Elisabeth Fairchild (19 page)

Nell spent the better part of two hours in the composition of three letters. The contents of one could not help but remind her of the young man whom she had sworn to ignore. So distracted did she become that she could not content herself with a nap. Knowing Mr. Ferd had returned with the carriage, she sent word to the mews, requiring him to take her to the beach, that she might follow her aunt’s suggestion, in taking the salt water cure.

He greeted her at the door at the appointed hour, his demeanor so natural and friendly, that Nell felt herself remarkably stiff and awkward by comparison. So caught up in this sensation did she become, that she forgot that she meant to mail her letters, until they had reached the beach in weighty silence.

“My letters! I intended they should meet the mail. Perhaps you had best turn the horses,” sheaid, as he opened the carriage door.

He smiled. “Shall I deliver them for you?”

It was impossible to sustain the remoteness of her tone when a gentleman looked at her with such a sweetness of expression. Nell could not but dimple as she handed the letters over to him. ‘The one on top requires that address you promised me, for Boots’s new owners. You do not mind writing it in for me, do you?”

Beau did mind. He had not expected Nell to dash off a letter so soon, to his sister, Anne. Such a letter was sure to be the undoing of him. On his way to the posting office he pulled the carriage to one side of the coastal road, that he might stand on the little spit of land that hung out over the water, while the bay and the gray stood patiently champing their bits. He looked out to sea for an answer to the question, and debated with his conscience, the fate of Nell’s letter.

The missive was tucked in the inner pocket of his new livery, the pocket over his heart. His right hand tucked beneath the crisp edge of paper, his fingers thrumming with the beat of his pulse as he waited for his brain to decide what next to do. The name on the letter was written in his own lean, flowing script.

Should he allow the flimsy bit of ink and foolscap to meet its destination, when the words it contained surely meant the undoing of his disguise? It would be an easy matter to tear the things to pieces, to burn it into nonexistence, or merely to allow the wind to carry it away into soggy oblivion in the waves below. And yet, Beau found himself reluctant to add even this small mite to his long list of transgressions. Deception was not an art in which he had planned to become accomplished, and yet he was fast becoming master.

He looked again over the edge of the cliff, to the dizzying surge and swell of gray-green water below. Was it perhaps another scrap of his integrity he proposed to fling into the drink? His lies begat more lies, his deception more deceit.

His hand slid empty from its place within his jacket. It was time to put an end to lies and deception. Time to see if the spider was caught in the web of his own making. He must resolve this matter before the missive found a reply.

Turning his back on the water, he set out to post the letter.

Having thus threatened his own future peace and happiness, Beau went on to the room rented in his name, to collect what correspondence he had himself received. There was a pile of letters from his sisters, and from Gates, and a great packet from his solicitor. With thoughts of his responsibilities weighing heavy on his mind, and letters heavy in his pocket, he returned to the beach to await Miss Quinby’s pleasure.

The day, and his new bay brown livery and the news he read in his letters, seemed unbearably stifling to Lord Beauford. Gates’s letter informed him a bay horse had been located. Beatrix wrote in a tirade from London, with regard to his absence, and its insult to Aurora Quinby. Anne, startled by the unexpected delivery of Boots, wondered if her brother was hoaxing her. His solicitor demanded an immediate response and the courtesy of his signature on the documents enclosed. As he read, the brightness of the sun wilted both the duke’s shirt points and his spirits.

There was no breeze to cool the sweat on his brow, his upper lip, and beneath the folds of his neckcloth, and the packet from his solicitor, full of documents that required immediate attention, did nothing to relieve his discomfort, for it could not help but remind him that he was very much a fish out of water.

The imp of mischief that had led him into this strange life gave way to the voice of reason that kept sounding in his head. He had responsibilities he must return to. His father had entrusted him with a great deal of money and power. It would be criminal to continue ignoring his duty. The life he had abandoned was sure to seek him out if he did not return to it. The letters were proof enough of that.

He glanced up from his reading now and again, to look out over the sparkling expanse of water into which he wished to do nothing so much as plunge himself, in pursuit of a certain blue bathing box, in which even now Miss Quinby was disrobing.

Removing his hat, the new brown coat and waistcoat, Beau neatly folded them across the curricle seat on top of his mail. The book he kept in the carriage to read as he waited, further secured his clothing from the whimsy of the wind. He loosened his cravat. All of which provided little relief. He was most uncomfortably warm. He wondered, and not for the first time, just what it was he meant to accomplish with this bloody charade. Why did he stand here pacing about in the heat, when he might just as easily enjoy his leisure in the water below?

The answer to that question stepped out of the blue bathing box. Beau forgot for the moment how very uncomfortable he was. Miss Fanella Quinby, paused at the top of the steps that led down out of the box, her attention riveted in turn, by a woman on the beach, who had just sunk to the sand in a dead faint.

The stir amongst the little crowd that gathered around the poor unconscious woman, was not based so much on the woman’s fainting, as what she had observed to provoke such a response. The source of her distress had attracted the attention of a great majority of those who promenaded along the shore, and two that numbered among this crowd, were women, who succumbed to the spectacle in a like manner, sinking like scuttled ships into the arms of the nearest gentlemen.

A man, of very little modesty and even less patience for the queues that waited entry into the men’s changing rooms, stood on the beach stripping off wet clothes for dry, in front of God and everybody. He was assisted in his endeavor by the ministrations of a woman who looked to be of less than gentle birth, who rather ineffectually held a large unfolded napkin in front of her companion’s private parts, as he removed his soaked bathing attire, and was handed dry shirt and breeches.

Feeling the heat again, Beau was further annoyed by the fact that the fellow below, who had every reason to be sweating, looked cool as a cucumber and completely unperturbed by the sensation he created with his unblushing display.

There was, Beau had to admit, something most arresting in such an unexpected sight, but uppermost in his thoughts, and of higher priority to his consideration as he looked away, was discovering whether Miss Nell Quinby bore witness to it, and if she did, if such exposure inclined her to fainting.

It would appear there was little danger of Fanella so succumbing to nerves that she might be in danger of drowning herself. She stood now in the water, looking not so much shocked, as curious and amused. So taken in was she by the scene unfolding on the beach, that she had no consciousness that her body, clad only in saturated flannel, was a spectacle as provocative in nature, as the man changing clothes.

She had submersed herself, and stood waist deep in water, hair wet and sleek, hanging like a thick, dripping curtain over her right breast.

Her left breast was not so concealed from view.

Beau knew that it was the fashion among the more daring young women in France to dampen the fabric of their dresses, the better to reveal their charms. His sisters had more than once expressed their dismay at such promiscuous cheek. He realized now, as never before, why such activities alarmee British sense of propriety. Wet flannel covered Miss Quinby’s charms no more than transparent gauze, and while the rare privilege of seeing her thus flushed his entire person with a heat of pleasure far more burning than the heat of the sun, with that pleasure came panic that someone else might see this treasure publicly revealed and attempt to steal it away from him.

He abandoned his seat, tempted to rush into the swelling water, to hide Miss Quinby’s amazing breast from the lascivious attentions of any man gazing seaward, save himself. As lathered as a horse before a race, he paced beside the carriage, eyes locked on the young woman he had come to care so much about, heart galloping, breath fast.

The dipper who accompanied Miss Quinby, a strapping, sun-browned woman of such an age that she might consider her role a motherly one, encouraged the fair siren that Fanella was become, to turn her back to the nonsense on the beach, but Miss Quinby was not entirely obedient. She turned readily enough, but curiosity kept turning her head back again.

Every time she turned, the astonishing outline of her raised left nipple was revealed.

Lord Brampton Beauford was beside himself.

Attracting the attention of a lad who agreed to watch the horses, the Duke of Heste tossed his shoes into the carriage, stripped off everything but shirt and breeches and picked his way out to the water’s edge, that he might walk into the waves.

Fanella returned to the carriage, to find Mr. Ferd absent, and a lad holding the horses. She dismissed the boy, with the shilling he was promised, and stood looking about for what might have become of Mr. Ferd. His hat, jacket and waistcoat were neatly deposited on the driver’s bench. The book he had the habit of reading when forced to wait for the return of his passengers, weighed them down.

The pile of clothes brought her to the blush, for they could not but remind her of the scandalous scene that had transpired on the beach. However, when some few moments had passed, and still no Mr. Ferd, Nell picked up one of the sun-warmed gloves that reached out to her from the top of the pile, and fit it over her own small hand. There was something strangely personal in trying on the article of clothing, as if she had violated Mr. Ferd’s privacy. Uncomfortable with the feeling it engendered, she set aside the glove and concentrated instead on the book that weighed down the clothing, curious to see what sort of written material was of interest to her unusual coachman.

She was not surprised that Beau Ferd knew how to read, although it was uncommon in a coachman to be literate, but to discover that the tome was a French work by Voltaire startled her. Mr. Ferd appeared to be more than halfway through in his reading of it. Several pages were marked. What surprised Nell even further, when she thought there could be no more surprises, was to find that the book opened on a number of pages between which flowers had been pressed to dry. One by one, she examined the specimens carefully flattened between the sheets of vellum. No mistaking them. They were pinks from the posy she had given Beau Ferd to replace the buttoner she had crushed in his lapel on the way down from Godstone.

She shut the book with a snap when Bandit appeared, as if from nowhere, and shook violently, ears flapping, drops of water flung in all directions.

It would appear Bandit had leapt into the sea, and that his master had followed him there. Beau Ferd, face pink from exposure to cold water and bright sun, hair slick, and darker than she was accustomed to, pant legs dripping, stood gazing at her as he wrung out his shirt sleeves.

“You and your dog are very wet, Mr. Ferd.”

He nodded. “It was very warm.” Blue eyes locked on hers, stilling her tongue. “F-feverishly so.” There seemed to Nell to be a hint of the fever he spoke of in the blue depths she was in danger of drowning in.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said.

“No need to apologize. I diverted myself examining your book." Flustered, Nell came very near to dropping it as she handed the volume back to him.

“Voltaire cannot be half so diverting as what transpired on the beach today.” His eyes sparkled as brilliantly as the drops of water that glistened in his hair.

Nell flushed as her gaze dropped, and she utterly failed in trying not to stare at the damp outline of his thigh. “A dreadful display,” she agreed.

“Quite.” He offered a damp hand as she approached the steps of the curricle. “I have always understood how well a dinner napkin might protect one’s lap, but must admit that I had never seen one so desperately employed to that purpose.”

Nell would not allow herself to be amused. She took his hand and frowned. His glove was soaked from water dripping off his sleeve, and in grasping hers unkindly shared its moisture. Nell could not help but stop to stare at the rivulets of water running from clinging shirt cuffs and breeches legs.

Why did her hand feel so very much at home in his, despite its having been soaked? Disengaging his grasp, she peeled off her wet glove and wrung the moisture from it, with a feeling that he watched her every move with far too much intensity for such a mundane task.

“You partake of the salt-water cure then, Mr. Ferd?” she enquired, and could not resist the temptation of looking to see if his clear blue eyes were indeed bright with some illness.

The feverish heat was still there, the intense, burning ember that fired his gaze as it met hers. Yet he had not, in any other way, the look of illness about him. His face fairly glowed with health and well-being. He regarded her with disturbing intensity, vibrant and alive and expectant, as if he stood on the brink of telling her something of vital importance and yet held his tongue in check. Said tongue, darted over his lower lip, and it occurred to Nell, and not for the first time since she had met him, that Mr. Ferd had a most attractive mouth, the lips being full and firm, and of a remarkably provocative peach-colored hue.

“The water beckoned,” those pleasing lips now said.

“Feeling better?” she asked. “It is clear to see that Bandit is rejuvenated.”