by Anna Bradley
Ten more minutes, and not a second longer—
“Haven’t drowned yet, lass?”
The deep, lilting voice came from behind her. A delighted smile rose to Lucy’s lips, but she tamped it down before she turned to glance at him over her shoulder. It wouldn’t do to look too eager. “No. I haven’t gone in this morning. I was just sitting here watching the sky, and…”
Waiting for you.
It was the most natural thing in the world, the way those words rose to her lips, but Lucy didn’t speak them. It wouldn’t do for him to think she’d been breathlessly awaiting him, her heart thudding with anticipation in her chest.
“And?” He ambled over and plopped down beside her in the sand.
Lucy eyed him. He looked like a dissipated wreck, and she wasn’t much better, clad only in her bathing costume with her cloak draped loosely over her shoulders. It was a bit late for maidenly shyness now. So, she took a breath and told him the truth. “I was waiting for you. I was afraid I’d miss you entirely if I went in, and you see, I was right.”
Lucy peeked at him from the corner of her eye. He looked like the very picture of a wicked rake, with his hair standing on end and a shadow of dark stubble across his jaw. Between that and his rumpled clothes and heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes, he looked as if he’d been on an infamous debauch the night before, and hadn’t yet been to his bed.
No doubt that was precisely the case, but Lucy kept the thought to herself. This friendship—or whatever one chose to call it—was a strange and fragile thing, and she didn’t want to test it just yet. If she scolded him, she might frighten him away.
He’d been staring out at the water, but now his blue gaze met hers. “Would you have been disappointed if you’d missed me?”
Lucy hesitated. She’d offered him her friendship before only to be rebuffed, but he was here, wasn’t he? She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Of course, I would be. You’re the only friend I have in Brighton.”
Not just Brighton, but all of England.
He raised one dark eyebrow. “If we’re truly friends, then why won’t you tell me your name?”
“I did tell you my name. It’s Lucy, remember?”
A brief smile drifted across his lips. “Your last name, lass. You have one of those, don’t you?”
She had one, but she’d hardly made it out of Devon before she realized revealing it would do her more harm than good. Lucy bit her lip and jerked her gaze away from him before he could coax the truth out of her with that playful smile and those teasing blue eyes. He might look harmless, but she suspected he was dangerously charming under that mussed hair and careless attitude. Rakes generally were, weren’t they?
Lucy grabbed a handful of cool sand and sifted it through her fingers. “Why are you so determined to know?”
He stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back on his hands with a shrug. “Why are you so determined to hide it, unless you’re some sort of criminal who’s escaped from your gaolers?”
She had escaped from her gaolers, though not in the way he meant. “Nonsense. Do I look like a criminal to you?”
“Well, you’ve assaulted me twice, so there’s that.”
Lucy choked on a laugh. “It’s not a proper assault unless there’s a broken bone.”
“It’s not a proper friendship if we don’t know each other’s names,” he countered, blinking innocently at her.
“Proper? You’ve seen me in my bathing costume. I nearly broke your nose with a kick to the face, and now we’re here alone on a deserted beach. We’re long past any concerns about propriety, sir.”
“Ciaran.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He glanced at her, his dark hair fluttering around his face in the morning breeze. “My name. It’s Ciaran.”
“Ciaran.” Lucy rolled the name over her tongue, testing it. It was shorter in her mouth than in his, blunted. She preferred the way he said it, with his lilt exaggerating the vowels.
Still, she nodded in approval. “It suits you. Yes, I suppose it’ll do.”
* * * *
The following day
Four fifty-five in the morning.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter that you won’t tell me your full name, Lucy. It’s not as if we can truly be friends, in any case. Gentlemen and ladies never can be.”
They’d been lying quietly on the sand, but Ciaran’s sudden announcement startled Lucy out of her thoughts. She squirmed into a sitting position and pulled her cloak more securely around her shoulders. “What do you mean, they can’t be friends? Of course, they can.”
Ciaran rolled over onto his side and propped his head in his hand. “No, they can’t. Etiquette, manners, a lady’s modesty—even a gentleman’s honor all forbid it.”
It was on the tip of Lucy’s tongue to point out their odd friendship wasn’t based on either etiquette or manners, and least of all her modesty, but instead she merely shot him a disdainful look. “That’s the most absurd thing I ever heard in my life.”
Ciaran shrugged. “True, nonetheless. A gentleman and a lady might be courting, or in love, or betrothed, or lovers, but not friends.”
The trace of bitterness in his voice made Lucy pause, but she balked at letting such a statement go unchallenged. “Have you ever had…”
A lover who wasn’t a friend?
No, no, she couldn’t ask him that. Despite the sheltered life she’d led—or maybe because of it—she wasn’t prudish about such things, but even she knew better than to quiz a man about his past lovers. “What sort of man becomes betrothed to a lady, much less marries her or takes her as his, er…lover, if she isn’t also his friend?”
His lover. Dear God, Eloisa would fall into a swoon if she could hear this conversation.
Ciaran gave her a look that was both amused and pitying at once. “Every sort of man there is, I promise you. Don’t be so naïve, lass.”
Lucy was quiet for a moment, considering this. She’d never had a friend at all, never mind a betrothed or a lover, so she was hardly qualified to hold an opinion on the subject, but even so, she wouldn’t allow him to be right about this. It was simply too disheartening for her to acknowledge it as the truth. “That’s utter nonsense.”
“Is it? Tell me then, Lucy. How many gentleman friends do you have?”
You’re the only one.
Not just her only gentleman friend. Her only friend. And not just for now, but for as long as she could remember. Lucy looked away from him, out toward the ocean, and lifted her face to the breeze. Before she’d come here, how long had it been since she’d felt the wind on her cheeks, or listened to the gentle swell of the waves as they rolled up to the beach?
So long, she couldn’t remember the last time.
As far as friends went, well…a lady who wasn’t allowed to leave her father’s house didn’t have friends, did she? What would Ciaran think if he knew before she’d come to Brighton, she hadn’t spoken to a single soul in two years aside from her father and their servants?
She didn’t want him to know. Not him, or anyone else. So, she kept silent.
Ciaran took this as agreement and flopped back down on his back in the sand. “It’s no wonder, is it? As soon as a gentleman even glances at a lady, some fool or other is shrieking at him to marry her. It’s not worth the risk.”
This causal pronouncement made a prickle of irritation dart down Lucy’s spine. Ciaran must have a great many friends to be able to dismiss friendship so carelessly. “A true friendship is worth any risk.” She held up her hand when he tried to interrupt. “Never mind. If that’s your only objection, then there’s no reason in the world we can’t be friends. I’d never agree to marry you, no matter who might shriek about it. I don’t intend to ever marry.”
Ciaran sat up again and cast her a quizzical look. “What, never?”
“That’s right. Never.”
He studied her, his brows lowered suspiciously, then his face cleared and he shrugged. “You say so now, but you’ll change your mind. In the end, every lady chooses to marry, whether or not she has any real affection for her victim…er, her betrothed, I mean.”
Lucy frowned, studying him. The way he’d said that—about a lady having no real affection for her betrothed—it sounded as if he was speaking from experience. “Have you ever been betrothed?”
He was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer her, but eventually he did. “I’ve been in love.”
Lucy couldn’t help but notice he hadn’t really answered the question. “Were you her friend?”
His laugh was bitter. “Yes, but she wasn’t mine.”
The hurt in his voice made Lucy pause. Whoever this mysterious lady was, she must have broken his heart. She let the silence stretch between them for long moments, the only sound the soft splash of the waves breaking on the beach. “Well, I’m nothing at all like most ladies. I won’t ever marry, despite what you may think. There are a great many things more important to me than marriage.”
Ciaran raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Like freedom.” Lucy bit out the word between gritted teeth. Her father had kept her locked in a gilded prison, and he’d called it love. Maybe it was a sort of love, too—the only sort he could offer her—but even as she’d adored him, she’d never willingly return to that half-life she’d lived. And what was a husband, if not another master? “I’m not the sort of lady who’s likely to fall in love, in any case.”
Ciaran studied her without speaking. Finally, a faint smile drifted across his lips. “I don’t believe you are like every other lady, Lucy. Not like any other lady I’ve ever known.”
He rose to his feet and brushed off his breeches, then held a hand out to her. Lucy took it, and he helped her up. When she gained her feet, they were standing far closer than she’d anticipated they would be. So close she could breathe in the faint scent of the ocean breeze clinging to his skin, and see the black starburst at the center of his eyes.
That’s why they’re so blue.
She stared up at him, a peculiar breathlessness in her chest she’d never felt before. That shade of blue made her think of the ocean stretched out behind them, the waves curling endlessly onto the beach.
Lucy cleared her throat. “Friends, then?”
Ciaran grinned down at her, a smile warming his eyes. “Friends.”
* * * *
The following day
Five twenty in the morning
Despite his promise of friendship, every morning after he parted from Lucy, Ciaran never consciously planned to return to the beach again the following day.
It just happened.
He and Lucy never discussed it, but somehow an understanding had sprung up between them. He would come to the beach every morning, and every morning she would be there, waiting for him.
This morning, he’d kept her waiting longer than usual.
When he approached, he found her sitting on the beach, her legs curled underneath her, her face and hair hidden by the deep hood of her cloak. “Don’t say I’ve missed this morning’s grand bathing excursion?”
Ciaran gave the back of her hood a playful tug, drawing it down so he could see her face. The soft breeze brushed damp tendrils of hair around her rosy cheeks, and he was aware of a low hum of pleasure in his belly. Lucy was his friend, and he didn’t aspire to make her his lover, but he couldn’t deny she made his skin prickle with awareness.
Even when she looked cross, like she did right now, with one eyebrow arched, and her mouth tight.
“What?” Ciaran held his hands up innocently. “What have I done?”
“You did miss the bathing excursion.” Her voice was tart, and her dark gaze narrowed as she took in his wrinkled coat and the soiled cravat hanging limply around his neck. “Your debauchery has kept you later than usual this morning. Are you onto something new?”
Ciaran made a half-hearted effort to smooth his clothing and tame his mussed hair, but gave it up as a lost cause. He tried a wheedling grin instead. “No, just the usual, dull debauchery. Wagering, drinking, ladies of questionable virtue. That sort of thing.”
He kept his tone light, but aside from the questionable ladies, this account of his evening wasn’t far from the truth. Lucy seemed to recognize it as a confession, because the disapproving pinch of her lips deepened.
“Don’t be angry, Lucy. I beg your pardon for being late,” he offered meekly.
“I’m not angry because you’re late. I’m angry because you behave like a wastrel. It’s just as well I don’t know your last name. I’m certain you’re the worst sort of rake, and I don’t want my conscience pricking at me to give you up.”
He lowered himself onto the sand beside her with a sigh. “That’s what rakes do, Lucy—they waste their time. I recall you saying once you hoped I was a rakish sort, because they’re the most amusing friends.”
“I don’t mind a rake, but I can’t abide a gentleman who squanders his time in such pointless pursuits. Surely there’s something more useful you could be doing?”
Ciaran opened his mouth to defend himself, then closed it again. He’d spent every night since he arrived in Brighton wagering and getting foxed. Before that, he’d spent months in Buckinghamshire doing the same thing. He was a wastrel, and he’d yet to find any point in it. “Like what? What would you have me do?”
“You could attend your poor, sickly grandmother. Isn’t that why you came to Brighton in the first place? You use her very ill, Ciaran. Indeed, I feel quite sorry for her.”
Ciaran snorted. Lady Chase, poor and sickly? The only debilitating condition she suffered from was chronic bad temper. “Don’t waste your pity on Lady Chase, Lucy. She’s as strong as a horse, and bound to outlive us all. In any case, she’s not my grandmother. My two eldest brothers’ wives are her granddaughters. Such a convoluted relationship doesn’t demand constant attendance.”
Lucy made a disgusted noise. “Is that so? Well, I daresay your brothers imagined you would attend her, or they wouldn’t have asked you to accompany her to Brighton at all.”
Ciaran let out a short laugh. “That’s not why they sent me to Brighton.”
Talking of his brothers depressed him. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his family. He did, more than he could say. But his siblings were married, with lives of their own. Somehow, Lachlan and Isla had managed to move on from the wreckage they’d left behind them in Scotland.
Only Ciaran hadn’t. Somehow, he’d fallen behind.
“Why, then?” Lucy asked.
“To get rid of me.” Ciaran winced, aware of how sulky he sounded. Lachlan and Finn hadn’t truly sent him to Brighton to get rid of him, but if they had, could he really blame them? No doubt they were as sick of him as he was of himself.
Lucy frowned. “Why should they wish to get rid of you?”
Ciaran tossed a pebble toward the water with a sigh. “Because they’re tired of watching me laze about in Buckinghamshire, drinking up all their port and being useless.”
“Well, that’s easily remedied.” Lucy sat up and dusted the sand briskly from her hands. “Don’t be useless.”
* * * *
The following day
Five forty in the morning
“Are you going to scold me again this morning, Lucy?” Ciaran asked, easing himself flat onto his back beside her in the sand.
Lucy studied him for a moment, then lowered herself onto her own back, imitating his posture, even as she knew she’d spend the rest of the day trying to shake the grains of sand from her hair. “Do you deserve to be scolded?”
He stared up at the sky for a while without answering, his arms folded behind his head, then muttered, “Aye.”
Lucy s
hifted her gaze from his profile to the water. They were both quiet as they watched the first rays of sun peek over the horizon. Lucy closed her eyes against the light, but it continued to press insistently against her eyelids. She didn’t have much time left this morning. “I won’t scold, but I do have a question for you.”
He rolled his head toward her. “What?”
“You told me you’d been in love before. What did it feel like?” Lucy drew in a breath. “That is, how did you know you were in love?”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, but his tone was wistful. “I just knew. She was the first lass I ever kissed. I was only nine years old at the time, but I remember thinking I’d marry her someday.”
“Why didn’t you?” Lucy asked softly.
His mood shifted, went darker.
“It was more that she didn’t marry me.” He let out a weary sigh. “It’s a long story, lass. There were some difficulties with my family, and we were forced to leave Scotland in a hurry. I haven’t been back since.”
Difficulties…
He didn’t say what sort of difficulties, but he’d stiffened beside her.
A lady he’d known since he was a child, a lady he’d grown up with, fallen in love with—a lady who’d perhaps broken a promise to love him in return. Was she the reason Ciaran’s smiles never lingered for long and rarely reached his eyes? If he was cynical about friendship and love, perhaps it was because he had reason to be.
Lucy hesitated. It didn’t sound as if he wanted to talk about this, but there was one more thing she wanted to know. “Do you ever think about going back to Scotland?”
He didn’t look at her. Instead he grabbed a fistful of sand and watched as it drifted through his open fingers. “Aye.”
Lucy wanted to ask why he didn’t, but she held her tongue. Something in his voice when he uttered that one word warned her not to prod any further.