A Stolen Heart

by Candace Camp

  “I am sure that we can control the going up and coming down, though, at least to some extent,” Sebastian said. “Look, they are hot air balloons, right? They fill the balloons with heated air, and that is what made them rise.”

  Alexandra nodded.

  “It would stand to reason, then, that if the air cooled, they would start to come down.” Sebastian looked pleased with his reasoning.

  “I suppose. You know, I think that there is a valve that you can use to let off air, with a cord that comes down.”

  Sebastian looked skeptically at the multitude of ropes hanging from the balloon on all sides. Most of them connected the net over the balloon to the gondola. “I don’t know that I’d want to risk pulling on cords to see what would happen.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Sebastian went to the brazier suspended above their heads in the center of the basket. “I don’t see any way to put out this fire, but if we don’t feed it coal, eventually it will burn down, the gas will cool, and we will come down.”

  “Hopefully not into a house.”

  “Yes. Or a hillside.” He looked at the scenery beneath them. “I would say that we are heading southwest from London.”

  “It won’t carry us as far as the ocean, will it?” Alexandra asked worriedly.

  “Let us hope that the fire will go out long before then.”

  “It’s getting colder.”

  “Yes. I think it’s because we are still rising.”

  Sebastian shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it around Alexandra. She smiled a thank-you at him, and they turned to look at the scenery. Despite the uncertainty of their situation, there was a certain peace and serenity to their trip. It was as if they were alone in the world, free-floating, the majestic beauty of the sky and land above and below them. Unconsciously Sebastian’s arm stole around Alexandra’s waist, and she leaned against him.

  They began to talk, not about this latest adventure or about the mystery of Alexandra’s birth and the attacks upon her, but about all sorts of other things—their philosophies, their childhoods, the value of good friends, the land that lay beneath them—moving desultorily from topic to topic as ideas popped into their heads. It was like a moment torn from time, too special and important to dwell on momentary problems. Later, Alexandra would look back on it as one of the best days she spent in London.

  Slowly they became aware that the balloon was dropping. The earth seemed nearer than before. Figures working in the field or walking down a road were much clearer.

  “Are we going to land soon?” Alexandra asked.

  “I hope so. Look at the horizon. It won’t be long before the sun sets. We would be in a bad way if we are still in the air when it turns dark.”

  Alexandra nodded. “Perhaps we ought to consider trying the ropes to see if one’s connected to the valve.”

  “All right—if it doesn’t land before dark. I don’t want to be coming down at night with no idea what’s below us.” He looked over the side of the basket. “Of course, I have no desire to come down into those trees, either.”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  Sebastian frowned. “We’ve been traveling southwest. My guess is the North Wessex Downs—although, God knows, we may have traveled so far that it’s Dartmoor. I have never seen the land from this angle before. What I hope is that we aren’t farther south and those trees below us are the New Forest.”

  The balloon dipped. It seemed to Alexandra that they had fallen from the current of air on which they had been riding. They were moving more slowly. Before long, they heard the thunk of treetops against the bottom of the basket. Alexandra and Sebastian cast a worried look at each other.

  “I don’t see any sign of these trees ending,” he said. “I don’t relish the idea of the basket crashing into the tops of these trees and us tumbling out.”

  “Nor do I,” Alexandra agreed wholeheartedly. “Shall we cut loose some more of the weights?”

  “I think we’d better.”

  They got rid of the other sandbags one by one, and the balloon rose, but not nearly as much as it had before. Finally they were rid of sandbags, and the trees were looming closer and closer. Once again, they bumped and skipped across the tops, once almost tipping over as a particularly high branch hit the side of the gondola.

  Then, abruptly, they were past the trees, with a wide expanse of green pastures below them. White sheep grazed on the grass, undisturbed by the passage of the vehicle over their heads.

  “This looks like an excellent spot to land.”

  “Yes, if only it will.” They waited a little breathlessly as they dropped lower and lower, skimming over a wide creek.

  Straight ahead of them lay a stand of trees.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SEBASTIAN LOOKED AT THE TREES, CLEARED his throat and said, “I think it might be time to try that valve.”

  Alexandra nodded, her heart in her throat. Though they were much closer to the ground, if they fell, it would still be very serious.

  “You will be safer if you sit,” Sebastian directed.

  “What about you?”

  “I have to find this bloody cord. But there’s no reason for both of us to stand.”

  “But—”

  “Please don’t argue about equality right now. I refuse to let you stand here and try the cords.”

  At the look on his face, Alexandra subsided and sat on the floor of the gondola. She wished she were standing. It might be safer on the floor, but there was something more frightening about not being able to see where one was going, only feeling the sudden drop if it came.

  Sebastian tugged fruitlessly at one cord, then another. Finally, after he pulled one, there was the hiss of escaping air. Alexandra looked at the balloon. It looked to be slowly deflating. She jumped to her feet.

  “That’s it!”

  “Yes, if only we make it in time.”

  She looked where Sebastian’s eyes were focused and saw the trees coming up on them at an alarming rate. Sebastian pulled her onto the floor with him, sitting down and wrapping his arms around her, bending over her protectively. They waited, scarcely breathing, for the crash.

  When it came, it was not the impact they had expected. The balloon hit and caught on the higher branches and stopped, causing the gondola to swing forward and sharply back. They went tumbling across the basket, coming up tangled against the other side. They lay for a moment, waiting for something more, but nothing came.

  It sank in on Alexandra that they were still alive and whole and no longer floating through the air. In the next instant she realized that she was lying on top of Sebastian, her legs tangled with his, her face against his chest and his arms around her. She could hear the rapid thump of his heart beneath her ear, feel his warmth surrounding her. Her breasts were pressed against him, and their bodies lay flush against each other all the way up and down.

  Alexandra could feel the heat rising up her throat and into her face, and she was not sure whether it was embarrassment or the more carnal flush of desire. Hastily she scrambled off Sebastian, unable to look him in the face.

  The dangling gondola swayed at her movements.

  “Careful,” Sebastian told her, sitting up slowly. “We don’t want to send this thing crashing.”

  The basket was tilted away from the tree. A branch, the end snapped off raggedly, poked through the opposite side, and several branches stretched across the gondola above their heads.

  Carefully, Sebastian and Alexandra stood, balancing on the slightly tilted floor and easing around the branches. Grasping a couple of the larger branches, they eased forward to the edge of the gondola. It rocked a little, and Alexandra was glad that she had hold of a thick branch. She peered over the side at the ground below.

  They were surprisingly close, hanging no more than eight feet above the ground. Sebastian turned to Alexandra with a grin. “No broken bones?”

  Alexandra shook her head. “Just a few bruises.”

 
“Then I would say we’ve come out ahead.” He edged to the door of the gondola, unbolted it and pushed it out. Then he lay on the floor of the basket and slid out backward, holding on to the bottom of the basket with his hands and finally dropping the rest of the way to the ground.

  Alexandra crawled to the edge and peered down. Sebastian was scrambling onto his feet. He looked at her. “Come on. I’ll catch you.”

  The ground suddenly looked much farther away when she thought about jumping down. But Alexandra took a firm grip on her courage and swung around, slowly lowering herself out of the basket. She thought about the view she must present to Sebastian below, her skirt twisting around her legs as she slid out. That thought gave her the impetus to shove herself the rest of the way out and drop.

  She fell into his arms, and he set her on the ground. He bent over her, laying his cheek against her head, his arms tight around her. Alexandra wrapped her arms around his waist just as tightly. Suddenly, in the aftermath of their adventure, all the tension that had been humming inside her for the last few hours broke loose, and she started to tremble. Her knees felt like melted wax. She drew a ragged breath and commanded herself not to cry.

  Sebastian rubbed his hand up and down her back, soothing her without a word. She felt his lips brush against her hair. Desire flashed through her, exploding in her abdomen. She wanted him to continue to stroke her, to run his hands through her hair and move them all over her body.

  Instead she forced herself to move away. “Well,” she said a little shakily, avoiding his eyes. “I, uh, guess we had better start walking.”

  “Alexandra…”

  She raised her eyes to his, steeling herself against their appeal. “What?”

  “Nothing. You’re right. Let’s go.”

  THEY MADE THEIR WAY ACROSS the verdant pasture, watched by the indifferent sheep. Alexandra’s green half kid boots were scarcely made for such a procedure, and she thought with an inward sigh that they would be entirely ruined by the time they reached any habitation. She gathered her muslin skirt and wrapped the excess around her arm so that it ended at the more practical level of her knee. Alexandra saw Sebastian glance at her legs and then quickly away, and she wondered with an inner sense of satisfaction whether the sight had affected him.

  They trudged for some time. The area seemed to be deserted, with dark clusterings of trees on either side of the lush pasture. They followed the course of a stream until they spotted a stile. They made their way toward it, crossed a fence and found themselves on a sort of track, not quite well-traveled enough to be considered a path, but eventually it led to a better-marked path, and that, in turn, fed into a narrow country lane, hedged on either side with rhododendrons.

  As they walked, they talked. Alexandra found it curious that once they returned to earth, their conversation turned to more mundane matters.

  “It’s obvious,” Sebastian began, reaching out a hand to steady her as she jumped across a little ditch, “that someone is out to harm you. This latest attack had nothing to do with your mother. It was only you.”

  “I know. I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of who it could possibly be. I know no one in England except you and the Countess.”

  “It has to be connected to…well, to the mystery of your birth—whether you are Chilton’s daughter and how you wound up in America. It seems far too coincidental otherwise.”

  “But who could it harm if I am the Countess’s grandchild? Lady Ursula and Penelope are the only ones I can think of, and it seems absurd to picture either of them as a killer, even by proxy.”

  “Yet someone tried to kill your mother and has attacked you twice and tried to kidnap you. I have given up my position that you have past swindling victims seeking revenge. But what does that leave?”

  “Nothing. No one…unless…what about Lord Exmoor, the one who got the title?”

  Sebastian chuckled. “Believe me, there is no one I can see better in the role of villain than Richard. I would love to discover that it was he. But to what purpose?”

  “You said that he inherited the estate because the Countess’s son and his children were all dead. If one of them isn’t dead, then—”

  Sebastian shook his head. “No. The entire estate and the title pass only to males. Your appearance on the scene would make no difference to him. He would still be entitled to everything he inherited. Now, if the boy, your brother, were the one who had shown up after all these years, I am sure that Richard would be homicidal. But a woman—the most you could inherit would be part of the Countess’s fortune when she dies. It is not enormous, but it would be a comfortable living. The problem is that only Lady Ursula could be hurt by any rewriting of the will. The Countess dislikes Richard and wouldn’t leave him a farthing of her own money, anyway. I am sure he knows that.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes, then Sebastian said, “Perhaps we are looking at this wrong. What about the Ward family?”

  Alexandra gave him a blank look. “My family? What are you talking about? What do they have to do with this?”

  “If you are really the Countess’s granddaughter, then you are not Mrs. Ward’s child. I would think that there might be some people who would resent that, who would feel that a stranger should not inherit Mr. Ward’s estate.”

  “Well, I haven’t inherited it. I mean, not really. Mother inherited it, and I manage it for her.”

  “But it will be yours when she dies.”

  “Then why would they attack Mother?” she pointed out. “That would only cause me to get it sooner.”

  He frowned. “You’re right. That would not be logical.”

  “Besides, my closest relative is Aunt Hortense. And I will not believe that she could ever try to do away with me. She raised me as much as my mother.”

  “Which brings us back to square one. There are no suspects.”

  “Yet it happened. Someone did it. Someone hired that ruffian to kill Mother, and I would imagine that someone hired that man today.”

  “There has to be something we’re missing. We’re looking at it wrong somehow.”

  “But how else can we look at it? We come to London, and the very night I meet the Countess, I am attacked and told to go back where I came from. When I don’t leave and instead start talking to the Countess and she declares that I am her granddaughter, someone tries to murder my mother, the only person who could tell us the facts of my birth. Now they’re trying to kidnap me.”

  “There must be some other person, some motive we aren’t seeing.”

  Alexandra sighed. “We’re getting nowhere.”

  “In our discussion or our journey?”

  “Both. I haven’t seen a house along this road yet.” Alexandra cast a look around. It had been growing darker as they walked. The trees and hedges on either side of the road had made the lane shadowy, and she realized that the sun was almost gone, and there was an evening gloom in the lane. “Oh, dear. It’s almost evening.”

  “Yes. It won’t make walking any easier, particularly on this road. Hopefully we will come upon something soon.”

  They were tired, but the closing twilight made them pick up their pace. Night came fast, and they trudged on, picking their way more carefully. The road gradually widened, and after a while they came upon a crossroad that was larger than their lane. Their spirits revived somewhat as they started along the road.

  They were nearing a curve when Sebastian stopped suddenly and raised his hand. “Listen.”

  Alexandra came to a halt, too, and they stood still and silent for a long moment, their ears straining. A noise sounded softly, and it took Alexandra a moment to realize what it was—the jingle of a harness.

  “A horse?” she breathed.

  There was a cough and then the faint sound of hooves on a dirt road. “Thank heavens!” Alexandra exclaimed, her face lighting up, and she darted down the road, waving her arms. “Hello! We need help!”

  “No, wait!” Sebastian reached out for her, but he caught not
hing but air. With a grimace he started after her. “Alexandra!”

  He reached her and grabbed her arm. “Shh! We don’t know who it might be.”

  “They’re bound to help us,” Alexandra replied confidently.

  “Not everyone is a friend.”

  The horses rounded the curve toward them. It was a small group of men, four at the most, and they led with them a riderless horse. When they rounded the curve and saw Alexandra and Sebastian standing before them, they paused, then came forward slowly. It was difficult to see them. They seemed very dark, with no spot of white on their clothing, and their horses were all black, without any markings.

  They stopped a few feet from Alexandra and Sebastian. Alexandra drew in a sharp gasp when she saw that the face of the man in front was dark from the nose up. The next instant she realized that he was wearing a half-mask over his eyes and nose. The effect was chilling.

  “Bloody hell!” Sebastian breathed beside her. “A highwayman.”

  She felt him tense beside her, and he crossed his arms. Alexandra remembered the knife hidden in a scabbard up his sleeve. A shiver ran through her at the thought of Sebastian going up against these four men with only a knife, and she quickly ran through her mind what she could use as a weapon to help him. She wished desperately that she had not dropped her reticule in the struggle with her attacker. Her gun was in it, useless, where the balloon had taken off.

  “Good Lord! What have we here?” the man in front said lightly. Despite his appearance, his speech was that of a gentleman. “Out for an evening stroll?”

  “Hardly the place I would choose to take a stroll,” Alexandra replied. “We are lost and in need of help.”

  “Alexandra…” Sebastian cast her a quelling look.

  The stranger glanced at him and grinned, his even white teeth glinting in the darkness. “Ah, the husband, I think.”

  Alexandra opened her mouth to deny it, but before she could speak, Sebastian said loudly, “Yes. This is my wife. I am Sebastian, Lord Thorpe.”