Page 82 of The Duke and the Lady in Red
“Nothing is going to happen.” Leaning down, he pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck. “I won’t allow it.”
For some reason, even knowing that he didn’t command the air or the heavens or the movement of this contraption, she believed him.
“Just close your eyes,” he said. “Absorb the peace of it.”
She did as he instructed. It was so quiet, the din from below faint and obscure. Although she knew they were moving, they did so at a snail’s pace and she could almost imagine they weren’t moving at all.
“Rose, look!” Harry crowed.
Opening her eyes, she saw the Thames below them. The boats and barges. The sun easing over the horizon, painting the landscape in glorious shades of sunlight.
“We can see everything. Are we going around the world, Duke?” Harry asked.
“Not today,” he answered.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Harry’s smile larger than she’d ever seen it. Tossing his head back, he laughed as she’d never heard him laugh. Her chest tightened painfully. She’d have never given him this. Even if she could afford it, she’d have neverthoughtto give him this.
Tilting her head back, she found Avendale watching her instead of everything unfolding below them. “Do you do this often?”
“A couple of times a year. There are no worries up here, no disappointments, no regrets.”
“What do you regret?”
He shook his head slightly. “They don’t exist up here.”
But she knew it for a lie. They always existed; they stayed a part of you forever.
Rose sat on a blanket, Avendale stretched out alongside her. Harry was walking along the stream with Mr. Granger. The pilot had brought the balloon down in this beautiful field, awash with purple, yellow, and blue petals. Fully aware of Avendale’s gaze on her, she plucked a flower, twirled it.
They’d enjoyed a lovely breakfast, packed in a wicker basket. “I’m going to miss your cook when our time together is over.”
“Don’t even contemplate stealing her away from me,” he groused.
She peered over at him. “As though I could.”
“I suspect you can do anything you set your mind to.”
“Even fly in a balloon. I can’t believe I did that.”
“You enjoyed it, though, didn’t you?”
“Immensely. Although not as much as Harry. I shall never forget the amazement on his face when that flock of birds flew by.”
Reaching out, he traced his finger across her forehead, down her cheek, along her chin, and she wondered how it was that his touch could still send her heart to pounding. She almost wished it were only the two of them, so she could lean over and kiss him.
“I shall never forget the astonishment on yours,” he said.
“I can well imagine what I must have looked like, probably all eyes.”
“Almost.”
She glanced around. “I do hope the fellow who owns this land doesn’t come barging over the rise to chase us off before we’re ready to leave.”
“I have it on good authority that he is too stuffed with meat pie to go barging anywhere.”
She eased down, raised on an elbow, so she could see him more clearly. “It’s your land.”
“It is.”
