“Absolutely not!” She glanced back to look at him and saw an older couple to his right. The lady had stooped shoulders and the gentleman leaned upon a cane. Neither could see past those in front of them.
Miranda was about to mention this to the baron when he noticed the pair at his elbow. Quick as a whip, he murmured something to the man before tapping the shoulders of two who’d come afterward and taken positions up front.
“Show your elders a little respect,” Lord Mercer said. Not waiting, he assisted the elderly couple forward, driving the others aside.
With the lamps reflecting in the older lady’s blue eyes, her face lit with pleasure to see the Cascade. The gentleman put his free arm around his wife’s waist.
Glancing at Lord Mercer again, Miranda smiled.
The baron was a considerate man. She’d noted this before. Why she’d expected a rake to be selfish, she didn’t know. Perhaps it was how he’d been depicted in the papers as caring only for himself and his own pleasure.
About ten minutes after the spectacle started, it was over.
“I wish they would begin again,” she said.
The older lady to her right overheard her. “That’s the wonder of the Cascade,” she began in a thick Scottish brogue. “It’s never on long enough that you grow bored of it.”
Then she addressed Lord Mercer. “Thank you for allowing us to see it, young man. It’s been many years since we came down from Edinburgh to witness it. When I saw the crowd, I feared our long trek had been for naught.”
“My pleasure, madam,” he said.
The older gentleman nodded his head in agreement before glancing in Miranda’s direction and back at the baron.
“Good evening to you and to your wife, my lord. Mayhap you shall come again forty years from now to this very spot. There’s nothing like a long marriage and a good woman to keep you young.”
They departed into the darkness, the man leaning heavily on his cane and his wife grasping his free arm.
They left behind them an air of awkwardness.
Aunt Lucinda spoke first. “If only my Mr. Cumbersome had not had weak lungs,” she said, then sighed before following the crowd out of the treed area.
Miranda and Lord Mercer exchanged a glance. He shrugged.
“Two of the few souls at Vauxhall who do not know me nor my reputation.”
“You were very kind,” she insisted. That was the reputation he ought to cultivate.
The baron’s gaze lingered on her before he said, “Shall we move on? We have much more to see. And there’s an extra treat this evening, maybe even better than this last entertainment.”
Miranda couldn’t imagine what might top the Cascade. After another hour of dancing, Lord Mercer ushered her and her aunt under the arches along the Grand South Walk until they stopped where a throng had gathered near its far end.
“Madame Saqui, late of the theatre at Covent Garden, is going to put on a show,” Lord Mercer explained.
“Does she sing?” Miranda asked, gazing curiously at the fireworks tower still many yards away at the end of the walkway and the rope coming from its high point to a stake in the ground near their feet. Someone performing while fireworks were exploding seemed unusual indeed.
He smiled. “You’ll see.”
In a few minutes, the top of the tower was lit with lamps and a woman appeared, waving to the crowd. Many gasped while some women put their hands over their mouths in excited fear, but most everyone clapped.
“Madame Saqui?” Miranda guessed.
The baron nodded, and she kept her attention upon the figure perched atop the platform. She was dressed in an exotically patterned tunic of blue and gold that reached her knees, with pantalettes showing to her ankles. Upon her head was a headdress consisting of a tiara and a bloom of white feathers that rose in the air a good two feet.
Miranda grasped her hands together with anticipation, memorizing every detail for Helen and Peter.
While the strains of music rose again from the Gothic Orchestra in the Grove, Madame Saqui stepped off the platform. It looked for a moment as though she stood on air.
Miranda gasped, hearing it echoed all around her, until she recalled the rope that stretched at an incline all the way up to the performer.
