Never Kiss a Toad

Chapter Sixty-Four, Part 1

 "Are you certain about this?" Papa asked Maddox, eying the slowly burgeoning pile of silk with distaste.

Maddox reassured the anxious father, neither face nor tone hinting that he was repeating the same reassurances he'd given a dozen times. "We will not go beyond the bounds of the city, and we will not go high enough for Sally to feel the cold. I have planned our route exactly, and if a rogue wind takes us off course, Sally's merry band of brothers will be following us on horseback and will be at our descent-point ready to guard us while someone fetches a carriage."

Sally decided it was time to take a hand. "Please, Papa. Maddox has been waiting for the perfect day, and this will be our last chance before we leave Calicut."

Papa allowed himself to be persuaded, but marched off to give Sally's guards some extra, and quite unnecessary, instructions.

Sally and Mama were distracted by the arrival of the two ladies who had accepted Sally's invitation to join her in the flight. It was a necessary nuisance. They would meet the requirements of propriety, and she had managed to find two who were at least interested in the flight itself, and not merely at ogling 'that delicious Lord Maddox', as she'd heard him called.

By the time the balloon was filled and straining at its anchor ropes, her two unwanted companions had run out of questions. Maddox had claimed work to do and had left Sally with the task of satisfying their curiosity. He wouldn't escape so easily once they were up in the air. Sally planned to ignore everyone to revel in the sights and sensations of the flight.

It took another half hour of checks and tests before Maddox and his engineer were satisfied, but at last one of the helpers set up the ladder — more of an ornate stair — that they'd borrowed to help the ladies into the balloon.

Then at last they were off!

***

Piero had planned this entire fortnight's incursion into the house of Fratini with merciless precision, from the moment he and Toad had stumbled upon Arturo trying to calm a weeping, wailing Chiara in a back hallway of the Grand Duke's palace. They did not present themselves—they hadn't wished to embarrass the lady—but Piero had hatched a plot.

When he had outlined each point for Arturo and Toad, they had agreed to almost everything he suggested, with a few caveats—one being Toad's right to send a letter to Sally well before any such activities ensued. Toad and Arturo had agreed later, between them, that Piero's cunning and ruthlessness, especially in combination, was a bit frightening.

Once they had engineered the apparent public political split between Arturo and Toad, and the non-existent private split between Toad and Sal, Toad had ingratiated himself with il conte Fratini by way of excess money, feigned stupidity, purposefully lost card games, and affected aristocratic sentiments that, in reality, Toad took as unsustainable nonsense that was best settled peaceably, as did Arturo and Piero and, incidentally, the Duke of Wellbridge. In short, he presented himself as a fool who might easily be parted from his money.

Three days ago, Toad had taken Chiara for a drive in her brother's carriage, under the strict eye of a frowning duenna, and he did naught but talk about his money, his houses and estates, his proximity to royalty on multiple continents, the position he would gain when his father died, and the company stock he would gain when his mother did. He drank watered brandy from a flask and leered at Chiara, asking her impertinent questions about whether and how she planned to keep her husband from straying from his marriage bed, and how he hoped by marrying someone with Mediterranean blood, he could avoid spending his life with a cold English fish, and how she looked sturdy enough to produce an heir and a spare—at least—and he thought she would probably age well. Every time he licked his lips, she shuddered.