Page 28 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match

Kent, England

November, 1831

“Shoes?”

Mercy grabbed fistfuls of her skirts, lifting them to reveal her feet, which were—for once—properly shod. “Shoes,”

she said. “Can we go?”

“And you’ve had breakfast?”

Thomas asked, with an arch of one brow, as she had not put in appearance at the breakfast table for the morning meal. Which was not a problem in and of itself, except that their countryside estate was a great deal larger than her father’s London house, and it sometimes created a bit of chaos when the servants were tasked with tracking her down in one of the many corners of it to deliver a tray to her.

But the routine they had established, comprised of notes left in the areas where she would most benefit from them and reminders provided by him and the staff as necessary, had thus far worked out splendidly. Mercy might lose herself in an activity which had dominated her attention, but she no longer missed meals or important engagements. Those tasks which were beyond her ability to focus on for longer than a few minutes at a time had simply been relegated to someone else.

There would always be chaos—but it had become a more controlled chaos, he thought. One that gave her the freedom to be who she was, absent the shame for those things with which she had often struggled. Little modifications, in the grand scheme of things, which had produced large differences.

“I did,”

she said, practically wiggling with excitement. “Bacon, toast, and poached eggs. Thomas, can we go?”

“You’ll want a pelisse. It’s chilly this morning,” he said.

Her brows lifted. “You’ve been out already?”

“Of course,”

he said. “I would not have suggested it if I hadn’t made myself entirely certain that we would all be safe.”

The November air was brisk and bracing, but the breeze had been only a light one.

“You’ve been up already?”

Her lips pursed into a pout and she planted her hands upon her hips, nudging her chin upward in sulky petulance.

“Only for a few moments,”

he said. “In fact, I had to fight the footman off only to seize a chance. More than a dozen men volunteered to anchor the ropes for us, in exchange for the opportunity to go up themselves. We won’t be in a free flight,”

he said, “but, as the last time you went up in a balloon, you crash-landed—”

“A controlled crash!”

“Onto me,”

he said, though he felt his lips quirk up just at the corners at the resurgence of what was now an age-old argument between them. Probably they’d still be bickering about it well into their eighties. “And this time, I’m going up with you, so you cannot rely upon me to break your fall from below.”

Mercy heaved a sigh and gave a roll of her eyes as she reached for the pelisse hanging upon the coat rack. “I suppose if I fell upon any of the footmen, they’d resign en masse,”

she acknowledged, cramming her arms into the sleeves of the garment.

“I hadn’t considered that,”

he said. “But I have enough experience with it to know that the men you fall onto have an unfortunate tendency to fall in love with you.”

“Unfortunate! Oooh—you’ll be lucky if I don’t push you out of my balloon,”

she said, spinning for the door.

Thomas jammed the toe of his boot down upon the hem of her skirt, and she pulled to a stop, casting a glare at him over her shoulder. “I count myself extremely fortunate,”

he said. “But I’d have to make certain that anyone else would regret it, you understand. I don’t relish the thought of fisticuffs—”

He paused, considered. “On second thought, in this particular circumstance, I just might.”

Her shoulders quaked as she smothered a laugh in her hand. “I cannot imagine you in a fistfight. But I think I’d like to see it, just once.”

She yanked on her skirts, pulling them out from beneath the toe of his boot. “Let’s go,”

she said, as she turned for the door. “I cannot wait—”

“A moment,”

he said. “We’re not yet ready.”

Mercy took stock of herself. “Shoes,”

she said absently. “Breakfast. Pelisse. What have I forgotten?”

“Nothing,”

he said. “But we’re to have an additional traveler with us.”

There was the sound of footsteps in the hall, and the soft, infant babble of a baby. A moment later, the nanny swept into the room. “Here she is,”

the woman said, in a singsong voice, as she passed the baby into Thomas’ arms. “Had a bit of a fuss, poor dear. Not one for swaddling, this one.”

“Yes, I know,”

he said. “But it’s chilly, and she’s a bit small yet for a proper coat.”

He peeled back his coat and tucked his daughter up against his chest beneath the shelter of it, holding her securely with one arm, her head tucked up against his shoulder. “She can share mine for now.”

Mercy’s brows arched high over her wide, dark eyes. “Flora’s coming up, too?”

He had bargained Mercy down from Florentia eventually, though he had half-suspected she had stuck to it as long as she had out of pure stubbornness and a natural affinity for quarrelling, rather than any firm attachment to the name. Though Sherborne, he was afraid, might become a sticking point, did they ever give little Flora a brother. “I thought you’d like to show her the world from your favorite point of view,” he said.

“And it’s—safe enough?”

“Perfectly safe. We’re all going up together.”

Not a flight, exactly—more like hovering. “Shall we?”

“Yes. Yes!”

She grabbed for his hand, interlacing their fingers as she tugged him toward the door. The brisk air hit him in the face the moment they stepped outside. A grey day, but the rain that had swept through the last few days had passed, and there were no storm clouds in the offing.

In the distance, set upon the lawn, Mercy’s red and white striped hot air balloon bloomed like a vivid flower. Several footmen lingered around the basket hung beneath it, minding the ropes that moored it to the earth. The damage that had been done to the balloon had taken countless bolts of silk and hours upon hours of careful, dedicated stitchery to repair. Seeing it now, in its newly-repaired magnificence, brought the hint of a smile to Thomas’ face. In the year since their marriage, Mercy had begun and abandoned a dozen or more needlework projects at varying stages of completion—but she had remained tirelessly dedicated to the restoration of her precious hot air balloon. And in the meantime, he had determined to learn all his could about how to fly one properly, so that when the time came, he would be adequately prepared.

Cautious, as always. But Mercy had developed an appreciation for it, and that was all that mattered.

“How is this meant to work?”

Mercy asked as they approached, squeezing his fingers in hers.

“You’ll climb in first,”

he said. “And I’ll hand off Flora to you and climb in after. And then the footmen will slowly let out the ropes, and we’ll ascend. Not too high, mind you,”

he said, mostly to the footmen circling about, as she released his hand and gathered her skirts to climb into the basket. “But high enough, I should think. The ropes will keep us steady and prevent us from being tossed about by the wind.”

The balloon was already fully inflated, straining at the restriction of the ropes presently mooring it to the ground.

Mercy held out her arms, and Thomas gingerly unwrapped Flora from his coat, laid a kiss upon the dark downy shock of hair atop her head, and handed her up. There was no particularly dignified way to climb into the basket, and so he hefted himself over the side and landed, inelegantly, within.

The footman had grown a bit more precise with the ropes than they’d been only an hour ago, when Thomas had first practiced this bit with them. Instead of a wretched lurch, there was only a strange, shifting pressure as the balloon lifted from the earth and rose slowly, steadily, into the air.

Mercy peered out into the distance, one hand rubbing the back of the baby nestled close to her chest. “This is wonderful,”

she said, her voice faintly breathless as she looked out over the landscape stretched below them.

“And possibly the closest we’ve come to privacy and more than a year, now,”

he said, edging toward the center of the basket. “Perhaps when Juliet has married, Mother will want to retire to her dower property.”

And then the house would be theirs alone.

“Stop,”

Mercy chided with a laugh. “I love your mother. And she loves Flora.”

“A little too much, perhaps,”

Thomas groused. In the three months of little Flora’s life, he’d had to share her with Mother, who loved nothing better than cuddling her granddaughter, more than he would have liked. “I’m thinking of inflicting her upon Marina, when she delivers in the spring.”

Marina had been married six months ago, to her publisher, and had shortly thereafter conceived. They resided happily together in London, though they had made several trips already to the countryside to visit. Thomas had been pleased to find Marina’s husband an amiable fellow, quick-witted and charming. They lived more or less on the very fringes of Ton society, but he didn’t think Marina much missed it.

Mercy chortled to herself. “You’d miss your mother,”

she said, sidling back to rest her back against his chest. “Just as I’d miss Papa, if we did not live so near.”

A tiny jerk of the basket, and Thomas knew they’d ascended as far as they would at last. “I would,”

he admitted. “And I suppose it’s good for Flora to grow up so close to her grandparents, and her Aunt Juliet.”

“That reminds me,”

Mercy said, “Charity wants to come for a visit. I told her she was welcome whenever she pleased.”

“Charity?”

he asked. “Really?”

Though he’d grown to appreciate his sister-in-law and her sharp, dry wit, she had never seemed much the visiting sort. All three sisters had exchanged veritable flurries of letters, but Charity had thus far declined every invitation they had extended to her to pay a visit. She had friends in London, it had turned out—powerful, well-connected ones. She might always be notorious, but she had collected a fair few people who simply did not seem to care. Even lords and ladies who had weathered their own share of scandal.

“Yes. She’s not yet met Flora.”

Mercy chewed her lower lip. “I think there might be some sort of trouble brewing for her in London. She was sparse on details, but I think it would be to her benefit to get out of London for a little while.”

“Then by all means, we shall host her.”

The cold air stung in his nose, and he caught the unbuttoned edges of Mercy’s pelisse, drawing them tight around her and Flora both.

Mercy sighed, turning her cheek against his shoulder as she looked out into the distance, across the fields, to the trees speckling the land, and a distant stream running in a streak of silver toward the horizon. “I love it up here,”

she said, and then nudged just the very edge of her pelisse away from Flora’s little face. “Look, Flora. Isn’t it beautiful?”

She hadn’t asked him, of course, but Thomas looked anyway—at his wife, his daughter. Safe in the circle of his arms, high above the tree tops, above the roofs and gables, above the land speckled with cottony white dots of sheep grazing in the fields, above the villages and the people below. “Yes,”

he said. “Absolutely beautiful.”