Highland Pleasures [6] The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie Page 12

  Daniel released her suddenly as the balloon swayed hard. The basket shoved upward, a strong gust sending it rocking. Violet shouted, her yell carried away on the wind, as Daniel grabbed ropes, pulling hard until the basket stopped its sickening spin.

  He thrust the ropes at her. “Hang on to these. Now we see if my hot-air personal dirigible is truly dirigible.”

  “Now we see?” Violet stared at him as she grasped the lines. “You said you’d done this before.”

  “Flown a balloon before, yes. Never tried to steer one with this system. Now, when I tell you right, you pull the rope in your right hand, left, the one in your left. Can you do that?”

  “I think I can remember right from left,” Violet answered shakily and started to wrap the ropes around her hands.

  Daniel grabbed her. “No. You hold them. If one jerks wild, I don’t need it pulling you out of the basket at worst, tearing off your fingers at best.”

  Violet’s eyes widened, and she unwrapped the ropes. Daniel retrieved the crankshaft, stuck it into his engine, and wound it again. A larger flame jumped from the top of the open box, the basket tipped, and Violet let out another yelp.

  Daniel laughed. “I like that you like to scream. Left, now. Left!”

  Violet yanked the rope as Daniel continued to crank, the flame spurting. The basket righted from its horrible listing, and the balloon rose higher still.

  Wind buffeted them. Violet watched Daniel’s body move as he worked, and wondered why he wanted to go so high. It was freezing now, the wind dry but icy.

  Violet glanced ahead of them, and suddenly understood why he wanted the height. Rocks and cliffs rushed at them, the trees on them looking so close she might be able to reach out and touch them. She sucked in a breath.

  “Higher!” she shouted. “We need to go higher!”

  “What the bloody hell do ye think I’m doing? Pull the right rope! Right!”

  “I’m pulling it!” Violet yanked on it with all her strength.

  Daniel kept pumping the fire. The rocks rushed at them. At any moment they’d hit, the basket would splinter, and she and Daniel would tumble down. Would they land on rocks, arms around each other, hurting but surviving? Or be plunged to their deaths?

  Violet didn’t want to plunge to her death just yet. She wanted to be pulled back into Daniel’s embrace, to feel his desire for her and taste it on his lips.

  At one time in her life, Violet would have welcomed death. But not today. Not when she’d finally found this aliveness.

  Daniel kept cranking. Violet’s wind machine blew the hot air up into the balloon’s silken envelope. The basket soared upward, over the cliffs. The crags at the top of the little peak seemed to reach up to grab for them, but then the balloon was clear. After a minute of soaring inches above trees on the other side of the ridge, the land fell away to the next valley, and the balloon floated gently above it.

  Daniel stopped the crankshaft and straightened up, stretching his arms high. He whooped. “Well done, lass!”

  Laughing, he caught Violet in his arms, lifting her from her feet and kissing her. His face was cold now, cheeks ruddy, hair mussed by the wind. Violet, still holding the ropes, kissed him back.

  Daniel’s gaze was all for her as he lowered her to her feet and gently took the ropes from her. “Thank ye, love. We make a good team.”

  “Yes.” The word came out a croak, Violet unable to think of anything else to say.

  Daniel turned around to look at the world, and spread his arms, the ropes moving with him. “Never been this high before.” He whooped again, and Violet laughed.

  The land opened out before them, a long river valley dotted with farms and small villages. Patches of snow clung to the shadows of trees and rocks on the slopes of the ridge they’d just crossed. Far below, smoke rose from the scattered farmhouses, and one or two people moved about on the remote roads.

  No one in the wide world knew where Violet was at this moment. Though she’d told Mary she was accompanying Mr. Mackenzie to a village outside Marseille, Violet had not known Daniel would take her aboard this wonderful machine and off into spaces unknown. No one but Daniel knew where she was now—they’d even left Monsieur Dupuis and Simon behind in the last valley.

  Violet was truly alone, floating on air, with only a man who was nearly a stranger to keep her aloft. Daniel had isolated her from everyone she knew, taken her far from the help of anyone. Violet should be terrified, brought to her knees in one of her attacks of panicked hysteria.

  But she could feel no fear. She watched Daniel as he dropped the ropes, held the side of the basket, and looked around, enraptured. The world was beautiful, Violet was alone with the man who’d shown her its beauty, and her heart was light. This must be what happiness felt like.

  When Daniel turned and looked at her, Violet wished the moment could be suspended in time. She never wanted to forget how he was looking at her. Not in lechery, not demanding anything from her. He studied her as though he liked looking at Violet, for herself, as though nothing in the world mattered to him but her and this moment.

  I could love you, Daniel Mackenzie.

  In this place of contentedness and freedom, the warmth of the words took form, and wouldn’t leave her.

  Daniel turned away, scanning the horizon again. “We should find a place to set down.”

  “I don’t want to.” Violet spoke before she could stop herself.

  Daniel glanced at her again, his smile returning. “I don’t either. But those clouds are thickening, and a balloon is not a good place to be in a rainstorm. Or possibly a snowstorm, this far from the coast.”

  True, now that the Mediterranean’s breezes had been left behind, the wind had a wintry bite.

  “Over there, I’m thinking.” Daniel pointed to a flat space of land covered with bare black fields, plowed furrows making dark crisscrosses in the ground.

  “How do we land?” Violet looked up at the balloon, which was stretched full. “Do you know where we are?”

  Daniel shrugged. “Somewhere in France. When we bring this thing down, I plan to ask.”

  How wonderful to go where the wind blew, to not worry about where you were or where you were going. Daniel moved through life expecting it to get out of his way, while Violet frantically scrambled to survive.

  Daniel started working with ropes again, and turned knobs on his engine. The fire in the machine died down, and the balloon slowly, regretfully, began to descend.

  “Hmm,” Daniel said.

  “What?” Violet was at his side again. “What do you mean, hmm?”

  Daniel gave her a dark look. “Better hold on to something.”

  Violet clutched the side of the basket, her heart hammering. “Why?”

  A gust of wind caught them. The balloon rocketed sideways, at the same time the basket rapidly slid toward the earth.

  Daniel pulled down hard on a rope, and high above them, a hole opened in the silk to let out the air. He yanked on the steering ropes some more, then finally let go of everything and slammed his arms around Violet from behind, grabbing the basket on either side of her. He shielded her with his body as the plowed field rushed at them, the balloon deflating.

  A corner of the basket scraped the ground. The balloon bounced upward, wind grabbing it again. Violet squealed in alarm but hung on. Daniel around her, strong and solid, gave her the false illusion that she was safe.

  The basket scraped the ground again, then it tipped halfway over, the bulb of balloon still upright on the wind. Daniel’s hands around Violet whitened with his grip. He was cursing, and she heard screams coming from her own throat, both in elation and absolute terror.

  The balloon dragged the basket across the field, pulling up stubble of last autumn’s late harvest. Birds exploded from the furrows, rabbits dove away from them. A fox lifted its head and stared as they skittere
d by.

  It would stop, Violet reasoned. The balloon would deflate, the basket would tip over with a thump, and she and Daniel would spill out into the mud. Comical but not deadly.

  The basket reached the edge of the field, the balloon still pulling it. They went up over gorse and rocks that lined the field, and suddenly the world plummeted out from under them.

  The half-deflated balloon sailed out over a river gorge, the river itself sparkling merrily at the bottom. The sides of the cliffs, pockmarked with snow, reached up to them.

  Daniel’s curses changed to one long yell, Violet’s joining his. The balloon swept them across the narrow gulf and up the other side of the gorge, straight toward a line of evergreens. Daniel shoved Violet to the bottom of the basket and landed on top of her, curving his body over hers.

  The basket broke through the saplings at the edge of the gorge, smacked into the boles of slightly thicker trees, and spun around once. A noise like a great wind shook the branches as the silk of the balloon caught, ripped, and snagged fast. The basket rocked, banged once more into the smooth side of a tree, and stopped.

  Chapter 11

  Daniel lifted his head. Violet lay very still beneath him. Her eyes were closed, and she had a bruise on her face.

  The world had stopped spinning, and now wind moved them gently, the only sounds rustling branches and flapping silk. Daniel’s engine was dead, silent, and so was the wind machine.

  “Are ye all right, love?” Daniel brushed tangled hair from Violet’s face, heart beating swiftly in alarm.

  If he’d hurt her . . . If his arrogance had led to broken bones or worse, he’d never forgive himself. He could have left Violet alone, borrowed the wind machine and not insisted she come with him, but no. Daniel had wanted to show off to this breathtaking woman. He’d wanted Violet to throw her arms around him and exclaim how wonderful he was to be able to pilot a balloon.

  “Violet. Lass, wake up.”

  Violet blinked her beautiful blue eyes open. “Are we down?”

  Daniel let out a breath of relief. “We’ve stopped. Are ye hurt?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Violet sat up, resting her back against the basket, and shakily pushed her hair from her face. Daniel ran his hands up her arms, squeezing a little, checking for broken bones. She let him, understanding what he was doing, though she watched him warily from behind thick lashes.

  Daniel swallowed the need that had been maddening him and concentrated on making sure Violet was whole. She didn’t flinch until he ran his hands up under the warmth of her skirt, his touch skimming from ankles to knees.

  “I said I was fine,” she said, jerking away.

  Daniel withdrew, difficult when his fingers had brushed the soft heat of her thighs. “Need to check every bone. I broke my tailbone once, falling off a horse.”

  “My tailbone appears to be unsevered,” she said primly.

  The quiet words, contrasted with their wild ride over the gorge, made Daniel laugh. “I think I’m unsevered too. How about we find out where we are?” He put his hands on the lip of the basket and pulled himself upright. “Oh.”

  Violet was up beside him in a hurry. “Oh,” she echoed. “My.”

  The basket hung about twenty feet from the ground, nestled in the branches of two close-growing trees. The basket swayed the slightest bit, but it was stuck fast. The silk envelope, deflated, draped over trees, hung from branches, and dripped in tatters to the ground.

  “Dupuis will not be happy with me, I think,” Daniel said. “Never mind. I’ll give him the cost of the balloon plus a little extra. He can make a better one.”

  “He’ll understand if he’s such a great friend of yours,” Violet said.

  Daniel gave her a look of surprise. “Not a great friend. I only met him a few days ago.”

  Now she stared. “I thought you came to Marseille to meet him and try out your idea on the balloon.”

  “No, I came in search of you, as I said. Meeting Dupuis was of secondary importance—I telegraphed friends here and asked them if they could point me in the direction of a fellow balloonist. Marseille is a good-sized city. I knew someone would know someone, and I’d heard of Dupuis by reputation.”

  Violet’s lips were parted as she listened, uncertainty in her eyes. Daniel touched her cheek. When they were finished here—and safely on the ground—he’d explain a few things. He’d convince her he’d come to France for her. He could have stayed in England to try his experiments—he knew plenty of mad aeronauts there. He hadn’t thrown a few belongings into a valise and jumped onto the first train to Dover because he fancied the Mediterranean air. He’d make her see that.

  First, though . . .

  “I’ll climb down,” Daniel said. “And find a way to extract you. Won’t be long.”

  He made sure his gloves were on tightly over his hands before he grasped the nearest branch and started to pull himself out of the basket.

  The basket listed alarmingly, his weight and Violet’s together the only thing keeping it level. If Daniel climbed out, the basket would tip over, and Violet would fall.

  “We both go at the same time,” Violet said. “I can climb a tree.” She looked at the branches around her and then down through them to the ground.

  “We might not have to.” Daniel cupped his hands around his mouth. “Oi! Up here!”

  Voices gathered below, answering shouts in French. Then followed a long debate, to which Daniel contributed, about the best way to get the crazy foreigners out of their love nest in the tree.

  Daniel ended up untying the counterweights and gathering up ropes, still attached to the harness that held the basket to the balloon.

  “I’ll lower you down a bit,” he said to Violet. “They have ladders, but they won’t reach this high.”

  Violet looked at him in alarm. “If I go out, everything will unbalance, and you’ll fall.”

  Daniel wound a rope around her waist and under her arms. “I’ll be directly behind you, sweetheart. Trust me now.”

  “You’re a madman,” she said. But Daniel saw exhilaration in her eyes behind the fear.

  “Ready?” Daniel knotted the rope tightly and grabbed hold of it where it fastened to the balloon. He wrapped his other arm around Violet and lifted her to the lip of the basket. “One, two, three . . .”

  Violet let out a cry as the basket tipped, but Daniel had climbed into the branches above her, holding fast to the tree and to her rope at the same.

  The basket went all the way over, sending down counterweights, the engine, and Violet’s wind machine, as well as extra ropes and Daniel’s coat. Everything crashed down through the branches, extracting a yell from their rescuers. Above them Daniel and Violet clung to the tree.

  “Go on, love,” Daniel said. “It’s all right.”

  Slowly, slowly Violet picked her way down. A woodsman of burly peasant stock climbed a homemade ladder to meet her, catching Violet around her waist and carrying her down with him. Not until Violet’s feet touched solid earth did Daniel relax in relief.

  He climbed quickly down behind her, the branches burning his hands through the gloves, cold wind cutting him. By the time he reached the ground, the men had unwound the rope from Violet, and she was shivering.

  Daniel caught up his greatcoat, which had landed on a pile of fallen branches, pushed away the last of the rope, and wrapped the coat around her.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Fine. Perfect.” Violet was breathless, but he read no pain in her eyes.

  Daniel turned to the men who’d rescued them. Farmers, woodcutters, hunters with shotguns. “Thank you all,” he said in his mixed-dialect French. “Are we near a village? Is there somewhere my wife can rest?”

  He felt Violet start slightly at the word wife, but they were deep in the countryside, and the locals might behave be
tter if they thought Daniel and Violet man and wife and not a man and his fancy lady. In Paris or even Marseille, it might not matter, but villagers could be sticklers for propriety. Violet would never pass as Daniel’s sister, mostly because Daniel would never be able to treat her like one. No, the fiction of man and wife was best.

  One of the hunters said he’d lead Violet to the village and his brother’s coaching inn there, where she could rest and eat and stay the night if necessary. Daniel gave Violet a smile and squeezed her hand.

  “You go on. I’ll salvage what I can and join you.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Violet, bless her, didn’t argue, but turned and walked away with the hunter and another man.

  They were deferential to her, Daniel was happy to see, and he knew they had swallowed the story that she and Daniel were married. Or at least were willing to go along with it. They also recognized from Daniel’s clothing and the fact that he’d arrived by balloon, that Daniel was a wealthy man. He doubted they’d have a qualm about taking his money for food and drink and a night’s rest.

  Daniel looked up at the basket still dangling from the tree. “Right.” He brought his hands together. “Let’s see what we can take.”

  The men who walked Violet to the village were respectful if taciturn. The village was not far—down the hill through the woods and then out past a farmer’s field. The track they followed turned into a muddy road that led between a cluster of farmhouses, a shop or two, a church on a little rise in the middle of the houses, and an inn. Large parts of the old walls that had protected the town in wild medieval times still stood, integrated now into the walls of houses or barns.

  The last time Violet had stayed in a village like this—stranded when they’d been traveling in a torrential rain—Celine had begun having visions. The innkeeper’s wife had not liked this, declaring that Violet, her mother, and Mary were Romany witches and not welcome.

  The innkeeper’s wife and other villagers had escorted the three of them to the edge of town and shut the gates, letting them suffer the weather. Violet had always been sure they’d been lucky not to have been beaten before being driven out.