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Vivianna was lucky, she had Oliver, and she had love, but Marietta had destroyed her chances of emulating her sister when she had tried to run off with Gerard Jones. She had wept long and hard when they brought her back to Greentree Manor, not so much for Gerard, whom by then she had realized was a lying rogue, but for her own lack of foresight. Time had resigned her to her fate as the “scandalous Greentree sister”—no matter how interested a man was in her, he soon faded away when he learned of her past. She may wish it was otherwise, that love conquered all, but she was no longer such an innocent as she had been. Love did not conquer all, in fact love was more often than not the crux of the problem.
However all was not lost. She may never live a cozy life as Lord Somebody’s wife, but she still had a life to live. Why shouldn’t she experience everything it had to offer, and without the fear of exposing her vulnerable heart once more? Marietta had a plan, and she hoped, very soon, to put it into practice.
At the Vauxhall Gardens, she had waited until Mr. Jardine became interested in one of the displays, and then given him the slip, claiming she had dropped her glove and must return for it. “I’ll only be a moment,” she’d promised. “You go on and I’ll catch you up.” She’d hurried back to the balloon to have a word with the ticket seller. A ticket tucked safely into her drawstring bag, Marietta had returned to her companion.
Now she recalled what the ticket seller had said. “It’s at your own risk, miss. As long as you realize that.”
“I do,” she had replied firmly.
“Then be here same time next week, and if the weather permits, you can go up with Mr. Keith.”
“Mr. Keith?”
“The aeronaught, miss. Don’t you listen to them what says Mr. Green’s the best aeronaught in England—I’d leifer go up with Mr. Keith any day!” The lad had said it with a smile.
People, Marietta found, usually did smile at her. Perhaps it had something to do with her petite stature, or her bouncing blond curls, or her open face and big blue eyes. Outwardly she was transparently honest in the joy she gained from life, and people gravitated towards her because of it.
Until they discovered she was ruined, she reminded herself bitterly—then they were quick to avoid her.
“Such people aren’t worth knowing,” her sister Francesca had said in an attempt to make her feel better. “Your true friends will never desert you.”
Francesca was younger than Marietta by only a year, but in appearance and character they were very different: Francesca tall and dark; Marietta small and fair. Francesca was intense and serious, whereas Marietta was, outwardly at least, all light and laughter. But they were close despite all that, and she wished that Francesca had agreed to leave her moors behind and come to London. Her sister had a way of comforting her—of making the truth seem not so bad.
The balloon awaited her, and this time she wasn’t about to be left behind on the ground, oh no. This time she’d be up there, in the sky, looking down.
Marietta hurried forward, and the crowd parted for her. The aeronaught, a man of about forty with graying dark hair and lush side-whiskers, was making some last-moment adjustments. He looked up, distracted by the crowd’s murmur, and the lad who had sold her the ticket leaned closer and murmured something in his ear. The aeronaught’s face underwent a transformation and suddenly he was all smiles.
“Ah, Miss Greentree! How do you do? I’m Ian Keith. We’re almost ready to take off. Please, come aboard.” He had a slight cockney accent, as though he had risen in the world.
Appropriate, Marietta thought, seeing he was an aeronaught. She smiled back, eager to be aboard, and it was only as she reached to take his gloved hand that she realized there was another passenger already in the wicker basket. He had been partially hidden in the shadow thrown by the balloon towering above them, but now she looked up and saw him clearly. A man. A stranger. And not a friendly-looking one.
Marietta allowed herself to observe him frankly, not for a moment considering it might be more polite to lower her gaze. The Greentree sisters had been brought up to believe a woman should say what she believed and act accordingly, that she should face life head on and never shy away from it. Her experience with Gerard may have dented her confidence, but it was far from destroyed.
Uns
miling, he returned her gaze.
The stranger was certainly very handsome, with hair of a deep mahogany brown and eyes of a similar color. He was dressed in a dark green jacket and buff trousers, and although there was the appearance of a gentleman about him it seemed slightly shabby, as if his valet had forgotten to give him a good polish. A neglected stranger, Marietta thought. A brooding and solitary man with secrets, who was not inclined to laugh and enjoy himself as she fully intended to do.
Marietta found herself wishing he wasn’t going up in the balloon with her. His presence threatened to spoil her enjoyment on this, her first adventure since she had made the journey to London from Yorkshire. At least she wouldn’t have to make polite conversation with him—he looked as dismayed to see her as she was to see him—and polite conversation meant exchanging the broader details of one’s life, and inevitably that led to who she was, and whose daughter she was, and then suddenly the person she was speaking to would find something urgent to do.
The man raised his eyebrows, and Marietta realized she was still staring at him. His mouth quirked, and she discovered that he could smile after all. “Perhaps you’d better get into the basket,” he said, in a deep, aristocratic voice that didn’t go at all with his shabby look. “If you don’t want to be left behind.”
There were some steps set against the woven wicker to enable passengers to climb inside. Marietta negotiated them with difficulty. She was hardly in the forefront of fashion—indeed, she was at least two years behind and she hadn’t had time yet to visit the London shops—but she had dressed in what she thought was a suitable outfit for a balloon ride. Now the blue wool dress and its modest two petticoats seemed cumbersome. The fashion was changing, skirts were becoming more rigid and hems longer. Marietta preferred the less fussy styles, too many flounces made her curvaceous shape appear even more curvaceous. But today even her Amazone bodice, plain and tightly buttoned to the neck and wrists, felt awkward, while the long ends of her scarf mantella were threatening to strangle her, and her velvet bonnet had been tipped to the side by her exertions.
As she climbed over the edge of the basket, she was just congratulating herself on her nimbleness when the toe of her elastic-sided boot caught. She stumbled and would have landed flat on her face if the stranger had not reached out and caught her.
Her breath whooshed out as she fell against him, his hard, masculine body a bulwark against hers. For a moment she could not think—her mind went completely blank. Shock, whispered a voice in her head. You aren’t used to being this close to a man. But it was more than that. Her senses were overloaded with information: the clean male scent of him, the dark shadow on his jaw above her, the heat of his palm on her back. Marietta found herself a little shaky just from being there, which was ridiculous enough in an untouched spinster, but for a ruined woman…!
The thought sent her instantly to the furthermost corner of the basket.
“Thank you,” she said, an afterthought.
Politely, he bowed his head; his eyes never left hers, and there was no smile in them. Nothing to tell her that what she had just felt had been experienced by him, too. Indeed the look he gave her made Marietta think he was also wishing her miles away.
“Perfect,” she muttered under her breath. “I am about to ascend in a balloon with a man in a mood.”
Mr. Keith had finished his preparations. He climbed into the basket with them, swinging his legs over the side with practiced ease. The basket was big enough for five, but it seemed only Marietta and her companion were to be passengers today. “Are you ready?” the aeronaught asked, but it was obvious he did not expect a negative answer. Marietta sat down and clung to the side and nodded vigorously.
