“I saw the surf this afternoon. You cannot convince me this is a safe place to swim.”
She drew a deep breath. “At high tide, there is some danger here, I will readily admit. The inlet and the cliff walls make the current very strong at times. But not now. It is heading toward low tide, and there is a full moon at that.”
One of his arms fell away, but the other proved stubborn. It was enjoying being wrapped around Caroline, ensuring the ability to jerk her to safety in the event of a rogue wave.
Or strangle her should the situation call for it.
“You clearly swim here at other times as well,” he said, unwilling to relinquish his anger or his hold on her. “Do not deny it, you were planning on swimming this afternoon, and the tide was up higher then.” He dared her to contradict him. This was a girl who took unnecessary risks, of that he had no doubt.
She wrenched from his weakened grasp and gathered herself warily, a few feet away. “Yes,” she admitted, still breathing hard. “I come here to swim. It is not as dangerous as you think, if you know and respect the current and the changing tides. I cannot swim at Brighton’s beaches, and so I come here. Where no one can see me.”
His anger refused to loosen its teeth. “That is ridiculous. Women swim in Brighton all the time. They construct bathing machines for the express purpose of swimming. In gentle surf. With people nearby to save you if you find yourself in trouble.”
“That is not swimming, David. That is torture. Think, for one moment, what it would be like to be denied the one thing you love.” Her words slashed at his heart in places that were supposed to be dead, places he was quite sure he had burned and buried eleven years ago. “This is the only place I can swim in open ocean,” she added, her voice cracking with emotion. “As fast as I dare, for as long as I want. With no one to judge me.”
David let his gaze snag on her damnable, ever-changing eyes and full, quivering lips, even though it was folly to be looking at her in this way, in this moment. He could understand something of what she was saying, but it did not deflect the worry that simmered in his gut at the thought of her swimming here, alone, risking her life. He, of all people, knew what it felt like to be out in this stretch of ocean when it had its claws in you.
Under his intense scrutiny, her arms crept up out of the water to cover her chest. The motion drew his eye, and for the first time his gaze settled on her shift, instead of her face.
Her very wet shift.
Much as he had when he had kissed her on the terrace, David felt the stirrings of an ill-timed interest, uncertain and hard and regrettable. She awakened something in him other than lust, although if he stopped to consider it, there was a bit of that surging to the surface too.
Damn it. He had thrown himself into the ocean to rescue her, not gawk at her.
Irrespective of his better sense, his gaze fell lower, to where her shift was plastered against her skin. Between the waves, when the water receded, he could see the outline of her thighs. It was dark, but not so dark he couldn’t see . . . well . . . everything. She looked far too lovely, with the water lapping about her hips and the moonlight reflecting off the rivulets of water that coursed along her bare skin. Her legs were covered by water, and her arms were busy protecting the upper half of her body that seemed to worry her so much. She didn’t even realize that left her middle parts free for scrutiny.
And that was when he realized that while she might be willowy, there was nothing at all boyish in the gentle swell of her hips, or the womanly shadow that hovered at the seam of her legs.
“Please, don’t look at me like that.” Her words clipped his expanding thoughts as efficiently as a pair of sharp shears.
David swallowed, aiming his eyes back toward the safer direction of shore. He knew he should apologize, but he could not find the words to beg her pardon when all he wanted to do was look again. “You should have told me this afternoon.” His voice came out hoarse. He tried to focus on the nearby shoreline, on the waves that pushed against his body, instead of the direction his mind and his eyes wanted to wander. “I would not have judged you.”
He heard a gentle sloshing that indicated she moved closer to him, apparently deciding he was trustworthy after all. “You judged me just now, presuming I couldn’t take care of myself, or know my own limits.” Her words were accusing, but her tone had gentled.
Guilt nudged at him. “I am sorry,” he said. “Clearly, I was wrong.”
And deranged. Otherwise, he would be taking his leave from the water, and tossing her the gown he had spied on shore, and demanding she button it up and not take it off in his presence ever gain.
He kept his line of vision anchored beyond her, to the gray cliff shadows that rose along the shore. Through sheer force of will, his stirrings started to settle. After all, she was not the sort of woman he was usually attracted to. And his gaze was no longer directed at that lust-provoking shadow at the junction of her legs.
And the water was damnably cold.
After a moment’s silence, he heard the soft, welcome sound of her laughter. “Not that I don’t appreciate the effort, and not that you don’t appear to have a capable—if overtutored—swimming style, but did you really think you could have saved me had I needed it?”
He risked a look at her then. His eyes settled on her lips, which were curving upward. The gesture remolded her features into something passably pretty. The last residue of anger drained away at the evidence of her amusement, and his own lips pursed around a smile. “Overtutored? I reached you, didn’t I?”
“That was hardly a challenge, given we are standing in no more than waist-deep water.” Her eyes narrowed, though her lips never faltered from their delicious upward curve. And then she dove into the waves.
She swam away so fast David didn’t even have time to blink. Beyond the heart-wrenching plunge he had seen her take a few minutes ago, he hadn’t seen her swim since that day eleven years ago, and then he had been something like two dozen sheets to the wind. He watched her a moment, analyzing her movements. She didn’t have the serious, perfect form she had just teased him about. Truth be told, she splashed a great deal as her hands cut into the water.
But Christ almighty, she moved like lightning.
Caroline’s unusual swimming stroke, with alternating hands and feet working like shears, gave her an efficiency of motion the likes of which he had never seen. He was no slothful swimmer himself. In addition to ensuring his sons could fire a revolver with enviable accuracy, and pass, if not excel, during their required four years at Cambridge, David’s father had impressed upon him and his older brother the necessity of a powerful, well-formed breaststroke.
But David was used to swimming in the fresh water of Loch Moraig, not open ocean. Even though the low tide was not particularly difficult to navigate, he floundered as he followed her. His arms’ synchronized motion kept getting tangled in the choppy, irregular waves that bounced off nearby rocks.
But she did not slow down in the slightest.
And David could do nothing but chase her.
CAROLINE TOOK PITY on him just as she reached the rocky foothold of the sandbar.
She waited there, trying to settle her stomach. This was the ocean, the one place in the world where she felt comfortable. But tonight she felt as if fleas were jumping under her skin.
If only he didn’t look so masculine. His shoulders showed evidence of his years in the army, sinew and muscle, flexing in purpose. She had seen more than her fair share of men in shirtsleeves while growing up along Brighton’s beaches, but David Cameron looked nothing like Mr. Dermott and the other dandies who came down from London each summer and shed their coats as the temperature rose. In fact, she suspected that, if stripped down and compared to the nearly naked man swimming toward her, Dermott would look very much like the boy he had accused her of being.
She greeted David with a spontaneous splash of water, right to his face. “Not a laudable effort,” she teased.
He grinned,
white teeth flashing in moonlight. “You’ll never get saved properly if you keep outswimming your rescuer,” he told her, shaking the water from his eyes.
And then he was ducking beneath the black water and grabbing her ankle and jerking her under. She came up sputtering and spewing and choked with laugher. The enjoyment of that moment threatened to submerge her as thoroughly as David had just done.
She was swimming, for the first time since her father’s death, with someone else. Someone who wasn’t judging her. Someone who made her laugh.
Someone who made her want.
Before she could give voice to those emotions, before she could even sort out the delicious skitter of her stomach, he looped an arm around her shoulders and began to haul her back to shore.
She couldn’t breathe. Not because his arm was too constricting, but because her lungs went rigid with surprise and repressed longing. She could have stayed that way forever, caught in his grip, even if it was purely for demonstration purposes. But all too soon the ocean floor met her feet, and then her posterior as he tossed her into the shallows.
He flung himself down next to her, loose-limbed and comfortable in the surf lapping along the shore. In contrast, Caroline felt as if she was waging a silent battle to pretend she was far less affected than she actually was.
“Did I answer the challenge well enough, mermaid?” He chuckled.
“I’ll admit that wasn’t a poor showing, for someone who only recently learned how to swim.” She peeked at him from beneath her lashes.
“That was a commendable showing, my friend.” He looked terribly pleased with himself, as if he rescued not-drowning girls every day. “And I’ll have you know I’ve been swimming since I was a child.”
His admission was unexpected. So was his easy reference to her as a “friend.” Her heart withered, just a little. She understood what David felt for her. He considered her a friend, nothing more.
But for heaven’s sake. Did he have to point it out quite so often?
Rather than dwell on the irritation his declaration brought, she sorted through her memories of that day when he had almost drowned. She had always presumed he had floundered because he hadn’t known how to swim, and that his folly had been magnified by the false bravado that often came at the bottom of a bottle. But with this new bit of information, she was unable to reorder the pieces into something approaching logic.
He shoved his way through her thoughts, nudging her with one bare shoulder. “You once told me your father taught you to swim. Where did he learn such an unusual style?”
Caroline pulled her mind from the physical and emotional conundrum David Cameron presented. “I believe he learned from an American who spent several years in Brighton. Apparently, the man had learned from the Natives in his own country. I realize it doesn’t look quite the thing, but . . .”
“It matters not what it looks like,” he interrupted. His moon-touched expression grew serious. “You should share your skill, Caroline. Show someone. Teach someone. Why, employing a stroke like that, I don’t doubt someone could swim all the way across the channel.”
She shook her head. As if she could ever be so brave. “The men in Brighton already consider me enough of an oddity without adding swimming to the mix.”
“Do not berate your skills,” he told her quietly. “I find much to be impressed with in you.”
She gave a self-conscious laugh. His words had her hand skimming the length of her side, though she had spent much of the evening disinviting his visual scrutiny. “Impressed? Look at me, David. I’m taller than Mr. Dermott, for heaven’s sake. My hands are better built to handle a plow than manage a formal place setting. Tonight’s dinner party was a rarity in my world. My mother hoped it might lead to additional invitations, and look how I mucked it up.”
His gaze turned piercing. “Why do you want to be in thick with that juvenile crowd, anyway? You did not strike me as enjoying their company overmuch. Surely you don’t want to marry one of them?”
The man was far too astute. She couldn’t see the color of his eyes in the dim light, but she could imagine the stab of blue, there in her own eyes. “My father did not plan well for the possibility of his death. Papa asked me to take care of Mama and Penelope before he died, and there can be no other way to make good on that promise. Marrying someone from the summer set would mean my family never had to worry about money again.”
“But to be bound to a man who may not deserve your trust, who might harm you in fact, all for a little financial security . . . would it really be worth the risk?”
Caroline’s eye fell on David’s clenched jaw. He spoke of marital vows as if he had given it a good deal of thought and found nothing worth considering. He described a marriage dredged in chains. What of love and affection?
“And why you?” he railed. “Why not your sister?”
Caroline shook her head. “You heard Penelope’s stammer tonight. It does not matter to the popular crowd whether she might have a kind disposition, or a vivid imagination. As much as it pains me, I can admit that I need to be the one to marry well. For my own future and my sister’s well-being.”
“Your sister struck me as a capable enough conversationalist during my limited interactions with her this evening.”
Caroline sighed. “She had enough wine tonight that her stammer was hardly noticeable. But come morning, she will be stumbling over her words again. I wouldn’t trade Penelope for anything in the world, but she has had as much, if not more, difficulty securing a good match as I. Therein lies my problem. I am my family’s best hope, but scarcely anyone will speak to me, much less offer for me. Mr. Dermott has made sure of that.”
A beat of silence ensued. “Mr. Dermott doesn’t strike me as a young man worthy of your notice. Why do you let yourself feel so uncomfortable around him?”
The shore beneath her refused to swallow her up. “I . . . I let him kiss me. Just once, but it was enough. He was the one who told me I was a poor kisser. Only he didn’t just tell me. He told everyone. And then suggested there were reasons for it beyond inexperience.” She shook her head. Her sigh sounded long-suffering, even to her own ears. “The summer crowd seized onto it as an explanation for what they already considered my eccentric nature.”
David was silent a long, measured moment. Her heart filled the space with an increasing rhythm. His voice, when it came, curled around her insecurities and threatened to strangle her. “So I was only your second kiss?”
“Yes.” She whispered her response. “My second failed kiss.”
He shifted, his body moving the small pebbles beneath her. “Why do you count the kiss we shared as a failure?”
She risked a look at him. “You pushed me away. You laughed at me.”
He shook his head, his lips a grim line in the moonlight. “You misread my response, Caroline. You reminded me of someone. It made me . . . uncomfortable. And as that is a memory I have no wish to revisit, it seemed safer to impose some distance. But rest assured, I was not laughing at you. Far from it.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. And so she said nothing at all, just turned his words over in her head and let them thicken in her chest.
“Besides,” he went on, “that was not even a proper kiss.”
She laughed, a choked, lamentable sound. “I assure you, it seemed more than proper enough to me. Lips met. Amusement ensued. I shall not be repeating the experience.”
“I hardly think that sort of decision will hold you in good stead when you are trying to find a husband. And if you are going to make an informed decision on the matter, you should at least have all the facts.”
“I have all the facts I need.” She turned back to stare at the moon hanging on the horizon. She felt miserable at how wrong a turn this conversation had taken. She had been far more comfortable when they had been talking about swimming.
Then again, swimming was something at which she excelled.
“Perhaps Mr. Dermott is correct,” she breathed. “P
erhaps there is something unnatural about me.”
His shoulder made contact with hers again. This time it stayed, pressed flush against hers. Her skin fairly sang from the contact with this man. She felt the heat radiating off him, sliding beneath her skin and warming the blood in her veins.
“Put that coxcomb Dermott in a box for now and lock him up tight. Do you feel an attraction for men in general? Or to a particular gentleman who has caught your fancy?”
Dear God, she could not be having this conversation. Not tonight.
Not with him.
Her eyes stayed anchored on the luminous moon and its orange halo. She wrapped her lips tight around the words that would be a certain declaration of her feelings for him. The cautious nod she summoned felt as if she were being shaken to her core.
“Then look at me, lass.”
She turned her head toward him. His eyes glittered in the scant light, but they might as well have been illuminated by torchlight. She could not look away.
“You deserve to know what sort of a man—and what type of a kiss—you should be looking for,” he said. “So let’s give this another go.”
And before she knew it, before she had time to even draw a breath, his lips were on hers.
Chapter 9
HE SURGED AGAINST her mouth like an incoming tide, determined and powerful and impossible to stem. She stilled, sure she couldn’t survive another round of this humiliation, sure she would rather die than admit to herself—again—that she wanted David Cameron far more than he wanted her.
He offers this tutelage to a friend, she reminded herself. Nothing more.
But her body refused to believe her thoughts.
He tasted of the same saltwater that marked her own lips. It lent a degree of familiarity, of rightness, to the intimacy he demanded. His hands came up to tangle in her wet hair, pulling her closer still. She could feel the persistence of his fingers, tight against her scalp.
The book she had read—the one Penelope kept hidden beneath her bed—gave very little information on kissing. She had little to rely upon except her limited past experience. On the terrace earlier, David had touched her gingerly, as if she might shatter if he pressed too hard or too fast. This time he kissed her as if he wanted to, not as if he owed her a polite favor. He was far less gentle now, insisting on her participation, dictating the terms of her acquiescence.
Summer Is for Lovers Page 8