“Oh.” Her wrinkled forehead softened. “I suppose that explains why I haven’t seen you again.”
“Do you live in town, then?” Though her accent was more educated than the dialect he had picked up from the few local fishermen he had encountered, it seemed too much of a coincidence to see her twice in two visits if she did not.
“Yes, on the far east side. Our house sits right on the ocean.” As if prompted by the question, her eyes pulled toward the crashing surf. He followed her gaze and caught the diamond flash of waves peaking before boiling over into gray. The tide was coming in, and it was a fearsome sight. The high cliff walls that surrounded them formed an inlet that seemed to force the water into a constricted space, intensifying the effect.
Had the waves been this rough and the tide this high that day, eleven years ago, when she had swum out to save him? He couldn’t remember. But the thought of such danger, heaped on a child’s shoulders by his own stupidity, chilled him thoroughly.
“I wouldn’t want to keep you.” Her voice broke through his thoughts. She motioned toward the footpath down which she had just come. “Not if you have a schedule to keep.”
“I am not expected elsewhere at the moment.” She seemed anxious to be rid of him. He wondered if perhaps she felt a need to hurry him along, in case he was considering another ill-advised swim off this section of treacherous, rocky coast.
Truly, there wasn’t enough whiskey in the world.
“I am visiting Brighton with my mother,” he added, “but she has eschewed my company at present.”
In point of fact, his mother had practically tossed him out of the room they had taken at the Bedford Hotel, insisting she was fine, snapping at him when he tried to plump her pillow or read to her out loud from the novel she kept on the table by her bed. He might have been plagued by troublesome memories in the three days since their arrival, but his mother seemed better, at least. The physician’s prognosis a month ago had not been favorable, but already her lungs sounded clearer. Perhaps there really was something to the restorative power of Brighton’s sea water cures.
He had initially argued against his mother’s suggestion for a recuperative holiday here. He had felt no desire to return to the town of Brighton and the nightmares that he sensed would await him here. But he had not been able to refuse his mother when she told him her heart was set on Brighton. Not when she had been so ill for so long.
And not when she had intonated it might be her last request.
“You are here for the summer then?” Caroline asked, thankfully oblivious to the maudlin direction of his thoughts. “So many are, now. The new rail system even permits Londoners to come for the day, if they want. Can you imagine? London to Brighton and back again, in only a few hours.” She wrinkled her nose, stretching a remarkable constellation of freckles far and wide. “Last year they came in droves every Saturday, to soil the beaches and overrun the sewers and generally trample over every blade of seagrass they can find. We have begun to earn the moniker ‘London-by-the-sea’, I’m afraid. I hope you won’t be disappointed here.”
A grin worked its way into residence on his face. She was the same, but different, too. She no longer chattered on with quite the same fervor as she had as a child, but she still chattered.
He was fascinated by the changes time had wrought, both in her appearance and her demeanor. Although he would have expected the opposite reaction, given the circumstances of their history, her voice drew him from his self-flagellating thoughts and diverted him from painful memories.
Suddenly his month’s penance in Brighton no longer seemed so long, or so threatening. He offered her the full force of his smile. “I have not been disappointed in the least. And while Brighton’s popularity among Londoners is certainly a diverting topic, I would really rather talk about you.”
CAROLINE DREW A deep breath, wondering why her stomach skittered so at the sight of one man’s straight, white teeth.
David Cameron was not quite as handsome as she remembered. Although his shoulders were every bit as broad as they had been eleven years ago, today they were covered in a brown wool sack coat instead of a diverting military uniform. His unruly curls were the color of new straw, and seemed to mock the shimmering spun gold of her memory. His face had lengthened into the hard planes of adulthood, framed by tiny lines etched by sun and experience, there at the corners of his blue eyes.
Handsome, to be sure, but not that handsome.
Of course, David Cameron was the man she had fallen a little bit in love with before she was old enough to know better.
When she had first caught sight of him, framed by scrub and seagrass along the eastern edge of the white cliff walls, she felt as if she had been slammed against the rocks that broke the waves into fragmented pieces, a dozen yards or so from shore. She could still scarcely believe he had appeared after eleven long years. Even more astonishing, he was speaking to her as if he was enjoying the conversation.
And so, despite his kind teasing, she was going to do anything it took to prevent the conversation from turning to her.
“You’re from Scotland?” She wet her lips, wishing she didn’t feel so nervous. “Although your brogue is not so strong as my memory.”
He grimaced. “Ah, I treated you to my brogue during our last meeting, did I?” He leaned in, one conspirator to another, and she felt his nearness as surely as if he had pressed himself against her. “I’ll share a little-known secret. My accent tends to come out when I have had too much to drink.”
She pursed her lips around a smile. “Well, that certainly explains it, then. You smelled like a distillery the last time we met.” She took an exaggerated, in-drawn sniff. “Not today, however.” In point of fact, he smelled . . . interesting. Like salt and ocean and, ever so faintly, freshly laundered cotton that had been heated by exertion.
Her cheeks heated at the audacity of such an inappropriate thought, and she cast about for a diversion. “Why does your mother not wish for your company today?”
He sighed, and she could pick apart the different tones of worry and exasperation that formed the sound. “She has been ill, and the doctor prescribed a rest cure. I brought her to Brighton with every expectation of serving as a doting son during her convalescence. But since our arrival, she seems to harbor other opinions for how I would spend my time.”
Caroline suppressed a smile as he ended the explanation on a not-so-silent groan. “Oh?”
“Social engagements.” He made it sound much the same as one might say the word “manure.”
“We should probably keep our mothers apart then,” she observed dryly. “Because mine is possessed of similar intent.”
He laughed then, a spontaneous burst of mirth that the wind snatched up and tossed against the cliff walls. “The baroness harbors aspirations of a social agenda that eclipses anything to be had in my hometown of Moraig. I really don’t understand the fuss. I am only a second son.”
Caroline’s heart thudded in the direction of her knees. She had not known of his status, that day eleven years ago. She had seen his military uniform and presumed him a common soldier, but by Brighton standards, he was borderline royalty. “Well, the son of a baron attracts some notice, especially in a small town like Brighton.” Unfortunately, if he moved in the circles she suspected, he was out of her social sphere.
“I brought my mother here to convalesce, but it seems her constitution is less dire than the pressing matter of her youngest son’s lack of marriage prospects. She has already accepted not one, but two invitations on my behalf.”
Caroline gave an indelicate shudder. “Sounds lovely.”
“Truly?” He sounded surprised.
“No.” She shook her head. “I confess I would rather play shuttlecock. And shuttlecock is a game I dearly despise.”
That had him laughing again, and the sound sent her insides into a heated free fall. “If n
ot shuttlecock, what then? We’ve established you don’t mind a bit of impropriety. Do you still swim, mermaid?” he chuckled.
And just like that, the desire to direct the conversation away from her eccentricities circled full round to take her by the throat. Perhaps he hadn’t heard the rumor about her unfeminine proclivities that was circulating like a scrub grass fire among Brighton’s summer visitors, but he had once seen her swim. Even if it had occurred eleven years ago, even if it was something they had both sworn to silence, that kind of secret was dangerous to a girl like Caroline, who already hovered on the outer fringes of society.
And while she was not sure she wanted to be accepted by the summer set, her mother was insistent she set her sights on more than a life of quiet spinsterhood. And that meant Caroline was expected to conform, even if acting the lady felt closer to a stranglehold than a blessing.
“No.” Caroline squirmed against guilt in her sweat-soaked dress. For a moment she contemplated changing her answer, telling him the truth. But how to explain that, despite her knowledge of Society’s expectations, despite her grudging admittance that her mother’s hopes for her future made perfect, proper sense, Caroline’s soul—nay, her sanity—cried out for something different? The ocean might pull and push her. It might occasionally threaten to kill her.
But it did not degrade her. She felt whole amid the waves, in a way she never did amongst the crowd.
And so she swam in secret. Furtively, like one of the silver-finned fishes that darted amongst the rocks, escaping the larger toothed fish that sought to consume her whole.
“Ladies do not swim,” she added, weakly to her own ears.
His brow lifted. “You used to swim very well. You had an oddly styled stroke, if I recall, but it was quite effective.”
The warm day and the uncomfortable bent to the conversation made the perspiration break out along her forehead in what she had to presume was a most indelicate sheen. The swim she had come for, the swim which was now out of reach, would have helped restore her to rights. But the reality of her circumstances stopped the words from lifting off her tongue.
David Cameron seemed to like her. Why would she destroy that with a bit of uncalled-for honesty?
“You were drunk that day,” she pointed out, breathless. “You probably don’t remember things very clearly. And I was never very experienced. I doubt I could imagine much more than a bit of uncoordinated splashing now.”
He nodded, as if her lie made all the sense in the world, when it didn’t even make sense to her. And just like that, the idea of telling the truth shriveled into something unrecognizable.
“I never told anyone, you know,” she murmured.
“That you used to swim?”
“That you could not.” She swallowed nervously. “I never told anyone about that day, not even my sister Penelope.”
He inclined his head, a physical acknowledgement of the courtesy she had shown. “That is a long time to keep a promise. I would not have faulted you if circumstances had compelled you to share such a secret.”
“I think someone’s word is the most important part of their character,” she told him. “A promise is something you must keep.”
His mouth flattened into a thin line. “An admirable sentiment. I wish I could claim to keep my promises half so well.”
For a moment, fear knocked the base of her spine. “You mean you told someone about me?”
He shook his head. “No. I was referring to another promise I made once. A long time ago.”
When he made no move to explain further, Caroline wiped her damp palms on her skirt. The sun mocked the awkward silence. It was always this way, next to the white chalk cliffs, an unexpected blast of blinding color and energy. As a result of this peculiar convergence of sun and wind, she was tanned in places a proper lady should not be, simply from her daily swim. She could feel her nose burning now.
“I must go,” she said, already turning toward the footpath that would carry her back. “Mama will expect me home for tea.”
“Will I see you here tomorrow?” David called after her, breaking the silence that had engulfed him since his last peculiar statement.
Caroline hesitated. While his unexpected appearance today had gladdened her heart and stirred her hopes, it had interrupted today’s opportunity to swim. As long as she could remember she had come to this hidden cove with her father, first to collect shells, and then, in the years before he had died, to learn to swim.
And despite his easy smile, despite the fact he had already seen it, she did not want to share it with anyone else.
Not even David Cameron.
“I don’t come here every day,” she hedged, chewing on her lower lip. “But you can call on me in town, if you prefer, and we can walk along the Marine Parade, or along the Steine. My house is the large Georgian with red shutters, the first one you encounter on the footpath back.”
He grinned, whatever melancholy that had gripped him momentarily tucked away for another time. “I shall do that.”
For a maddening moment, a moment she could not regret, but which she wished she could control, her stomach churned its agreement. Did he mean to court her, then? Eleven years of yearning, secret dreams stretching from childish fancy to adult curiosity, rose up in hope.
And then he ruined it. Took her swelling hope in his hands and pressed it flat, as if her dreams were a whimsical castle made of sand and he was the inevitable tide.
“After all,” he said, as if the matter of Caroline Tolbertson receiving a gentleman caller was not an astonishing thing. “If I am going to resist my mother’s harried matchmaking efforts this summer, I suspect I am going to need a good friend in Brighton to make it through unscathed.”
About the Author
A veterinarian and infectious disease researcher by training, JENNIFER McQUISTON has always preferred reading romance to scientific textbooks. She resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, their two girls, and an odd assortment of pets, including the pony she promised her children if mommy ever got a book deal. Jennifer can be reached via her website at www.jenmcquiston.com or followed on Twitter @jenmcqwrites.
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By Jennifer McQuiston
WHAT HAPPENS IN SCOTLAND
Coming Soon
BRIGHTON IS FOR LOVERS
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Brighton Is for Lovers copyright © 2013 by Jennifer McQuiston.
WHAT HAPPENS IN SCOTLAND. Copyright © 2013 by Jennifer McQuiston. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition MARCH 2013 ISBN: 9780062231253
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062231291
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