and looked down.
The basket was level with the roof now. They’d never be able to scramble out in time to reach it. Worse, he could see two sets of fingers gripping the last row of the wicker. The brown pant legs swinging below told him who had tried to stop the balloon.
“Let go, Bateman!” he shouted. “You’ll hit the roof otherwise.”
“Won’t let you get away,” Bateman shouted back.
“Beast!” Charlotte’s voice below was anguished. “Please! Don’t leave me!”
The fingers disappeared, the balloon swung, then slowly straightened.
Lydia managed to regain her feet. “Is he all right?”
Worth craned his neck, trying to see the ground, which was slowly fading. “I don’t know.
He pulled himself to the center of the balloon, the heat from the brazier pulsing at his face. He had to think, to reason. Their lives depended on it.
Lydia was peering over the side, as if she hoped to find means of escape. “We’re past the chimneypots,” she reported, pressing one palm to the canvas of her coat.
Forty feet or more so quickly? They’d be in the hundreds shortly. The remaining coal in the fire would continue to heat the air for perhaps a half hour, based on previous experience. With the night air, the balloon would cool, at which point they would start to descend. The prevailing winds should be from the west, pushing them to the east. How far? Beyond London? Into Essex?
Or out over the unforgiving waters of the North Sea?
Chapter Seventeen
“What do we do?” Lydia asked.
For the first time since Worth had known her, her voice was small and quiet. Her eyes, on the other hand, had never looked larger, a vivid green against her face as her skin turned rosy in the light of the coals. For her sake, he would keep his probabilities to himself.
“Now we ride it out,” he said. “The others will surely follow us as they can. Eventually, the temperature in the envelope will fall.”
“And so will we,” she murmured.
“It should be a gradual descent,” he told her. “If we land on a field or park, we should be fine. A city could pose a problem.”
“So would the North Sea.”
He should have known she’d surmise the danger as well. She shivered as if she felt the chilly waters closing around her even now.
“You intended this balloon for long distance travel,” she said when he didn’t reply immediately. “Could we reach Belgium or France?”
The thought was unnerving. He resorted to levity. “That eager to meet Napoleon?”
“Better Napoleon than the bottom of the ocean,” she countered.
“Ah, the trials of balloon flight. I suppose we should have considered that before climbing aboard.”
She raised her chin. “Well, I hardly expected to leave the ground. And I must protest Miss Pankhurst’s assumption. I had nothing to do with the ropes breaking.”
Interesting assumption indeed. Miss Pankhurst’s assertion that a coal had burned through one of the ropes was clearly wrong. It would have taken a sustained touch of the burning coal, not a mere brush. Still, Lydia had been at the advantage. Inside the basket, she could have reached all four ropes faster than the others scurrying around the diameter. And no one could watch all the ropes at once. The evidence could point in her direction.
But he refused to believe it. Lydia wouldn’t jeopardize the balloon, not when she’d worked so hard to bring their vision into reality.
So how had the ropes come free? Everyone on his team and his staff had proven their loyalty. Could there have been someone else in the garden? Bateman had been so sure he could control the space, that Worth would be safe there. They hadn’t considered Lydia’s safety.
“I believe you,” he said. “We’ll look into the matter when we return.”
She rubbed her temple. “Good. Truly, it’s been a beastly day. First that ridiculous meeting with John Curtis and then walking back to the house and now this.”
Worth stilled, stomach dropping as if the balloon had suddenly jerked higher. “Curtis? Why would you meet with John Curtis?”
She waved a hand, setting the basket to swaying again. She clutched the rim. “Sorry.”
“Never mind the balloon,” Worth said, barely keeping his feet. “What about Curtis?”
She answered readily enough. “He sought me out at the lecture, while you were talking with Lord Halston. He invited me to meet him.”
“At Gunter’s,” he realized. Though he knew they were in the air, he felt as if a snake slithered up his pant leg.
“Yes,” Lydia said. “He claimed he wanted to help with the balloon, but he wasn’t much use if you ask me.”
Curtis understood what they were working on? “How did he know about the balloon?”
She met his gaze with a frown. “I assumed you had told him.”
“No,” he said. “I share nothing with John Curtis.”
“Or anyone else, apparently,” she said with a sigh. Immediately she stiffened. “What’s wrong with me? I feel light-headed.”
Worth glanced over the rim. Far to the west, a line of gold proclaimed the last moments of the sun. Everything below was in darkness, the sky around them growing black. He consulted his pocket watch, angling the mother-of-pearl face to reflect the red of the coals.
“We will have risen several hundred feet,” he told her. “I doubt the altitude has affected us yet, but it will.”
She sank to the floor of the basket with a thump that mounded her canvas coat around her. “I don’t feel well.”
Worth crouched beside her. Her face looked pale in the dim light, and her breaths were coming too fast. Hyperventilating, perhaps?
“Take a deep breath and let it out slowly,” he advi
sed, watching her.
She obeyed, her breath brushing his chin.
“Three more times,” he urged.
Once more she obeyed.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes, thank you. But now I’m having trouble seeing.”
Worth stood. “That’s not the altitude. Night is falling.”
“The temperatures will fall too.” She swallowed a giggle. “Funny how many ways we’ve found to mention falling.”
“That’s the spirit.” He offered her a hand and helped her climb to her feet. “The moon rose earlier today and is in the gibbous phase, so we should be able to spot it as soon as these clouds part.” He nodded toward the east. “Right about there.”
She squinted toward the milky section through the clouds. Enough light trickled out that he began to identify larger objects below as his eyes grew accustomed.
“So we’ll be able to see when we fall,” she said.
“So we’ll be able to see how to steer,” he replied.
Her brows went up. “Your propellers! Worth, this would be the perfect time to test them.”
Once again, she turned calamity into opportunity. He could he fail to appreciate a woman like that?
“First we have to determine where we are,” Worth told her. The clouds grudgingly parted then, and one rounded side of the fattening moon appeared, glowing like a pearl at a forty-five-degree angle above the balloon. Worth leaned over the rim, scanning what he could see of the ground for landmarks. The light gleamed off the silvery bend of the Thames. Tiny pricks of light, some clustered close together, spoke of inns, businesses that catered to the night.
“There,” he said, pointing. “Where the Thames curves. That could be the Isle of Dogs.”
She pressed against him. “Yes! It must be.”
She was so close a curl tugged on the breeze brushed his chin and lavender teased his nose. He wanted to breathe it in, breathe her in.
He had to think!
“The River Lea joins it near the apex past the island,” he said. “That spot is about an hour’s ride outside London. We’ve covered that distance in less than a half hour, so we’re moving at roughly twice the pace of a trotting horse, say ten miles an hour.”
Lydia glanced up. “But we’re still rising.”
“And will be for another quarter hour, if my calculations are correct.”
“I have read,” she said, dropping her gaze to the brazier, “that the winds aloft can travel faster and in different directions than those at ground level.”
He’d read the same paper. “True.”
“It’s only forty miles from London to the North Sea,” she pointed out. “At this rate, we should reach it before midnight or sooner.”
Worth eyed the envelope above them. So much work had gone into it. All those tiny stitches. Just working with the fabric manufacturer to produce wider panels had proven challenging.
But he would never accomplish anything more important than protecting Lydia.
“There’s nothing for it,” he said. “We have to let in more cold air, force the balloon down sooner.”
“How?” she asked. “We could throw out the last of the coal, but that wouldn’t cool the air currently in the envelope. And there’s no opening except the mouth.”
“We’ll have to make one,” he said. “We’ll have to puncture the balloon and pray.”
~~~
Lydia clutched Worth’s arm. He was prepared to sacrifice everything he’d tried to achieve?
“No!” she protested. “All your hard work, all Miss Pankhurst’s meticulous stitches. There must be another way.”
He frowned up at the envelope as if trying to find one. “Could we turn the mouth, I wonder?”
“Yes,” Lydia encouraged him. “Perhaps use the bellows to fan colder air inside?”
He seemed to be considering it, face tight and mouth working. His gaze snapped down to hers.
“A quarter hour,” he said. “If we haven’t begun to descend by then, we’ll have to take more drastic measures.”
“Agreed,” she said.
They set to work.
Lydia pried off pieces of Miss Janssen’s insulation to cover her and Worth’s hands, and together they seized the brazier. Heat built as they tugged it out of place, then tipped the coals over the edge of the basket.
“We’ll have to reset it,” he said. “It’s too hot to risk against the wicker, and I’d hate to drop it onto someone’s roof. At least the coals should have cooled before they reach the ground.”
Her hand stung all the more, but she managed to help him replace the now-empty brazier.
The neck of the envelope had been left open to allow the heated air to enter. Worth took hold of the fabric now, twisted it toward the breeze to make a funnel. Once more, Lydia took hold of the bellows. With each pump, her arms ached, her burnt skin protested. Without the coals to warm the space, the air grew colder. She still broke out in a sweat.
She must have made a noise over the creak and whoosh of the bellows, for Worth nudged her foot with his. “Are you all right?”
Lydia gritted her teeth a moment, then squared her shoulders. “Fine,” she made herself say in her sunniest voice.
He must have accepted that, for his shadow outline moved toward the rim.
“Still rising,” he reported. He resumed his spot at the mouth, arms tensed to hold it where she could reach it.
Lydia worked the bellows faster, until her arms began to cramp. By the way his coat bunched, his lean legs braced, Worth was straining to hold the fabric open and wide. Perhaps she should have agreed to his first suggestion. But to destroy the envelope?
“What happens if we must damage the fabric?” Lydia asked. “Will we have time to repair things before the demonstration to His Highness?”
“We must,” he said, and she could have built a castle on the determination in his voice.
Just then clouds gathered, sending the moon into hiding, and darkness wrapped around them. She could barely make out Worth’s shape next to her. He groaned, and the balloon swerved as he must have lowered his arms.
“Are we still rising?” Lydia asked, dropping her arms as well.
“I can’t tell,” he admitted. “I failed to factor in the clouds. Without the moon or the coals, I can’t track the hour or determine a safe place to land. Forgive me, Lydia. I seemed to have failed you multiple times this evening.” She heard the rustle of cloth then a thump as he sat on the floor of the balloon, setting it to swaying once more.
She slid down to sit beside him. The basket tilted with all their weight on one side, but she couldn’t care.
“You didn’t fail me, Worth,” she said. “You don’t have it in you to fail.”
He snorted. “I fail to meet my own expectations on a far-too-regular basis.”
“You aren’t the only one,” Lydia told him. “I am the sister of one of Society’s most noted scoundrels. I was counseled never to let a gentleman know I had intelligence lest I be branded a dreaded bluestocking. Society expected very little of me. Certainly no one expected me to marry someone like you.”
“So why did you try?”
The words were curious, as if their courtship had happened to someone else, long ago. She couldn’t quite make herself think that way. Still, she had to answer him.
“I tried because Beau said I should. And because I hoped, I dreamed, that you might show interest.”
“A viscount is not the loftiest of titles,” he argued. “Why not set your sights on a marquess? A duke?”
“Oh, Beau threw me at several. But I couldn’t love them.”
His body shifted, as if her words made him uncomfortable. “Was love part of the equation?”
“Not for Beau,” Lydia confessed. “But I kept hoping. Surely, somewhere among the ton was a man who would not only satisfy my brother’s longing to see me marry into the aristocracy but gladden my heart as well. It didn’t take long before I realized the odds were again
st me. You would probably have given me a ten percent chance of success. So, imagine my delight when the man I most admired showed every indication that he admired me too.”
He was quiet, and she wanted to swallow her words. Perhaps it was the cover of darkness, perhaps the fact they did not know what was coming, but sharing her thoughts was too easy tonight.
“Who was he?” he asked at last. “This man you loved.”
Lydia blinked. “Why, Worth, it was you. It’s always been you. But I realize I wasn’t the woman you wanted for your wife. I’m just glad you were willing to let me work beside you.”
He twisted on the floor, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her.
Surprise swiftly melted into more—joy, delight, wonder. She kissed him back, for all the times she’d dreamed of him, for all the time they’d lost. Tomorrow he would likely come to his senses. This moment, this closeness, might be all she had.
He drew back, finger tracing the curve of her jaw, her cheek. “I wish I’d understood that a year ago.”
Lydia sighed. “Would it have made a difference?”
He dropped his hand. “Perhaps not. We each had things that gave us pause. You doubted a gentleman would wish to marry you because of your brother. I doubted my ability to choose a bride.”
Lydia frowned. “Why? You’re intelligent and reasonable.”
“Not when it comes to people. I have chosen unsuitable staff, trusted men who only meant me harm. So when it was brought to my attention that you were after a title, I thought I’d fallen prey to my own inabilities again.”
Lydia lay her head against his shoulder. As if he relished the contact as well, his arm stole around her waist.
“Miss Janssen told me she’d shared my brother’s nature with Miss Pankhurst,” Lydia murmured. “She had hoped you would love her, you see.”
“Miss Janssen?” Surprise lightened his voice. “I would never have guessed. You see how easily I misjudge motivations? A shame I didn’t realize the truth, about her and you.”
Lydia grimaced. “Beau was rather notorious about thrusting me at any gentleman he thought might take notice. It is all too easy for people to expect the worst of me.”
