Summer Is for Lovers

Summer Is for Lovers Page 3

by Jennifer McQuiston

  “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.”

  She seemed anxious to be rid of him. He wondered if 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 whisky in the world.

  “I am not expected elsewhere at the moment. I am staying at the Bedford with my mother, but she has eschewed my company for the afternoon.”

  In point of fact, his mother had tossed him out of the room they had taken at the grand 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 seawater cures.

  Two weeks ago, when his mother had first suggested this trip, he had argued against her wish for a recuperative holiday here. He felt no desire to return to the town of Brighton and the nightmares he sensed would await him there. But he had not been able to refuse his mother when she had told him her heart was set on Brighton. Not when she had been so ill for so long.

  And not when she had implied it might be her last request.

  “You are here for the summer then?” Caroline asked, oblivious to the maudlin direction of his thoughts.

  “Two weeks,” he answered. Ten more days. It was a bloody long time, all things considered. “We shall return to Scotland near the start of August.”

  “Oh. Still, it is longer bit of time than many take. 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 smiled, 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 trample over every blade of sea grass they could 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 in 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 remaining ten days’ 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 a diverting topic, I would prefer to 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 woolen sack coat instead of an eye-catching military uniform. He was not wearing a hat, and his straw-colored curls mocked 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.

  And for heaven’s sake, a younger and every bit as attractive specimen—Mr. Dermott, to be precise—had smiled at her not an hour before, and the sight had caused nothing but an urge to rake her nails across his face.

  Of course, David Cameron was the man she had fallen a little bit in love with before she was old enough to know better. The man she had imagined kissing when she had, in fact, been kissing Mr. Dermott.

  When she had first caught sight of him, framed by sea grass 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 couldn’t believe he had appeared after eleven long years. It was astonishing, really, as was the fact that he was speaking to her as if she was a lady and as if he was enjoying the conversation.

  But despite his kind teasing, she was going to do anything it took to prevent the conversation from turning to her.

  “You mentioned 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 acutely as if he had pressed himself against her. “I’m from a town to the north, called Moraig. And 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 explains it. 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, laundered cotton that had been heated by exertion. In contrast, Mr. Dermott, who was the only other male in recent memory she had taken the opportunity to sniff, had smelled of Watson’s hair pomade, and his mouth had tasted too much of the tankard of ale he had purchased from a vendor on the pier.

  She wondered, for a heart-stopping moment, what David Cameron’s mouth would taste like. 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. But since our arrival, she seems to harbor other opinions for how I would spend my time.”

  Caroline smiled. “Long walks to undiscovered beaches?”

  He laughed, a spontaneous burst of mirth that the wind snatched up and tossed against the cliff walls. “No, nothing so pleasurable. The baroness harbors aspirations of a social agenda that eclipses anything to be had in my hometown of Moraig. I don’t understand the fuss. I am only a second son.”

  Caroline was startled enough to take a half step back. 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 town like Brighton.”

  “A Scottish barony is not the same thing as an English barony.” David waved a modest hand. “Really, it is more that my father owns a small estate. There are those who would dispute whether he even rates the title of peer.”

  Caroline blinked. She supposed that made sense. Although it still stood to reason that if Mr. Cameron moved in the circles she suspected, he was not just out of her social sphere.

  He was in Mr. Dermott’s.

  “I brought my mother here to heal,” David continued, “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 shuddered. “Sounds lovely.”

  “Truly?” He sounded surprised.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I confess I would rather play shuttlecock. And shuttlecock is a game I despise.â
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  That had him laughing again. “If not shuttlecock, what then? We’ve established you don’t mind a bit of impropriety. Do you still swim, mermaid?” he teased.

  And just like that, the desire to direct the conversation away from her eccentricities circled full round to take her by the throat. He might not have heard the rumors about her recent ill-considered kiss, 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, Mama expected her to act like a lady, even if she couldn’t actually claim such a title.

  “No.” Caroline squirmed against guilt. In Brighton—indeed, in Britain—a lady did not swim. She might stroll along the shore, as long as she remained bundled to her chin in sweltering layers of wool and lace. She might partake of a seawater treatment in one of the ridiculous wheeled bathing houses that ensured privacy and propriety. If she were very brave, or very desperate for a “cure,” she might even don a flannel bathing costume and venture out to take a medicinal dip in open water before scrambling back to the safety of those wooden walls.

  But a lady did not swim. Not if she wished to be considered a lady.

  “You don’t swim here?” he asked, looking perplexed. “Or at all?”

  For a moment she contemplated changing her answer, telling him the truth. But how to explain that, despite her knowledge of Society’s expectations, 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 among the crowd.

  And so she swam in secret. Furtively, like one of the silver-finned fishes that darted among the rocks, escaping the larger toothed fish that sought to consume it whole.

  “Ladies do not swim,” she told him, weakly to her own ears.

  His brow lifted. “You used to swim very well. You had an unusual 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 that 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. “You probably don’t remember things very clearly. And I was never very experienced. I doubt I could manage 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.

  He believed her. It was a pity too. The heat of the day was pooling, damp and ominous, in the space between her breasts.

  Well, the space where her breasts should be.

  “I never told anyone, you know,” she murmured.

  “That you used to swim?”

  “That you could not. I never told anyone about that day, not even my sister, Penelope.”

  He inclined his head, a physical acknowledgment 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 his 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, just from her daily swim. She could feel her nose burning now.

  It occurred to her, in a flash of annoyance, that Miss Baxter’s yellow parasol would come in very handy in a place like this.

  Oh. Miss Baxter. The invitation for the dinner party.

  She had been so shaken by the excitement of seeing David Cameron—indeed, by the thrill of revisiting the past—she had forgotten about the unfortunate state of her future.

  “I must go,” she said in a rush, already turning toward the footpath. If Miss Baxter had actually sent the threatened invitation, her mother would be searching for her in every corner of the house. “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 had stirred her hopes, it had also 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 this man’s easy smile, despite the fact he had already seen this beach, she did not want to share it with anyone else.

  Not even David Cameron.

  “I don’t come here every day,” she hedged. “But you can call on me in town, if you prefer, and we can walk on 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 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. No one, not even Mr. Dermott, had ever called on her at home before.

  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.”

  Chapter 3

  CAROLINE ARRIVED HOME just in time to see a uniformed messenger step off her front porch.

  The sight sent her pitching over the last stretch of shoreline in a panic. Her lungs protested as she pushed herself into a full-bore sprint.

  Why, oh why, couldn’t the afternoon’s conversation with David Cameron have concluded about five minutes earlier? She could not regret their meeting, or even the loss of her precious swimming time. She was still overwhelmed by the unexpected direction of her afternoon. All the way home, her thoughts had skipped ten paces ahead of her feet. But if the pleasure of conversing with her childhood obsession had ended five minutes earlier, she would not be catching the backside of the courier who had with certainty just delivered Miss Baxter’s invitation.

  And more importantly, she would not be left with the bitter declaration of friendship echoing in her ears, from the mouth of the man who had shaped every womanly thought she had ever entertained.

>   She took the weathered wooden front steps two at a time, hurtling past the porch railing with its peeling paint, tripping over her exuberant shell collection that grew larger every summer. She flung open the door and skidded to a halt across the parquet floor, fingers itching to snatch up whatever had just been delivered and escort it to the rubbish heap.

  Her sister, Penelope, was standing in the foyer. A letter lay open in her hand, and excitement widened her eyes. “Oh Caroline, you’ll never g-guess!” She waved the piece of paper. “We have been invited to a d-d-dinner party tonight.”

  Caroline’s stomach turned over. She had thought to keep the dreadful thing out of her mother’s hands. She had not considered what greater calamity it would be for the invitation to fall into her sister’s.

  “It’s mine, Pen.” She shook her head. “And I did not plan to accept.”

  “But it was addressed t-t-to me too. I would not have opened it otherwise.”

  For a moment, her sister’s words rattled around Caroline’s head. And then she realized she had been outmaneuvered. Miss Baxter must have realized that the only way to ensure Caroline appeared at the sacrificial altar was to extend the invitation to her sister.

  “Pen, it isn’t what you think.”

  “I think I should wear my pink striped taffeta with the flounced hemline. I’ve always felt that color complemented my complexion.”

  “You always look lovely.” And it was true. Penelope, with her fair hair and kind—if overserious—blue eyes, had a quiet beauty about her. Not that any of the summer set had ever taken the time to see it.

  “Oh, say you’ll go,” Penelope pleaded. “You know Mama won’t let us go unless we serve as each other’s chaperone.”

  Bess, the family’s maid-of-all-work, emerged from the depths of the house like a well-timed wish, bearing a tea service and clucking to herself. When she caught sight of Caroline standing in the foyer, she heaved a relieved sigh. “Lord, child, there you are. Wasn’t sure how I was going to explain your absence again. You know you promised your mama you would try to be on time today.”

 

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