Millie rotated her neck. It rather ached from her nap. “Calèches, trains, and hot air balloons, I feel as if we are attempting Around the World in Eighty Days.”

“The current record is sixty-seven days, so you will have to do a little better.”

“How far are we from Calais?”

“Seven miles or so.”

The sky was clear, but she could not help worrying. “I hope the Channel stays clear. Last time I had to wait overnight.”

He touched her hand briefly. “You’ll see her again. I’ll get you there in time.”


The weather, however, did not wish to cooperate. A heavy fog stuffed the entire channel; all ferries remained in port.

“How long before it lifts?” Millie asked anxiously. Fitz had been talking to ferrymen and fishermen.

“Nobody thinks it will lift today. Half of them don’t expect anything to happen before tomorrow afternoon, and the rest believe it’s one of those that will stick around for at least forty-eight hours.”

Her heart sank. “But we can’t wait that long. She might not last.”

“I know,” he said.

“Why haven’t they built the tunnel under the Channel yet? They’ve only been talking about it for as long as anyone has been alive.”

He gazed back toward the direction they’d come. Then he looked at her, one thumb pressed into his chin. “If you have the stomach for it, we can go above the Channel.”

“Above?”

“Remember that airship I saw? Crossing the Channel in a balloon has been done before. But it’s a dangerous undertaking—especially going from east to west.”

She stared at him for a second. She’d never been on an aerial device before—never even read Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon. The idea of being thousands of feet above the ground did not hold any particular appeal for her, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

“Well, what are we waiting for?”


The airship was very peculiar looking.

Millie was familiar with a hot air balloon’s lightbulb-like shape. But the airship’s envelope looked more like an overfilled sausage. A rectangular wicker basket was suspended beneath. And from the back of this basket, two long poles protruded, each outfitted with propellers at the end, the blades almost as long as Millie was tall.

“Yes, she is safe as can be,” said the pilot, Monsieur Duval, to Fitz, in French. “The propellers are powered by batteries, none of that gasoline engine nonsense the Germans are trying. Just you wait. They will set themselves on fire yet.”

Millie was not sure that was what she wished to hear just now, even if they didn’t have a gasoline engine. She was beginning to envy Bridget, who’d chosen to stay behind in Calais until she could cross the Channel by steamboat.

“How do you heat the air?” she asked.

“The air is not heated. That is hydrogen inside the envelope, madame.”

“Hydrogen is lighter than air, isn’t it? How will we descend?”

“Ah, very intelligent question, madame. There are two air sacks inside the hydrogen envelope and these we can fill or empty. And when they are filled, the entire weight of the airship becomes slightly larger than the lift provided by the hydrogen and we will come to a very gentle landing.”

She glanced at Fitz.

“Only if you wish to go,” he said. “But you must make up your mind soon. Or it will be dark before we reach the English coast.”

She expelled a long breath. “Let’s hurry, then.”

The moment they’d settled themselves inside the basket, which Monsieur Duval called a gondola, his assistant began tossing bags of earth overboard, while Monsieur Duval coaxed his battery-powered engine to life. The propellers rotated, at first lazily, then with vigor.

The basket lifted so gradually that Millie, absorbed with Monsieur Duval’s handling of valves and gauges, didn’t even notice they were airborne until the basket was three feet off the ground.

“Last chance to jump,” murmured Fitz.

“Same goes for you,” she said.

“I’m not afraid of falling into the English Channel.”

“Hmm, I am quite afraid of falling into the English Channel. But if I jump now”—she looked down; the ground had receded dramatically—“it is a certainty I’ll break my limbs. Whereas it is only a probability that I will need to swim.”

“Do you know how to swim?”

“No.”

“So you have entrusted your life to this mad venture.”

She exhaled. “I trust I will be all right with you by my side.”

For a moment he looked as if he didn’t quite know what to say, then he smiled. “Well, I do have a compass on my watch. Should we hit water, I’ll know which direction to push the gondola.”

The fog. She’d forgotten about the fog altogether.

Above them was a clear sky, beneath them the French countryside—dotted with sheep, cows, and hamlets. Children pointed and waved; Millie waved back. Two boys threw stones that fell far short; Fitz laughed and shouted something that sounded like French, but did not contain any French words Millie had ever been taught.

The airship kept rising. The livestock were now pinpricks; the land a parquet of tracts in varying shades of green and brown.

“How high are we?” Fitz asked.

Monsieur Duval consulted a gauge. “The barometric column has dropped almost two inches. We are about fifteen hundred feet up—half again as high as the top of the Eiffel Tower—and we are still ascending.”

After some time, Fitz shaded his eyes with his hand. “I can see the fog now. Are we approaching the coast?”

“Oui, monsieur le comte.”

The fog was the most spectacular sight Millie had ever seen, a sea of cloud upon which the airship cast its elongated shadow. The thick vapors erupted and writhed, with currents and climates of its own. And as the sun lowered toward the western horizon, the peaks and ridges turned into mountains of gold, as if they were being given a tour of heaven’s own bank vault.

Fitz draped his coat around her shoulders. “Magnificent, isn’t it?”

She stole a look at him. “Yes,” she said, “in every way.”

“I’d once hoped my marriage would be an adventure—and it has turned out to be just that.” His gaze still on the fog, he placed his arm around her shoulders. “If something should befall us this day, know that of all the heiresses I could have married four years ago, I’m glad it’s you.”

At times she’d wondered how her life might have turned out differently had she been given a choice in the matter of her marriage. Now she knew: There would have been no difference, for she’d have chosen the very path that led her to this precise moment. She gathered her courage and put her arm around his waist.

“I feel the same,” she said. “I’m glad it’s you.”


There was just enough light for Monsieur Duval to set down the airship on an empty field, causing much excitement to several Sussex villages. Millie and Fitz arrived in London by midnight.

Millie spent the next week by her mother’s bedside. At first it seemed that Mrs. Graves might make a miraculous recovery, but Millie’s hopes were dashed when her condition further deteriorated.

Mrs. Graves slipped in and out of consciousness, sometimes awake long enough to take some nourishment and exchange a greeting with Millie, sometimes falling unconscious again before she’d even quite oriented herself.

Mrs. Graves’s sisters and cousins sometimes sat with Millie during the day; Fitz was there every night, keeping her company. They did not speak much during these long nights, each dozing in a chair, but his presence was a source of immeasurable comfort.

One morning, just after he left to have his breakfast, Mrs. Graves came to.

Millie leaped up. “Mother.”

She hurriedly reached for the glass of water kept on the nightstand and fed her mother several large spoonfuls.

“Millie,” Mrs. Graves murmured weakly.

Millie had not meant to, but she found herself weeping. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

“Forgive me, for leaving you much sooner than I’d intended.”

Millie could deny it, but they both knew Mrs. Graves had not much time left. She wiped her eyes. “It’s not fair. You should be as long-lived as the queen.

“My love, I’ve lived a wonderful, enviable life. That it will be a little shorter than I’d liked is no cause for complaint.”

She coughed. Millie gave her another three spoonfuls of water. Her breathing was labored, but she waved away the tonic Millie offered. “No, my love, the only unfairness here is what your father and I asked of you—that you give up your own happiness so that we could have a grandson who would one day be an earl.”

“I am not unhappy.” Millie hesitated. She’d never spoken aloud the secrets of her heart. “I do not wish to be anyone’s wife except Fitz’s.”

Mrs. Graves smiled. “He is a lovely young man.”

“The best—like you, Mother.”

Mrs. Graves caressed Millie’s still-wet cheek. “Remember what I said years ago? No man can possibly be more fortunate than the one who has your hand. Someday he will see the light.”

“Will he?”

But Mrs. Graves’s arm slackened. She was again unconscious and passed away the same day, late in the afternoon.

Fitz was by Millie’s side. He kissed her on her forehead. “I’m so sorry.”

Her eyes welled again with tears. “It was too soon. She was the last of my family.”

He handed her his handkerchief. “Nonsense. I am your family. Now go have a lie down; you haven’t slept properly for days.”