“I believe I do, Mr. Truscott.”
“Your fiancé’s last flight went off in a stiffer breeze than we have this morning, and every villager and farmer for twenty miles about was quite entertained. But the rest of us, after riding pell-mell ten miles on the other side of Baronsford, only got there in time to witness him dragged like a stone over walls and hedges for another half mile. We thought he was a dead man.”
“Not this time,” she said. “Last autumn, he tells me, he didn’t have the help of our excellent Mr. Darby, who has fashioned a valve that will allow him to control our altitude and our descent.”
Truscott walked with them as they moved toward the balloon. “Remember, Hugh, it’s only a week before your wedding, and if anything were to happen to you—but more importantly to her—the earl will have all of our heads on poles on the ramparts. And that’s after your mother has us skinned alive.”
“I’ll take good care of him,” she said, smiling.
They’d dragged an empty chest to the gondola, and Hugh helped her climb in. As those on the ground got ready to release the ropes, Grace braced herself against the side and looked around her. Thick lines and rope netting rose from the sides of the gondola, securing it to the balloon above them. A flying ship.
She thought of the last time she’d been in this basket. Exhausted by her run through the murky alleyways of Antwerp. Stunned and torn inside at the sight of her father’s murdered body. Afraid for her own life. Ripped from everything she had ever known and propelled into an unknown future.
Grace closed her eyes and ran her hands over the wicker walls and the rawhide lacing. She let her fingers trace the woven patterns, recalling the darkness and gradually diminishing hope of ever breathing fresh air, or seeing daylight, or breaking out of what she’d come to accept as her coffin.
Hugh’s arm stole around her. “Shall we?”
She smiled up at him and nodded.
As the ropes were released, Darby saluted them and the others let out a shout. The basket rose smoothly, and in a moment the ruined church and the hill and the fields grew smaller and more distant. They were sailing toward the sun, the balloon rising higher over cottages and ponds and meadows. Animals in their enclosures looked like toy figures. All around, the world was a rolling patchwork quilt of green and earth tones. A river snaked along through meadows and forests.
She put her arms tight around Hugh and he leaned down and kissed her.
At one time this basket had been a casket, a vehicle of darkness and misery and death. No longer. It was now a soaring bird, carrying Grace and the man she loved into a crystal-clear future of light and life and joy.
“Look,” Hugh said, pointing.
In the distance, beyond a broad green forest, ringed with a lake of sparkling waters, a fairy-tale castle rose up to greet them.
Baronsford, her home.
