Chapter 3
Chapter Three
She had told him to find her at the rock pool. She hoped he had realized that.
He did. She recognized him the instant he appeared, a dark silhouette against the white chalk cliffs, the elemental god at home in his domain. He spotted her and set out across the shingle.
Effie’s heart leapt like a hare from its burrow and took off running, trailing relief and an eagerness so sharp it made her palms tingle.
She sat back on her several layers of petticoats and pushed back her bonnet, which was having a bad go of it in the breeze.
She never took such an interest in men. She was not a ninny, she was not coy, and she secretly snickered at women who simpered and flirted their fan and tried every trick they knew to gain a gentleman’s attention, even though she was adept at such tricks herself.
This was different. She did not want his attention for tricks.
She wanted him to look at her boldly, in earnest, the way he’d regarded her on the beach yesterday.
He’d worn the precise expression she felt when she lifted a rock to discover something marvelous, an astounding expansion of the world she thought she knew.
She watched him come, striding in that arrogant way men had, owners of the earth.
He was very splendid. He wore a plain riding coat and only one waistcoat, gray silk patterned with diamonds, his cravat a snowy cascade over his chest. Such a chest. He wore tall black boots with pantaloons that didn’t cling, as some men wore them.
Yet her builder was precisely the sort of well-shaped man who ought to wear clingy pantaloons, as a service to the viewing public. He had such strong thighs. She’d leaned against him last night—or he leaned against her, contact had been made—and he was solid as an oak.
Also, though she was not conversant in these things, Effie was certain he’d been aroused.
By her.
She’d kissed him. What a stupendous launch to her last summer of freedom.
She’d have laid wagers he would come again for Lady Erato. Who would not take a boon freely offered, without return, without consequence? She’d hardly dared hope he would come for her, plain Effie Stanier.
He smiled at her as he neared, and her heart went off in loops.
What a goose she’d been yesterday, prating on to him about rocks and kelp.
She’d quite lost her mind. But a handsome gentleman standing bootless in the water—uncaring of how shocking he was being, completely absorbed in a handful of mud—she’d sensed a fellow creature.
Someone, like her, who was accustomed to the bounds of propriety, could go along quite well in the train of convention when he must, but was ready to bolt harness the moment someone wasn’t looking.
And when he spoke to her so easily, his deep voice so teasing, his eyes focused on her and reflecting the gray clouds of the sky—well, her thoughts had rushed up like geysers and she gave vent to them freely, as if she hadn’t been trained from the cradle to restrain her emotions, her eagerness, her puppyish ways, to act a young lady who was a credit to her family and her breeding.
She was going to do it again. Breeding escaped her when he was about, and the real Effie broke through.
Her family wouldn’t approve of going on with strange men, but her family hadn’t arrived in Brighton yet.
He’d found her, and she’d been crammed in a barrel and hooped down a hill, her stomach tilting end over end, the most glorious weightless feeling.
She was either going to be transported by delight or crash into pieces when some unforeseen obstacle arose.
“Miss Iphigenia,” he said, and his voice was as it had been at the club last night, smoky and dark. Her fingertips tingled, recalling the heat of his mouth.
“Mister…Sand.”
“Burnham.” He doffed his black top hat, silk, not beaver.
At once the wind plunged its fingers into his hair, tossing the careful style and tumbling a wave of brown across his brow.
She quite liked the rugged cast to his features, the bold nose, those quick eyes beneath deep brows.
Gray eyes, like the flint stones that made up the beach.
His sideburns, clipped short, accented the jut of his cheekbones and jaw.
He was a man accustomed to weather, not one of those indolent gentlemen who lay about indoors at their clubs all the day, like her cousin.
She held forth her hand, the leather of her gloves damp at the tips. “Stanier.”
Clearly the name meant nothing to him. What a reprieve.
She ranged her gaze down his figure, thinking how very perfect he was for her purposes. “You’ve your boots today, I see.”
She understood why he’d chosen to remove his Hessians before. Fine leather, expertly made, well-seasoned. They oughtn’t be ruined by sea water.
“One requires footwear on this shingle. Besides, I can be polite when the occasion warrants.”
“Not here, I hope. How dreadful that would be.”
They’d kissed at a pleasure club and she’d pressed her breasts against him. Even now those parts of her peaked with nervous anticipation. The need for conventional courtesies between them was long gone.
He grinned, and Effie tamped down the urge to seize his ears and hold him still for another kiss. His mouth was as well-shaped as the rest of him.
He crouched beside her and stripped off his gloves, laying them with his walking stick and hat beside the rock pool.
He bent one knee to the shingle as if careless of getting wet and draped a wrist over the other knee crooked in the air.
He was quite close but seemed unconscious of his effect on her and he leaned forward to peer into the water.
“Any limpets here?”
“Sadly, none. But I have good reports of yesterday’s specimen. I sketched him from all angles, then put him and his kelp in a jar with water. I hope he will live for some days and provide a fruitful source of study. I named him Hector.”
He raised his eyebrows, two straight brown slashes. His face was the most interesting blend of stern and beautiful. He was a man in his full prime, she would guess him possessing a few more years than she, but curiosity gave his face a boyish light.
“Miss Iphigenia, be truthful with me. Have you a preoccupation with ancient Greece?”
She laughed. “I have seven siblings, and we are all of us named after gods or heroes. I could not escape the ancient world if I tried. And you? Have you a similar preoccupation?”
“With Greece?” He looked into the pool, not at her, but a small, sensual smile curled his lips. “My interest is increasing of late.”
Her heart soared. He knew. He recognized her, as she had known him the moment he entered the room at Heddy’s.
The way her heart had swooped when she saw him take his seat for the tableaux!
Perhaps he felt with her as she did with him, that some door had opened and she’d stepped into a world made for they two alone.
“What wonders have you discovered?” he asked, looking into the rock pool.
Him. She’d discovered him.
Effie leaned forward, peeling off her gloves. “There is a velvet crab hiding beneath that overhang. You can just see the tip of his blue pincer. I am waiting for him to venture out.”
“That must be the snakelocks anemone you spoke of.” He pointed.
“What an excellent student you are. That other anemone I do not know, the one with the purple column and the knobs atop its tentacles. It looks like a coronet, does it not? With all those pearls, he must be a person of some esteem, though I could not tell you the rankings.”
“Six pearls for a baron,” he said promptly. “On the coronet, at least.”
“Oh.” Effie gazed into the pool. She had thought the afternoon turned sunny, with his arrival, but now a shadow touched her shoulder. “I shall need to know that, I suppose.”
He glanced at her, suddenly wary. “You’ve an acquaintance with barons?”
She scrunched up her face before she remembered her mother had told her a thousand times not to make that face in company. “I have no acquaintance with that anemone, and I might take him home with me. Did you see the sea squirt?”
“I’ve always wondered why they are called that.”
She couldn’t resist. Effie lifted a rock with the leathery red pouch attached and laughed at the look on his face when the animal squirted water at him. “See that tube? That is the siphon. I think it must be how it feeds.”
He sat back, his expression curious, but not scoffing. “I ought to know these things. I grew up on the seashore. How did you learn about these creatures?”
Effie replaced the rock and stroked her fingers along a flat frond of rockweed. “I am interested in natural history, or zoology, some call it. I am particularly curious about marine life.”
She cut a look at him out of the corner of her eyes. He sat unconcerned by the salt droplets flung at them by the breeze, a man at ease with the world and his place in it. A man not threatened that he did not know what others might, who was willing to listen. How rare that was.
It made her bold. “I should like to study and write about it, to learn as much as I might and teach others, if I may.”
“And why should you not?” His glance held a trace of surprise, but not the condescension she was accustomed to seeing.
She smoothed out her face. “Have you heard of the Baron Cuvier? Lamarck? Alexander van Humboldt?”
He inclined his head. These were all men who had made profound discoveries about the natural world. “Now,” Effie said, “can you name any women who are famous for their works of natural history?”
To his credit, he spent a moment in thought before he shook his head. “Perhaps they do not harbor those interests?”
“Or perhaps they are helpers and servants to the men. Assistants. Illustrators. Proofreaders. Not the authors themselves.”
“You are ambitious,” he observed.
“No,” she said. “I am curious. And stubborn, I shall be the first to admit it.”
“And why should you not study what you wish?”