Summerset Abbey: Spring Awakening (Summerset Abbey Trilogy) by T. J. Brown

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    The day shone clear and crisp and she was glad she’d worn a scarf. The wind was light out of the northeast, though she knew it would no doubt pick up the closer she got to the coast.
    When she got to the Flying Alice, she realized she’d forgotten the small wooden toolbox she used to climb up in the aeroplane. The smirk on one of the men’s faces told her he had noticed her error.
    Impatiently, she motioned to the other man to lift her up. He did, his hands lingering on her back end. Her face burned and she resisted the urge to smack him. How dare he? The look on his face showed both his trepidation at manhandling a noblewoman and delight that he had put a trouser-wearing hussy in her place. He glanced at the other man for approval and he guffawed.
    Rowena held her hand out for her small case, and once she had it, she leaned forward. The man stepped forward to hear her, still leering.
    “How dare you, you little pissant of a man. My uncle will make mincemeat of you.”
    He stepped back and shrugged, though she could tell she had shaken him. “I can’t imagine the lord of the manor is too thrilled with his niece wandering around dressed like a tart.”
    Her face burned and she suspected it was true. “Start the propeller,” she snapped.
    He gave her an insolent salute and went around to the front of the aeroplane.
    It took him several attempts to start the propeller, and Rowena took deep breaths to calm herself. She didn’t need to be distracted as she flew. She’d never crashed, but knew it was a very real possibility every time she flew.
    She pulled down her goggles and scanned the gauges in front of her. Like those in her Vickers, they were fairly basic. Oil-pressure gauge, speedometer, and fuel pressure. The red tick marks on the speedometer indicated maximum speed and the speed at which the aeroplane would stall. As she performed these mundane but important tasks, her pulse sped up. It had been too long, far too long, since she had been in the air. Her envy at Victoria’s purpose-filled life faded as she readied herself and her aeroplane for flight.
    She worked the rudder pedals and rode out the bone-jarring trek across the field as she picked up speed. She pulled back on the yoke, her heart lifting along with the nose of her aeroplane.
    Then she was flying.
    Once the aeroplane was in the air her nervousness ebbed, and she kept one eye on the speedometer while enjoying the never-ending thrill of watching the earth fade behind her. The wings flexed and the plane pulled to the right as a gust of wind hit, but Rowena held steady and climbed a bit higher. Once she reachedthe speed and the altitude she wanted, she straightened the nose out and turned until the compass needle read southeast.
    As always, the sensation of being above all of her problems filled her with a sense of well-being that she had never felt while her feet were on the ground. The sky was bluer, the air crisper, and the sun brighter.Up here she was in control of her own destiny. Yes, she depended on the machinery to perform, and the weather to behave, but she had only herself to rely on, and somehow she trusted herself to rise to any occasion. Whereas on the earth, indecision held her captive and she doubted her choices to the point where she often couldn’t act at all. It had become worse after she had made the rash decision last fall to beg her uncle to allow Prudence to join them at Summerset. That decision had been catastrophic, had placed Prudence in a horrible situation, and had led to the end of a relationship Rowena had valued above almost all others.
    Then, even knowing that she and Jonathon faced almost insurmountable obstacles to their relationship, she had allowed herself to be seduced, only to be brokenhearted when he had, unsurprisingly, walked away from her.
    No wonder she was insecure about her decisions.
    But here, up here alone in the sky, she was as confident as a sea eagle soaring among the cliffs. In the