Edward Ashworth stood at the edge of the Yorkshire moor and watched the wind try to lift his creation from the earth. The glider—he refused to call it a machine, for it had a grace that machines lacked—trembled against its ropes like a living thing straining toward the sky.

Three years of design. Three years of secret work in the old barn, funded by selling his mother's pearls one by one. Three years of whispers from the servants and disapproving silences from his father, who believed that a gentleman's son should hunt foxes and attend Parliament rather than dream of flight.

"It will never work," Sir Henry had said at breakfast that morning, not looking up from his newspaper. "Men are not meant to fly, Edward. If God had intended otherwise, He would have given us wings."

Edward had said nothing. He had learned that arguments with his father were exercises in futility. Sir Henry Ashworth was a man of solid earth—land, rents, tradition. The idea of leaving the ground voluntarily offended his sense of natural order.

But Edward's mother had understood. Before she died, she had pressed her pearls into his hand and whispered, "Fly for both of us, my darling. Fly where I never could."

He cut the ropes.

The glider lurched, caught a gust of wind, and rose. For a moment—one perfect, impossible moment—Edward was flying. The moor fell away beneath him. The sheep became dots of white against the green. The wind roared in his ears, not as sound but as pure sensation, as if the air itself were welcoming him home.

Then the thermal collapsed.

He had time to think, quite calmly, that this was how Icarus must have felt—not fear, but wonder, even as the ground rushed up to claim him. Then impact, darkness, and the distant sound of someone screaming.

When he opened his eyes, he saw an angel.

She was bending over him, her dark hair loose around her shoulders in a way that no respectable woman would allow. Her eyes were gray-green, the color of the sea before a storm, and they were wide with concern.

"Don't move," she said. "You've broken something. I can tell by the way you're lying."

Edward tried to sit up and discovered that she was right. His left leg sent lightning bolts of pain through his body, and his head felt as if someone were playing drums inside it.

"My glider," he managed.

"Destroyed." The angel—she was not an angel, he realized, but a young woman of perhaps twenty, dressed in a riding habit that had seen better days—gestured toward a pile of splintered wood and torn canvas. "You fell into my father's south field. You're lucky to be alive."

"Your father?"

"Lord Belmont. This is Belmont Park." She helped him sit up, her hands surprisingly strong. "I'm Catherine. And you, apparently, are a man who thinks he can fly."

Edward laughed, then winced as pain shot through his ribs. "Edward Ashworth. And I did fly. For almost a minute."

"A minute." Catherine smiled, and the moor seemed to brighten around her. "A minute of flight in exchange for a broken leg. Was it worth it?"

Edward looked at her—really looked at her—and forgot how to breathe. "Yes," he said softly. "It was worth it."

He did not know, then, that he had just sealed his own doom.