by Jane Ashford
Nathaniel shook his head. Clearly, he wasn’t convinced, and she rather enjoyed that fact. His little bit of jealousy was terribly flattering, and rather exciting.
They moved through the party, talking with friends and surveying more of the lush surroundings. Violet had one glass of champagne, no more, saving her indulgence for the luxuriant buffet. After supper she joined a group of friends who were admiring the music room, a brilliant red-and-gold chamber in the Chinese style. “Look at that,” said one of their party, pointing at the winged dragons hovering above the curtain pelmets. Chandeliers like giant water lilies hung from the high, vaulted ceiling and lit the space almost like daylight. At the top of the room was a tentlike octagonal cornice.
Through the milling and exclamations of her friends, Violet noticed Lord Granchester standing on the other side of the room. When she went over to say hello, he reacted with cool surprise and had to be reminded of her identity. Told she was a good friend of his wife, he showed no interest. “Is Marianne here?” Violet asked. She hadn’t seen her.
“I haven’t the least idea,” was the bored reply. “If you will excuse me.” With no effort at all to be polite, he walked away.
Watching his tall, athletic figure pass under the arched doorway, Violet remembered how romantic it had seemed when Marianne caught the eye of this noted Corinthian. Scores of young ladies had set their caps at Granchester and been disappointed. When he offered for Marianne, it had been hailed as such a triumph for her. Violet knew Marianne had been dazzled. Granchester was handsome, assured, slavishly admired, and wealthy, of course. To find that such a man had succumbed to your charms… She’d been envious; she admitted it. It had been obvious even then, in her first year out, that she would never achieve such a coup.
Now, seven years later, she stood in the pavilion’s gaudy precincts and wondered about the aftermath of their whirlwind courtship and swoon-worthy love match. Granchester’s behavior did not suggest a happy partnership. And Marianne had definitely looked downcast when Violet encountered her at the assembly. Violet remembered her friend’s advice about simply enduring the intimacies of marriage. The implications of that hadn’t really sunk in until now. She realized that she’d seldom seen the pair together during the last two London seasons. Violet’s face heated with chagrin. Had her sour thread of envy blinded her to a friend’s unhappiness? Had she been too self-absorbed to notice Marianne’s situation? That was a lowering reflection. Violet thought of herself as a good friend. She prided herself on it.
Nathaniel appeared under the archway that Granchester had passed through. As he approached, Violet was struck by the contrast between the two men. Granchester had the subtle swagger of a leader of fashion, the certainty that he was the sinecure of all eyes; he pretended to ignore all that attention while actually savoring it. Nathaniel dressed and moved quite differently; everything about him seemed designed not to draw undue notice. Yet he was quite as handsome and well set up, as elegant in his own way. Marianne’s husband had an edge, an air of…not danger precisely, but it was obvious you’d be unwise to cross him. Violet’s husband was…safe as houses.
She’d had a wistful moment or two about the nature of her marriage, Violet thought. She’d compared it unfavorably to Marianne’s. In this moment, she wondered why.
“It’s getting late,” Nathaniel said when he reached her. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yes!”
He looked surprised at her vehemence. “Is anything wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Back at their lodgings, she took his hand, led him into her bedchamber, and threw herself into his arms. Nathaniel staggered slightly as he caught her, but he responded at once to her raised lips. She never got enough of his kisses.
When, after some time, he drew away, Nathaniel smiled down at her. “You’re lively tonight, and it can’t be put down to champagne this time.”
Rather than answering, Violet loosened first one, then another, of the fingers of her long kid glove. Slowly, she pulled off the left-hand one, did the same with the right. She loved seeing Nathaniel’s blue eyes begin to burn. She turned around. “Will you undo the buttons of my gown?”
“With pleasure.”
Violet had a brief qualm. “Do be careful. It’s so beautiful. I know I will wish to wear it again.”
“I’m always very careful with beautiful things,” her husband replied.
And he was.
Six
“I scarcely see you these days,” said Nathaniel as Violet hurried through the parlor toward the stairs.
She paused. “That’s not true.”
He eyed her frogged and tasseled walking dress, no doubt in the first stare of fashion, like her tilted confection of a hat. It wasn’t true, precisely. But in their third week in Brighton, she seemed to have a great many engagements. She was always rushing off to meet an acquaintance at the library, or shop in the Steine for…who knew what. She had masses of new clothes. She’d established herself in a group of dashing young married women. Indeed, one or two of them were a bit more dashing than Nathaniel would have preferred. And she was always on the go, and seemingly delighted to be.
He hadn’t found any similar mooring. He’d joined Raggett’s Club on the Steine, even though he didn’t care for high play, and attended two race meetings with groups of other gentlemen. But he’d found no particularly congenial companions. On the contrary, he’d discovered that he actually missed his duties around Langford. Riding about the estate conferring with tenants or the steward could get tedious, but at the end of the day he would have accomplished necessary tasks. There was satisfaction in that. Here in Brighton, there was none. There was only the continual social round and the never-ending sense that he must embody his position. “Where are you off to now?” he asked Violet.
“I’m going sea bathing at last.”
Nathaniel looked out at the gray day, heavy with the threat of rain, and shivered at the thought of cold seawater. “Why not choose a sunny afternoon?”
“They say one must bathe in chilly weather, when the pores of the skin are safely closed.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you plunge in when heated by the sun, you risk a severe chill,” Violet informed him. She gazed out at the lowering clouds. “That is what I was told.”
“I should think there was a danger of that in any sort of weather. We aren’t in the tropics, you know.”
“Sea bathing is a very healthful practice,” Violet said. “Lady Hartwood swears by it.”
Nathaniel snorted. He had been tossed into cold water a time or two when sailing, and it had not felt especially salubrious. “Is that the Lady Hartwood who walks all bent over, leaning on two canes?”
A giggle escaped Violet. “Oh, don’t be a stick in the mud.”
“It is you who are likely to be knee deep in cold mud.”
“Sand, not mud, silly.” Violet had been checking the contents of her reticule. “Oh, I forgot my handkerchief.” She turned back to her bedchamber.
Wondering what good a scrap of lace-edged linen would be against the rigors of the English Channel, Nathaniel opened one of the letters that had been delivered a few moments ago. Just as Violet returned to the parlor, he leapt to his feet, clutching the single page.
“What is it?” she exclaimed.
“James has been shot. No, shot at. What the deuce?” Quickly, he ran his eye down the rest of the—lamentably short—message.
“Is he all right?”
“Apparently. He says he is only writing in case I might hear the news from someone else. He seems to think it a great joke that some…person fired a revolver at him at one of Ariel’s garden parties.”
“What?”
“Precisely.” Nathaniel read the whole letter again.
“At a garden party? But who…why?”
“I can’t understand who it was. First he says ‘he’ and then ‘she.’”
“A woman shot at him?”
“Your family just grows more and more interesting,” Violet remarked.
Nathaniel turned to stare at her.
“No one in mine meets Hindus with lapdogs or is shot at. At least, perhaps when out hunting they might have been? No. I never heard of any relative of mine being shot at. And if they were, I should think they’d be prostrate with anxiety. James really treats it as a joke?”
Nathaniel nodded. The one clear thing in his brother’s message was the amused tone.
“He must be very brave.”
“I suppose he is,” replied Nathaniel slowly. He hadn’t really thought about it before. “James has been in the navy for nine years, and has been in several large battles.” He looked down at the letter. “I know him the least well of all my brothers. I was sent off to school when he was still a toddler. And then he joined up at sixteen.”
“And he’s sailed all around the world,” said Violet. “It must have been thrilling.”
Nathaniel snorted. “It seems to have turned his brain. I’m going to write Alan and get the real story.”
“Not James?”
He shook his head. “Alan is the most sensible of us all, and the clearest writer. It comes of being a scholar, I suppose. Oh…” Could that have been what happened?
“You’ve thought of something,” Violet said.
“No… I just wondered…”
“What? I can see that it’s important.” She moved closer, looking at the letter in his hand.
“I don’t know whether it’s… It just occurred to me that Ariel might be…up to something.”
“Alan’s wife? Why would you think so?” Violet’s eyes widened. “You don’t think she shot at him?”
Nathaniel’s brain filled with wild surmise. Could gunfire be part of some scheme? But no, that was too fantastic. “No, of course not.”
“Then what? What should she be ‘up to’?” Violet cocked her head. “Is she often up to things?”
“She has a most…active mind,” Nathaniel allowed.
Violet eyed him as if trying to decipher his expression. “I am so sorry I’ve had no opportunity to get to know her.”
“You’ll like her,” Nathaniel replied, as a diversion.
“I’m more and more sure I shall,” his wife answered. “But what did you mean?”
“Mean?”
“Nathaniel!”
It was said in a tone that surfaced occasionally in her voice, the one that straightened one’s spine and made information just burst out. “Ariel helped with, er, gave some advice to Sebastian and Robert about…women.”
“Women?” Violet looked intensely intrigued.
“Sebastian wasn’t getting anywhere with Georgina Stane, and Ariel suggested that he should—”
“What?”
“I beg your—”
“Should what?” Violet demanded.
“Ask her questions, and be sure to listen to the answers.” Nathaniel had not entirely understood this advice, but he couldn’t deny that it had served the purpose.
“Indeed?” Violet’s expression as she considered this made him wary. “What sort of questions?”
Nathaniel searched his memory. He hadn’t paid close attention. He’d been focused on his own concerns. “About her opinions,” he recalled finally. “And her experiences.”
“So he was to pretend to be interested in these things?”
Just now and then, for a sentence or two, Violet could sound rather like her grandmother. It was…unsettling. Nathaniel was actually relieved that he remembered the answer to this. Ariel had made a particular point of it. “No, he had to be—or become—truly interested. Otherwise, it was no good.”
“I see. Did he?”
“I…I suppose so.” He had no idea.
“Did she advise you as well?” Violet inquired.
“Me?” He did not bleat it. He had never been anything resembling a bleater. “No.”
“No?”
Nathaniel felt as if she saw right through him. “Not…as such.”
“As such?”
“She had a few thoughts on how to handle your grandmother.”
Violet’s pale eyebrows went up.
“The old lady was forever keeping us apart,” he reminded her.
“I know!”
“Ariel suggested that if I dropped a few hints to your father about how it was putting me off the match…” He stopped as he saw her frown.
“That’s what happened,” Violet said. “I couldn’t understand why Grandmamma was suddenly more lenient.”
“If you call it lenient,” complained Nathaniel. They’d never had the freedom granted most other engaged couples.
“Well, for her,” Violet conceded.
“Thank God we don’t have to worry about her any longer,” Nathaniel said with perfect truth, and a hope that the subject was exhausted.
Violet nodded. “I must become well acquainted with Ariel as soon as may be. We should invite them to visit Brighton.”
Nathaniel didn’t want to imagine the mischief that such collusion might bring. “Won’t you be late for your sea bathing?” he said.
Violet’s eyes flew to the clock on the mantelpiece. “Oh, I must go!”
She hurried out. Nathaniel let out a long breath and turned to begin his letter to Alan.
* * *
As agreed, Violet stopped for Marianne on her way to the seaside, at the Granchesters’ very desirable lodgings on the Marine Parade. She had, with difficulty, convinced her friend to join the sea bathing expedition. Though they were staying in the same small resort town, it had proven hard to see much of Marianne. She claimed to be continually occupied, but never said with what. Twice, when Violet had called on her friend, Marianne was out. Yet she never saw her on the promenade, and only rarely at one of the assemblies.
Today, however, she had persuaded her, and they walked together toward the ladies’ side of the beach. It remained a chilly, gray day, with clouds streaming above the treeless coast. The Channel was also gray, with lines of pale foam farther out. Some bathing machines were already in the water. Others awaited their next customers at the edge. By inquiring, Violet found Mrs. Crane, with whom she had made the appointment.
This sturdy woman stood by her machine like a superior sort of washerwoman. The sleeves of her gown were rolled above her elbows, and the skirts kilted up high enough to reveal her knees. Heavy wooden clogs sheathed her feet. “Up you get then, my ladies,” she said when Violet identified herself.
The bathing machine before them was like a miniature house—wooden walls and a peaked roof—mounted on four large wheels. There was a horse tethered to the front and a set of three wooden steps leading up to a door at the back. This stood open, revealing a wooden bench fastened to one wall of the interior, empty except for a pile of fluffy towels.
Mrs. Crane handed each of them a bundle of gray flannel. “Once you’re safely in, undress and put these on,” she instructed, as if she had said it a thousand times before.
Violet and Marianne carried the cloth up the steps and into the apparatus. Mrs. Crane shut the door behind them. Violet hadn’t realized how cramped they would be. Though they’d been friends for years, their association had not included disrobing together.
After an awkward moment, they turned their backs on each other and began to undress. To make things more difficult, the bathing machine lurched into motion, throwing off their balance. They bumped and jostled. Violet could hear the splash of water made by the wheels as she untangled her feet from her petticoat.
“Did you, umm, did you drink the prescribed glasses of seawater?” Violet said as she slipped off her underthings.
“No, I didn’t,” said Marianne. “I tried one, but it was too nasty.”
“They say bathing won’t do you as much good if you have not.”
&
nbsp; “Do you really believe that?”
“Well…”
“What is this thing she’s given us?” Marianne went on.
Unfolding the bundle of flannel, Violet found that it was a wide, shapeless smock. She raised it over her head and let it fall around her bare body, wiggling her arms into the long sleeves. The garment had a high neck and fell down to her ankles, with no tailoring whatsoever. It was like wearing some sort of tent. “It’s a bathing costume,” she replied. Peeking to be sure Marianne had donned hers as well, she turned around.
As one, they burst out laughing. Marianne pointed at her, then raised a fold of her own smock to point at that. “This is the ugliest garment I’ve ever seen, let alone worn,” she said when she could speak.
The floor lurched again, and the two women caught each other to keep from falling. “Whatever have you gotten me into?” said Marianne.
“An adventure,” Violet replied. As she was perfectly healthy, sea bathing had the appeal of a novelty rather than a cure. “What can it hurt?”
They came to a stop. A brisk knock on the door heralded the round red face of Mrs. Crane, peering around the edge. “Ready, my ladies?” she asked. When Violet nodded, she opened the door wide.
The horse had pulled them some distance away from shore. And then it had apparently been turned round again, because Violet faced a wide expanse of heaving water, stretching off to the horizon. There was no sign of the bustling town or the safe, dry countryside that lay behind.
Standing on the bottom step, Mrs. Crane held out a helping hand. Which seemed hardly necessary, Violet thought. She was well capable of managing three stairs. She stepped down once, twice, a third time, and then dropped into cold water up to her bosom. She gasped with the shock. Her smock puffed up around her like an errant balloon. “Oh, oh.”
“How is it?” Marianne asked.
The icy seawater had invaded every crevice. Violet swallowed. “Bracing.”