Chapter One
Kent, England
April, 1830
It was the scream that woke him. It had been a short, sharp, shrill one, rather like a songbird being strangled, and it pierced both Thomas’ ale-induced slumber and his unfortunate eardrums, allowing him only a half second to be rudely yanked from the ill-advised nap—or, more accurately, the unplanned drunken stupor—into which he had fallen in a field on his long walk back from the village pub evening last to his house upon the hill.
Of course, a half second was not nearly enough time for a brain so clouded by a surfeit of ale to rouse to full wakefulness. It wasn’t even enough time to roll out of the way before the woman who had fallen from the sky landed atop him in a jumble of skirts and limbs, several of which had managed to plant themselves firmly in various areas of his limp body.
The air sailed from his lungs on a startled, pained whoosh.
Mercy. It was the first truly coherent thought that flashed through his brain, and not just because an unaccountably pointy elbow was still lodged in his solar plexus.
It was because ithadto be Mercy. Miss Mercy Fletcher, the pampered, eccentric daughter of his nearest neighbor, and the only woman he could think of who could have managed toscrounge up the temerity, the unmitigated gall, the absolute fucking audacity to fall out of the goddamned sky.
Thomas closed his eyes once more, praying for a swift death as the wretched woman dug her elbow still more deeply into his midsection in her efforts to right herself. A shadow passed over his face, blotting out the bright morning sun for a moment or two.
Mercy gave a cough, a wheeze, and then— “Oh, no. My balloon!”
Balloon?Thomas cracked one eye open. Fought for what scant shreds of breath he could convince his lungs to draw around the relentless digging of that elbow into his middle. Wrenched a few strained words from the largely breathless pit of his stomach. “Would. You. Get.Off.”
There was a crashing sound not too very far in the distance, as of something large and awkward blundering its way through the brush. “My balloon!” Mercy cried again, with a frantic edge to her voice. And then: “Ouch. My hair is snarled in the buttons of your waistcoat.”
Of course it was. Bloody damned hell. “You are a goddamned disaster,” Thomas snarled. “What the devil are you doing on my land, anyway?” He’d warned her off it at least a half dozen times in the last year alone, given explicit instructions that she was not to trespass upon it absent an invitation.
“I don’t,” Mercy said, in frosty, prim tones, “control the direction of thewind, my lord. I might ask what youwere doing, sleeping in a field?”
He hadn’t been sleepingso much as lying where he’d fallen after altogether too much ale. “None of your damned business,” he snapped, seizing her shoulders and yanking her—and himself—upright. The action wrenched several strands of dark hair loose from her head, and an accompanying yelp from her lungs. His head swam. Still drunk, then.
“You reek of ale,” Mercy said with a disdainful sniff.
“Get.Off.” Where were his damned spectacles? Thomas patted at his clothing, found them at last tucked into his coat pocket, and experienced some sliver of relief that he had had the foresight to put them away for safekeeping. He slid them on, but they sat awkwardly upon his face, one earpiece decidedly bent. But then, not even the most talented prognosticator could have foreseen Mercy Fletcher.
Blinking blearily into the distance, he watched a large basket tumbling about the field, attached, however precariously, to a billowing length of fabric. “What the hell is that?”
“Itwasmy hot air balloon,” Mercy said, a tinge of regret in her voice as she gingerly picked herself up, tugging at the disordered locks of her chestnut-brown hair, which had gone flying every which way.
“You fell from a hot air balloon?” The words sounded ludicrous even as he spoke them, even though he had personally witnessed the debris of it tumbling into the distance. “Have you gone entirely mad?”
“I didn’t fall by design,” she said, with an over-exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Naturally, I was trying to land it.” She gave a sigh, plunking her hands upon her hips and narrowing her eyes at the striped red and white fabric that tossed in the breeze like the sail of a ship. “I underestimated just how quickly I would descend once I had snuffed the fire, and failed to account for how difficult it would be to relight it in the wind. Next time—”
“Next time!” Good God, he’d never had the misfortune to meet anyone half so harebrained, so reckless, so absolutely head in the clouds—quite literally, in this particular circumstance—as this infuriating woman. “There had better not be a next time. Most certainly not on my goddamned land!”
Mercy turned. Blinked placidly. Notched that firm little chin an inch or so higher, as if he was being deliberately obtuse. “Idon’t control the wind, my lord,” she repeated. “Your spectacles are crooked. Did you know?”
“Because you fellon them!” His fingers itched to throttle her; a sensation which was, regrettably, not unfamiliar to him.
“Well, yes,” Mercy said, still in that supercilious tone that suggested he was not quite bright. “When I realized I was going to come down harder than I would have preferred, obviously I attempted to find some place to break my fall other than the ground. You seemed a marginally softer target.”
Thomas’ teeth were bound to crack if he clenched his jaw any harder. “You are not suggesting youaimedfor me.”
“I didn’t know it was you until it was too late,” she said, pursing her lips into a pout of distaste. “Had I known in advance of my jump, certainly I would have reconsidered. I invite you, my lord, to change your mind in your choice of targets in mid-air from nearly twenty feet up.”
Twenty feet! No wonder she’d knocked the wind out of him. She was damned lucky she’d not broken a bone into the bargain. Or any of his. “Get yourself—and your damned balloon—off of my property this instant,” he snarled. “And God help you if this should happen again!”
“It won’t,” she said, with a dismissive wave, turning back to survey the wreckage she’d left in the wake of her tumble from the heavens. “I’ve got it now; I’m sure of it.”
Which sounded offensively like she intended to attempt this preposterous undertaking again. Thomas swallowed back an avalanche of frustrated pejoratives of the sort that tended to coat his tongue whenever he happened to be unfortunate enough to be subjected to Mercy’s presence for longer than a few minutes at a time.
