Chapter Fifteen #3
Mrs. Salisbury blinked up at him in surprise. “Oh, yes, of course. If you would like.”
Scarlett blushed and nodded.
Severn, that devil, winked at him from over Mrs. Salisbury’s shoulder.
Scarlett came toward him, and he tried to school his features into some reasonable pattern—except he had forgotten what that might even look like. Instead, he was pretty sure that he was staring at her in open hunger.
It was hard not to, under the circumstances. Even before her blushing, her cheeks were pink in the warm, bright afternoon, and her figure, shown to advantage in a light-blue dress, filled his head with thoughts completely unacceptable for this summer party of matrons and maidens.
Strange, that the first time since the closet that he would be alone with her would be in a basket two hundred feet in the air. It was rather like the closet in one way—and completely unlike it in another.
“Miss Perkins,” he managed.
She extended her gloved hand, and he handed her up into the basket, his fingers tingling from where they made contact with her own.
He followed her and soon they were rising.
When he had been in the basket with Miss Marburry, the most terrifying thing had been the space that opened up between them and the ground as they rose.
Now, however, here with Scarlett, the most terrifying thing was imagining what she must think of him.
He couldn’t manage a single syllable, even though he desperately wanted to speak to her.
When the balloon reached its furthest height, he opened his mouth—to say what, he wasn’t even sure—but found himself cut off.
“Mr. Brown, you needn’t have offered to escort me,” she said, her voice rushed. “It was not necessary.”
Of course it wasn’t, he thought. But he had been unable to stop himself. As seemed to be the case when it came to her in general. In fact, the idea of her up here with another gentleman, even one of his brothers, made him sick with jealousy.
“I am happy to do it. And you seemed so eager to get into this contraption.”
“I was. But anyone can see you are miserable in this balloon—”
“I am not,” he objected.
“When Mrs. Salisbury asked you to escort Miss Marburry, you nearly turned green.”
He coughed. “I do not care for heights.”
“Then all the more reason you should have stayed on the ground.”
“It seemed the least service I could render you after—”
He broke off, unsure whether he should acknowledge what had happened between them. Perhaps it would have been better not to say anything at all.
She cringed. “Don’t speak of it.”
Somehow, hearing her say the words that he had just been thinking irked him. “You will let me touch you,” he growled, “but I am not allowed to speak of it?”
“That will never happen again,” she snapped. “And you are being very ungentlemanly in mentioning it now.”
Pain bleated against his skull. He did not understand why they weren’t allowed to speak of what had happened between them.
He understood that she did not want more with him, that she did not seek a more lasting attachment with him, and he understood why.
The life he could offer her was not one to which she was at all accustomed, to say the least. He was a most unsuitable match for her.
But why did that mean they could not speak of what had passed between them?
“Your first night at Parkhorne,” he said, “was a mishap. Neither of us was conscious of the mistake before it had been made. But yesterday—”
“Another mistake! I would have never acted so if it weren’t for—if we hadn’t been—it is not fair to blame me for it.”
He started in surprise. “I blame you for nothing.”
“I am sure it shames you,” she said, “to have done what you did with me—”
As the words left her mouth, the basket lurched horribly.
She was thrown back into his arms, and he caught her, stabilizing her and himself by grasping onto the edge of the basket.
He looked down and saw that one of the tethers had come loose.
He couldn’t see what was happening on the ground exactly, but he could discern that one of the balloon men was on the ground.
And he could hear shouting and something, perhaps, about a dog…
“Dear God,” Scarlett cursed.
And then the basket lurched horrifically in the other direction—and the balloon began to float upward.
Goddamn it, they were truly aloft.
The men had somehow lost control of the balloon. And they were floating across the meadow.
“Christ!” he exclaimed.
The basket was upright now, but he was completely frozen. All he could see were the people on the ground beneath them getting smaller and smaller—and that they had begun to drift over the meadow to the east.
To his surprise, he felt a small, warm hand squeeze his own.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Brown,” a sweet voice said, her sweet voice, that pierced his panic.
And then, without warning, they were drifting downward.
She had let open the vent, he realized. She had thought to act where he had failed.
He still found himself unable to speak and her hand returned to his.
His breath came fast and shallow.
His vision blurred.
Yet again, Miss Scarlett Perkins had left him breathless.