“Miss Standish…” He cleared his throat. Surely the minx was not teasing him? “If you could be ready to depart shortly, then I would appreciate it.”
“Of course, Mr. Cantrell,” Pen said. She got to her feet. “I shall be ready directly and then we may discuss our mutual passions all the way to Salterton. What a delightful means of passing the journey.”
And with that she whisked from the parlor, leaving Alistair fidgeting with his napkin once again as he contemplated just where their mutual passions could take them.
HAD PEN AND ALISTAIR BUT KNOWN, Freddie Standish was a mere five miles away, wrapped up asleep in his coat on the floor of the taproom of the Maiden’s Arms. He had traveled by stage to Winchester where he too had been confronted with the problem of no accommodation in the inn. He had solved it by getting so blind drunk that he could have slept in a hedge and not noticed. And since someone had lifted his wallet from him while he’d been in a drunken stupor, it would now be a considerable time until he reached Salterton.
ISABELLA WOKE EARLY on the second morning in her new home. On the previous day she had been too tired from traveling to stir, but now she was rested and eager to explore.
The room, which had been Lady Jane’s, faced southward toward the sea and it was starting to fill with sunshine and the bright light from the water. Isabella slipped from the bed and went across to the window, opening wide the casement and letting in the fresh, salty air. It brought the memories flooding in with it. She could see the cluster of white painted cottages of the old fishing village down the hill to her left and the more elegant new buildings along the esplanade. In her stomach was the same pit-a-pat of anticipation that she had felt on visiting the seaside as a child.
But there were other memories too: the bend in the wide stair where she and Pen would peer through the banisters to watch the visitors arrive in the hall below, the old nursery with its smell of dust and wax, the tumbledown summerhouse at the bottom of the gardens where she had met Marcus…
And everywhere the paintings of India, or the little glass animals she’d collected, or a book upon a shelf with her name written inside in a childish hand…Salterton Hall was haunted for Isabella and as she stood by the window and watched the dawn creep across the bay, she knew how very difficult it was going to be to shake those ghosts. Even if she had not known how much Marcus had loved India, coming back to Salterton would have been difficult. Now it felt like a quicksand.
Suddenly impatient with herself, Isabella dressed carelessly and ran down the empty staircase. She needed a swim to clear her mind and wash those memories away.
The house was already astir, running with the smooth precision that characterized all well-organized households. They had sent a message on ahead from Winchester to announce their imminent arrival, but Isabella had been interested to find Salterton Hall in perfect order when the coach had rolled up the drive. Such calm efficiency argued a very well-run staff. It seemed that Marcus had been taking his custodial duties very seriously since Lady Jane’s death. More telling still was the fact that the servants had greeted her with warmth and courtesy, but they had greeted Marcus with affection. It had impressed Isabella—not that she was prepared to tell Marcus that. Not yet.
She took the path that cut through the gardens down to the sandy lane that connected Salterton Hall to the village. The morning was quiet but for the call of the seabirds in the bay, and the air was scented with the soapy smell of gorse. Down in the harbor, a couple of fishing boats crossed the bay, leaving an arrowing wake in the still water. A white-painted bathing machine was standing at the edge of the sand, a sturdy pony standing patiently between the shafts. In front of the caravan sat an enormous woman, patiently untangling a fishing net.
Isabella stopped and smiled. Suddenly she felt twelve again, a small child running down to the beach to greet her favorite dipper.
“Martha! Martha Otter!”
The enormous woman looked up and a broad grin split her brown face. “Good morning, my lamb. We heard you were back.”
“How are you, Martha?” Isabella inquired.
“The same,” Martha Otter said comfortably, making Isabella wonder how one could possibly be the same after twelve years.
“You’ve grown,” Mrs. Otter added.
“Outwards, I expect,” Isabella said, with a small sigh. “I would like to bathe, Martha. I wonder if you would take me out, if you please?”
Martha lumbered creakily to her feet. “My pleasure, pet. You must be mad as a broom to go out so early, but then the sea cure never hurt anyone. Never cured anyone, neither,” she added thoughtfully, “no matter what those quack doctors say.”
Isabella climbed up onto the bathing machine as Martha kilted up her skirts and led the pony out into the water. The sand sloped gently here, which made the beach so perfect for swimming.
“I hope the sea cure can banish my blue devils,” Isabella said. “I feel quite out of sorts this morning, which is no way to be on such a beautiful day.”
Martha threw her a look over her brawny shoulder. “Ah, Salterton will do you good, my pet. What’s troubling you? Not that new husband of yours, is it? No cause for concern, my pet. We heard he’s sweet on you. Always was, always will be. We all know that,” she added, using the word we in what Isabella suspected was the royal plural.
Isabella trailed her bare feet in the water as the bathing machine creaked deeper into the sea.
“I wish it were true,” she said despondently.
Martha gave the pony an encouraging pat. “Nothing but a couple of children, you and milord were, but we reckoned it was forever.” She turned her head to give Isabella a look over her shoulder. “What went wrong, Miss Bella?”
“All sorts of things,” Isabella said with a sigh.
“All right again now,” Mrs. Otter said comfortably.
Isabella sighed again. “My cousin India—”
“Ah,” Martha Otter said again. “Little Miss India, God rest her soul.”
Isabella felt irritated that India had Martha Otter’s sympathy, and then felt churlish for being so intolerant. Somehow it did not seem fair. How could she compete with a ghost? The dead were untouchable and she would have to live in India’s shadow, making her mistakes and comparing unfavorably with her cousin. It irked her and she disliked herself for the capricious feeling.
“India and I were never close,” she said. “I did not know her well.”
“You had plenty in common,” Mrs. Otter opined. “Only you did not know it.”
Isabella wondered whether Martha meant that they had both married Marcus, a thought that she did not want to dwell on, but then the dipper added, “They turned away her suitor.”
Isabella frowned. It was the first that she had heard of India having a suitor. Her cousin had always seemed too shy to attract the gentlemen and Isabella could not remember a time when anyone had paid her particular attention.
“Who turned him away?” She said.
“Her parents, of course.” Martha shook her head lugubriously. “Powerful proud, the Southerns. Not good enough for her, they said.”
“I do not recall a suitor,” Isabella said. “Who was he?”
“I’ve no notion,” Martha said with massive indifference. “Good-looking boy, though. He had a wicked smile. Charmed the birds from the trees and Miss India with them.”
Isabella was silent, listening to the splash of the water in the caravan wheels and trying to remember those last few summers at Salterton. India and she had been of an age but, as she had told Marcus, they had never confided. India was a quiet girl and very self-contained. Isabella, more extroverted, had tried to draw her cousin out but had been politely but firmly rejected.
“How strange,” she said now. “I remember nothing of it. I thought that when she married Marcus…” She stumbled a little over his name just as she stumbled over the thought of India and Marcus married, “I thought it a love match. Her first love, I mean.”
Mrs. Otter made
a noise of disagreement that sounded uncannily like a seal blowing water. “Love match! Best to ask your husband about that, Miss Bella.”
If only I dared, Isabella thought. She had seen a little of the loyalty and passion that India had inspired in Marcus and, although she felt a coward, she did not think she could broach that subject with him. Not yet, if ever. The blue devils returned to plague her and she felt impatient with herself.
“Are we out of sight of the beach here, Martha?” she inquired.
“Well enough,” Mrs. Otter replied, drawing the horse to a stop. “I know what you’re thinking, Miss Bella, but only the gentlemen swim naked. It’s tradition.”
“High time it was changed, then,” Isabella said and, with a brisk gesture, she pulled off her gown and chemise and leaped into the sea.
MARCUS HAD ALSO RISEN EARLY that morning. He told himself that it was a coincidence that he had stirred at the precise moment Isabella had left her room and gone out into the gardens, but he knew that it was more than mere chance. He was so aware of her that it seemed his body was tuned to hers even through the frustratingly locked door that linked their rooms. He reflected sardonically that a few days of lying in bed imagining her close by, soft, fragrant and completely unobtainable, would be sufficient to have him taking an ax to the door, promises of celibacy be damned.
He watched from the window as she made her way down the sandy path through the gardens toward the beach. The sight of the dilapidated summerhouse where they had conducted their trysts roused all his most heated memories and did nothing to calm his ardor. Clearly some hard, physical exercise was required. He went down to the stables, saddled up Achilles and took the track away from the beach that led up to the top of the cliff. From here he had a magnificent view of the curve of the bay and the village of Salterton embraced within it. He also had a magnificent view of his wife, floating completely naked on the gentle swell of the waves.
In the growing light she looked as insubstantial and light as thistledown on the soft billow of the sea. Her hair spread out like a mermaid’s tresses on the water, touched with gold from the setting moon. The pale light of morning cocooned her body in a silver shroud and turned it to mist and shadows.
Marcus’s lips formed a silent, appreciative whistle. His hand strayed toward the telescope that he always carried in his jacket pocket but then he paused. It seemed rather prurient to spy on his own wife in such a manner. But how very typical that she should be the only person in Salterton who would be so careless of convention as to swim naked in the sea in the early morning, and a Sunday morning at that. There were no public entertainments in Salterton on a Sunday, for it was far too exclusive a resort to sink to the levels of depravity of Brighton or Margate. Isabella, however, was making up for that magnificently. Already he could see a crowd gathering on the esplanade.
Marcus watched her. She looked like a water nymph, pale and perfect, her skin white marble in the dawn. His eye traced the vulnerable line of her shoulder, her breasts exquisitely high and round, her waist a curve that tempted a man’s hand with the need to slide down over the line of her hip and farther down still, to the long, slender length of her legs…
His horse side-stepped in protest as Marcus unconsciously tightened the reins. The smile still lingered about his mouth as he urged the beast forward down the narrow path toward the shore. A few more people were gathering on the esplanade. All of them were gazing out to the sea.
Marcus did not merely gaze. He urged his horse into the water.
He was within a few yards of Isabella, and the water was up to Achilles’s chest, when she turned and looked at him. Only her head was visible above the water.
“Good morning, Stockhaven,” she said. “Did you know that there are fines for gentlemen who invade the privacy of the ladies when they are bathing?”
“They only apply if one is in a boat, not on a horse,” Marcus said. “Besides, there is not a gentleman in Salterton who would not willingly pay that price to see you like this, my love.”
“I cannot think why,” Isabella said. “I am most decently clad.”
Marcus blinked. Then he stared. Isabella was floating on her back now, as she had been when he had seen her earlier, but there was a vast difference. From neck to toe she was clad in a blue bathing gown that wafted modestly on the slight swell of the water.
“But I saw you—” He stopped. “You were naked.”
Isabella raised a perfectly outraged eyebrow.
“Have you been spying on me, Stockhaven?”
“No…but I…” Marcus realized that he was stuttering like a schoolboy in his salad days. Surely his eyes had not been deceiving him? He frowned, unable to shake off the shaming thought that perhaps he had pictured Isabella as he would have liked her to be rather than how she actually had been.
“You were naked!” He burst out. “I saw you!”
“It is a Sunday morning,” Isabella said coolly. “This interest in the physical seems somewhat inappropriate. Perhaps, as we discussed a few days ago, you should concentrate on your spiritual welfare, Stockhaven, rather than having lustful fantasies about your wife.”
The door of the bathing caravan opened with sudden venom. Achilles shied and almost decanted Marcus into the water. Marcus, who had not realized that Isabella was accompanied by a dipper, looked up, startled. An enormous woman in a straw bonnet and blue flannel jacket was flapping what looked like a fishing net in his direction. Part of her responsibility in assisting the ladies to bathe was to discourage the more impertinent attentions of gentlemen, and this she was wholeheartedly embracing.
“Heathen indecency on the Sabbath!” she shrieked, assaulting Marcus simultaneously with the net and the strong smell of gin. “Back to the beach, sir, and preserve the lady’s modesty!”
“My good woman,” Marcus said, amused, “this lady is my wife and I am half-inclined to join her in the water.”
“Oh no, you are not, my lord! There’s no mixed bathing in Salterton.” The dipper cracked her knuckles meaningfully, plunged into the sea and looked ready to set about him with hands the size of hams. Marcus quickly withdrew a few feet before the horse took fright altogether and they both drowned.
“Thank you, Martha,” Isabella said. Only her head was visible above the water now, tendrils of damp hair curling about her forehead and trailing in the sea about her like Circe. “My husband is leaving now.”
Martha put her hands on her hips. “Seems to me that your husband should learn a bit of respect for his wife.”
Marcus raised his brows. He looked from Isabella to the protective figure of Martha Otter.
“I apologize,” he said slowly. “I thought—” He stopped. This was not an opportune moment to acquaint the dipper with his fantasies. Isabella was watching him and he could have sworn there was a flicker of amusement in her eyes as she saw his discomfort.
Martha did not look appeased. She stood watching him pugnaciously as he turned Achilles and splashed through the shallows to the beach.
Your husband should learn a bit of respect for his wife….
Marcus’s mouth turned down wryly. He was learning that lesson rather frequently at the moment.
He reached the shore to discover that the bathing carriage was so situated that Isabella was completely out of sight from the land and that in fact the gathering crowd was looking out to sea, where the sight of fresh sails indicated a ship coming in. He had caused more outrage by taking a horse into the water than Isabella had with her swimming. So much for his thoughts that she was disporting herself naked in front of the local populace. It was extraordinary, but he must have been imagining things. Further evidence, if it was needed, that he was completely besotted with his wife.
Marcus laughed ruefully as he urged a relieved Achilles onto dry land. He realized he was a possessive husband. It was a startling idea, for during his marriage to India he had never been moved by any emotion stronger than a mild pleasure in his wife’s company. But then, he had married the wr
ong cousin and had always known it.
He had married the wrong cousin but now he had the chance to make amends to the right one. His courtship of his wife, no matter how slow, would end in a mutual regard that matched the mutual passion that burned between them. Of that he was determined.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“SIR STANLEY AND LADY JENSEN, Lady Marr, Mr. and Mrs. Latimer, Mrs. Bulstrode, Mr. and Mrs. Spence…”
Isabella was nervously reciting the names of all the eminent Salterton residents whom she could remember as she and Marcus ascended the carriage for their first evening at the Salterton Assembly.
“I wonder whether Miss Parry is still here and then there was Captain Walters—”
Marcus’s hand closed firmly and reassuringly over hers as she fidgeted with the seam of her cloak.
“Bella, you are beginning to sound like a roll call onboard ship,” he said. “Everything will be fine, I assure you. You are charming and beautiful, and if you remember their names then everyone will see that as an added benefit.”
“Oh dear,” Isabella said, suddenly feeling hideously nervous, “I have a lowering feeling that this will be the moment that Pen’s prophecy comes true.”
“Which was?”
“That I could not settle quietly in any town, let alone Salterton.” Isabella bit her lip. “She considers me far too scandalous.”
“Judging on your performance yesterday,” Marcus said, “she could be correct.”
“I do not know what you mean,” Isabella said. “If you are referring to my bathing then I assure you that it was perfectly respectable.”
Marcus turned swiftly to face her. “Bella,” he said, “I know you were swimming naked. I saw you.”
Isabella bit back a smile. This had been one of the most pleasing tricks she could play on Marcus. He had spent a large part of the previous day looking sideways at her as though he could not quite believe that he had made a mistake.
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