The Waverly Women Series (3-Book Bundle) Page 5

  It was then that Fanny realized her own circumstances for the first time. She was a foundling. She had been taken to the foundling hospital from the steps of St. Bride’s in Fleet Street and then from there to the orphanage. Her parents had probably never married. Her parents were most likely poor and common. If a man such as the earl were interested in her, it would be to purchase her as his mistress.

  Sadly, she turned away. She felt miserable. She felt like the thief she was.

  Her spirits were hardly rallied on her return when Felicity and Frederica berated her for being so late back and nearly spoiling their future plans of escape.

  Then, that very evening, Mrs. Waverley decided to lecture the girls on the subject of love.

  Fanny found that lecture very lowering, although it all sounded like good sense. Women, said Mrs. Waverley, usually fell genuinely in love once and then became addicted to the idea of being in love. Romantic love did not last and had no secure foundation. Passion was fleeting. It was a well-known fact that any man tired of the charms of one woman after a time, eighteen months being the longest period. True love was a combination of loyalty and caring. Women should not find it necessary to look to men for such love, when that pure kind of love was something another woman could supply.

  “But what about children?” cried Fanny. “God made us as we are to bear children!”

  “God also gave us brains,” said Mrs. Waverley. “Look about you. London is overpopulated with unwanted brats. Why add to the misery?”

  Fanny felt very low in spirits when they set out the next day for the balloon ascension, and her spirits were further lowered by the fact that she and Mrs. Waverley were to travel in Mr. Fordyce’s carriage while Felicity and Frederica and Lady Artemis went in the earl’s carriage.

  “If only men were really like the heroes in books,” thought Fanny before she climbed into Mr. Fordyce’s carriage, and she cast a yearning look at the earl, who did not notice.

  But Felicity did, and she pinched the back of Frederica’s hand and whispered, “Got something to tell you.”

  When they reached the fields at Islington where the great balloon was moored, Fanny felt much happier. The earl had appeared at her side and she turned impulsively to him and said, “Oh, how I should like to fly above the houses. To be free.”

  Again, he experienced that odd, protective, yearning feeling. Mr. Fordyce was happily lecturing Mrs. Waverley and Lady Artemis on the art of ballooning, and Frederica and Felicity were whispering with their heads together. Lady Artemis had decided to try to make the earl jealous by flirting with Mr. Fordyce.

  “There is our balloonist, Mr. Greene,” cried the earl as a carriage drove up. “Come, Miss Fanny. I have an idea.”

  Fanny was introduced to the famous balloonist. “Mr. Greene, with your permission, before you make your ascent,” said the earl, “may I take Miss Waverley here into the basket so that she may get some idea of what it might be like to fly?”

  “By all means,” said Mr. Greene. “There’s some fellows over there with a ladder.”

  Felicity and Frederica watched round-eyed as they saw the earl helping Fanny into the balloon basket. Above them, the great pink and gold balloon soared up to the heavens. “I tell you, she’s spoony about him,” hissed Felicity. “She’s going to run off and get married and I can’t bear it. Why should she escape and betray us and our ideas?”

  Frederica grinned maliciously. “Let’s give them a fright.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have my sharp knife. We could creep around and fray the ropes so that, perhaps, they might snap and tilt the basket and give Fanny a scare.”

  “That won’t do any good. They’re loaded down with sandbags.”

  But as the girls watched, Mr. Greene himself climbed into the basket and could be seen explaining the working of the balloon to Fanny. The earl said something and Mr. Greene smiled. He and the earl started to throw out sandbags and the crowd cheered as the basket lifted, straining at the ropes.

  “Are they taking Fanny up?” asked Felicity.

  “No,” said Frederica. “She’d freeze to death. Mr. Green’s giving them an idea of what it feels like. See, they’re bringing back the ladder. Fanny’ll be getting down.”

  “Let’s give her that fright,” said Frederica. “You start shouting that someone has stolen Mr. Greene’s horse and leave the rest to me.”

  Frederica darted off. Felicity had no intention of calling Mrs. Waverley’s attention to herself, so she tugged at the sleeve of a man in front of her and said, “I just saw a ruffian steal Mr. Greene’s carriage horse.”

  The man immediately shouted out that the horse had been stolen without even looking round to see if the voice at his ear had told the truth. Soon the whole crowd was shouting thief and calling to Mr. Greene. The balloonist darted down the ladder. In the commotion Frederica scurried from guy rope to guy rope, sawing busily. In the shouting and running and yelling no one noticed her.

  But the day had become wild and blustery and one great buffet of wind struck the balloon. Instead of just one of the guys giving and tipping the basket over, all the ropes snapped at once. The crowd cheered thinking it was some sort of stunt. Mr. Greene howled. Mrs. Waverley turned white and clutched at Mr. Fordyce for support.

  The balloon soared straight up and for a moment appeared to hang motionless just a little above the crowd. Fanny looked white and scared, the earl, furious. Then another buffet of wind and the balloon began to sail away rapidly to the east.

  A silence fell upon the crowd as it dawned on all of them that the lady and gentleman had been borne off by mistake. They watched anxiously as the balloon grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared behind a bank of clouds.

  Several of the men in the crowd removed their hats and stood with their heads bowed. Few expected amateurs to survive the flight.

  Clutching each other, Felicity and Frederica began to cry.

  Chapter Four

  Fanny’s hands clutched the edge of the balloon basket so tightly that one of her gloves split. The clouds parted, and down below were little fields and little dots of people. The earl was cursing and fiddling with the gas burner. They had changed direction and appeared to be rushing off madly to the west.

  “I trust you can get us down,” said Fanny over her shoulder.

  “I am trying, Miss Fanny,” he said crossly. “I know little of ballooning. This is one of the older ones, not hydrogen gas, but hot air. I do not think those ropes parted of their own accord. Someone must have cut them. Are you very cold?”

  “Yes,” said Fanny, surprised. She had hitherto been too startled and shocked to realize just how cold she was. She wondered for the first time why Mrs. Waverley in all her strictures against the follies of the human race had not thought to attack current fashions. To be dressed in transparent white muslin on a chilly spring day surely suggested a devotion to fashion bordering on the frenetic. Fanny’s gown was deeply décolleté, the transparency of the muslin revealing a minimum of pink underclothing, and a slit at the side showing pink stockinged legs. Over it she wore a lace pelisse, and on her head a Mary Queen of Scots cap of white velvet and gold thread.

  He took off his coat and wrapped it about her and then returned to fiddling with the burner. A gust of wind seized Fanny’s cap and sent it flying and tore the pins from her hair so that it blew about her head and shoulders. She slipped her arms into the sleeves of the coat he had put about her shoulders and peered over the edge of the basket again.

  “I am fortunate to be able to have this view of the world,” Fanny told herself. “I am sure I am not going to die. It is silly to waste an opportunity like this through sheer maidenly weakness and fear. We must be getting lower. People look more like toys than dots. And, I declare, the wind has dropped.”

  The basket swung around, and there, revealed on the other side, was a distant line of gray heralding the broad expanse of the sea.

  “Miss Fanny!” Fanny edged around and looked a
t the earl. His green eyes looked bleak. “I am afraid we may be in for a ducking. I do not suppose you can swim.”

  “Yes, I can,” shivered Fanny. “Do not worry, my lord, I am not afraid. I cannot possibly feel colder in the water than I do at present.”

  He caught her in his arms and held her close as the balloon swayed and turned, getting lower the whole time.

  “Turn up the burner!” cried Fanny suddenly. “That way we shall not continue to sink.”

  “My dear child, we shall end up in the middle of the North Sea if I do not get us down soon. The Thames estuary is still directly below us.”

  Fanny struggled free and before he could guess what she meant to do, she had wrenched at the gas burner. The flame went out with a noisy pop.”

  “You half-witted idiot,” howled the earl.

  “Stop shouting at me and light it,” snapped Fanny.

  “I have neither brimstone match nor tinder-box, but I suppose such an enlightened, modern lady as yourself carries such items.”

  He cast a cynical eye at the piece of dainty nonsense that passed for a reticule, dangling from Fanny’s wrist.

  Fanny bit her lip. Normally she did carry an amount of useful stuff about with her, but vanity had prompted the thin gown and the scrap of a reticule. She realized that trying to compete with Lady Artemis had its drawbacks.

  “Well,” he said in a milder tone, “down we go. Hang onto me …”

  “No!”

  “Don’t be silly. If we are plunged into the water upside down or something, you will need all the help I can offer.”

  He drew her to him again and held her tightly while the balloon, which had ceased its rushing, plunging motion, drifted down and down.

  “I believe we shall make land after all,” he said at last, looking over the top of her head. Fanny pulled free and looked over the edge of the balloon. There was a village below, and she could see faces turned upward and hands pointing. Light glinted from musical instruments as the village band ran this way and that, staring upward, and colliding with each other. A tiny figure in an open carriage, just recognizable as a mayor from one of the neighboring towns, could be seen hurtling along the road to the village.

  At first, to Fanny, they seemed to be drifting gently sideways toward the village, and then all at once the balloon gave a lurch and straight down it went. She threw her arms around the earl and clutched him tight.

  “Sit down,” he commanded, dragging her down to the bottom of the basket.

  They lay in the bottom as close as lovers. There was a sickening bump and then the deflated balloon collapsed on top of the basket.

  There were cries and cheers from outside. Dazed and bruised and shaken, Fanny looked up at the earl who was lying on top of her. He grinned suddenly and kissed the tip of her nose and then rolled off her and helped her to her feet, taking his coat from her and putting it on, just as the covering that was the balloon was ripped away and the round red face of the mayor in full ceremonial robes appeared at the top of a ladder.

  “I am sorry to have caused so much disturbance,” said the earl, bowing low. “I am Tredair, Lord Tredair, and this is Miss Fanny Waverley.”

  The mayor’s red face became even redder with delight. A real live lord!

  “Pray descend,” said the mayor, “and accept the hospitality of this humble village.”

  The earl made his way down the ladder and then turned to help Fanny.

  A great cheer went up from the villagers, the sun shone, the village band began to play “Rule Britannia”, as Fanny with her golden hair streaming about her shoulders descended from the balloon.

  “Speech! Speech!” screamed the villagers.

  “Cannot we just go?” whispered Fanny fiercely to the earl.

  “No. This is the biggest thing that has ever happened to them and we must not disappoint them,” said the earl and climbed back up the ladder. He noticed ruefully that the road leading to the village was jammed with carriages and hawkers, conjurors and jugglers. Everyone must have been following the progress of the balloon for some time and any excuse for a fair had drawn them all as if pulled by one enormous magnet.

  The earl raised his hands for silence. “Thank you, my lord mayor, and good people of …”

  “Deep-Under-Lime,” hissed the mayor.

  “Deep-Under-Lime,” said the earl.

  “And the township of Deep of which I am the mayor,” prompted the mayor, sotto voce.

  The earl duly repeated all that and went on, “Miss Waverley and I are most grateful to you all. We had said our last prayers and had just given ourselves up for dead, when a ray of light struck down from the heavens, right on this village.”

  There was an awed gasp.

  “The hand of God guided us here,” said the earl. “In fact, the village of Deep-Under-Lime was chosen by Divine Providence to be our place of rescue. I shall now tell you how we came to be in this predicament …”

  Fanny listened in horror. How could he tell such lies? Well, not exactly lies, but such a wildly exaggerated tale. A cloud crossed the sun and she shivered. But she could only be glad that the earl was holding his audience. He made a handsome and commanding figure, and he stood with one booted foot upon one rung of the ladder, the wind ruffling his black hair. For just before he had begun to speak, Fanny had noticed the shocked looks cast at her gown. What she was wearing was respectable for a fine lady in London, but here her scanty attire looked more suitable wear for a prostitute.

  “At the height of our peril,” the earl was saying, “a great gust of wind tore Miss Waverley’s outer gown from her body. Picture her distress. Her outraged modesty. Perhaps one of you good people could lend her a warm cloak? Thank you.”

  Fanny smiled gratefully at the better dressed group of women at the front of the crowd who had miraculously found a velvet cloak to wrap about her. She was doubly grateful for its warmth as the earl talked on and on. He finally finished by suggesting they sing a hymn and when that was over led the crowd in a rousing chorus of God Save the King. By this time most of the crowd were weeping with emotion.

  A garlanded chariot was found and bedecked with ribbons. In it went the mayor, a Mr. Dowdy, and his wife with their backs to the horses and Fanny and the earl facing them. There was a scramble and jolting and heaving as the horses were untethered and the crowd proceeded to pull the chariot themselves to the neighboring town while the band went on before, playing, “See The Conquering Hero Comes.”

  Fanny felt exhausted and shattered and buffeted by all the cheering and noise as she had so recently been buffeted by the wind.

  “Smile and wave!” hissed the earl in her ear, and so Fanny waved to the cheering crowds, cursing him in her heart for a vain fool.

  At the nearby town of Deep they were taken to a posting house and given bedchambers to refresh themselves in and commanded to attend a mayoral banquet that evening while messengers rode to London with the glad news of their safety.

  How Fanny got through that terrible evening, she never knew. There were great masses of food and then a personal appearance on the balcony of the town hall and then a fireworks display to attend.

  She hated the earl with a black deep hatred. He should have been concerned for her welfare. Had she screamed or fainted or behaved in any missish way? No! But all he did was smile and smile and make those interminable speeches.

  It was not until the morning after that they found themselves alone together at last as they set out in a closed carriage on the road to London. The weather had turned wet and blustery, and Fanny was considered too much a heroine to mind the conventions or object to being put in a closed carriage with the earl.

  “You, sir,” began Fanny, as soon as the town was left behind, “are a vain knave and a fool. How you basked in all that adulation. What lies you told those poor people.”

  “A little exaggeration, that is all,” said the earl mildly.

  “All that business of a ray of light from God pointing the way,” scoffed Fanny
.

  “Think,” he said. “Our deliverance was a miracle, whatever way you like to look at it. Did you not mark how poor that village was? Now, for a short time, it will be on the map. People will come from all over to see where Almighty Providence intervened. The shopkeepers of Deep-Under-Lime will make money and so will everyone else. Why deprive people of enjoyment and fun? They have so very little. You were not hurt. If I may say so, you have shown remarkable stamina and look more beautiful than ever.”

  “You may have forgotten,” said Fanny in a thin voice, “but I am a woman, and yet you showed not a whit of concern for my well-being.”

  “I would have shown a great deal of impatience if you had added to my misery by behaving in a hysterical manner. Come now, Miss Fanny, are not you bluestockings always going on about how you are as strong as men?”

  “Intellectually, but not physically.”

  “Then be grateful for a strong mind that enabled you to bear danger in a commendable way. You cannot have it both ways. If you want me to treat you as I would treat a silly, twittering miss, then you must be silly and twitter and look at me as if I were the most marvelous man in the whole world.”

  He smiled in a superior way at Fanny’s averted face. Fanny suddenly looked at him with a world of tenderness and adoration in her eyes. Her body appeared to sway toward him, and she said huskily, “Oh, my hero!”

  He was shaken to the core. His hands were about to reach for her when she said maliciously, “Something like that, my lord?”

  “You are a play actress and a minx,” he said furiously. “You would have me believe that men and women are intellectually equal, and yet that is not so. Women are cruel. They take things too personally, whereas a man is able to dismiss petty slights and insults.”

  “Fustian,” said Fanny. “What actions of female violence at any time ever exceeded the cool determined cruelty of eastern princes who murder all their brethren, on their accession to the throne, from the jealousy of rivalship?”

  “Then take vanity. Women are more vain than men,” said the earl, feeling huffy.