Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Effie wasn’t where she’d said she would be.
A fitting answer to his betrayal, Jay supposed, though how could she know he’d betrayed her, and why did it feel a betrayal at all?
Plenty of men took their pleasures where they could before marriage, and some of them during, as he knew.
Jay’s father, though, had never looked with interest upon another woman from the moment he met Leda Wroth at an assembly in Bath, so perhaps it was only Burnham men who were peculiar in that respect.
As he circled Adelaide Crescent, examining the Athaneum from all angles while convinced all over again the builder hadn’t put in enough iron supports to hold up the dome of glass, Jay had to face the truth. He was here, and Effie wasn’t.
He was wild to see her again, and she didn’t feel the same.
He’d met obstacles in his life before. He’d met plenty of women who turned him down, who didn’t want a tradesman, or didn’t like his rough edges.
He’d had problems on projects, customers who didn’t pay, prospects that didn’t go through, projects that folded when an owner ran out of money or inclination.
But he’d been so certain this was something he was meant for. Effie Stanier was a like soul.
He’d been convinced that, despite all his flaws, all the drawbacks, she would say yes.
Though he was coming to her bearing the imprint of another woman. The scent of Erato still filled his nostrils, even after washing. The taste of her still teased his tongue, her eager kisses and the nectar of her womanhood. She tasted like clay pulled from the sea, sharp and sweet at the same time.
What an astounding privilege that she had chosen him for her awakening.
He hoped he’d done a decent job of it. He hadn’t been a tutor with her in his arms. He’d been lost to everything but her scented heat, the unbelievable softness of her skin, the music that filled his head when she put her mouth on him.
God. He would be sporting a cockstand all about the half-built Adelaide Crescent if he didn’t bring his thoughts under control.
But how could he not be aroused by the memory of her kneeling between his knees, not because they’d made a transaction, not because she expected something of him, but because she wanted to touch him. As if he, his own self, was a pleasure to her.
He hoped his wife would feel the same way.
There would be no more visits to Hedone.
If he saw Lady Erato, passed her on the street on another man’s arm, Jay would do as she asked and pretend not to know her.
Theirs had been a stolen moment, perfect, a memory he could cherish and revisit to the end of his days.
An unlooked-for connection, a pleasure he’d found tucked away when he had needed a distraction from the dull round of his life.
When he knew he wanted something more but could not say what that looked like.
He turned toward the beach and saw two shapes on the shingle, one a woman in a broad-brimmed hat and the extravagant silhouette of current fashion, the broad sleeves and skirt nipped in by the tiny waist. As if a woman were a toy one could pinch with one’s fingers and fly through the air.
It was Effie, and he knew now what that more was he’d been craving. He’d been searching for her.
The second shape was a seal, he saw as he neared.
A common seal, gray with white spots, turned on its side.
Two sets of eyes regarded him as he approached, one set large and brown and mournful, above a set of drooping whiskers, and the other an anxious midnight blue.
It was the blue eyes that set grappling hooks in his chest and pulled.
He felt the same hunger that gripped him last night when he’d fallen upon Erato. He wanted to set his palms on either side of Effie’s face and pull her to him and kiss her until the world fell away.
How very out of place, to have a rush of raw desire here, on this exposed beach, oddly empty. The pleasure seekers were all down by Chain Pier, where the entertainments could be found.
“I’ve sent Heddy to get help,” Effie said, eschewing a greeting. “I think we need to return her to the water.”
“She could be molting. The seals at Hunstanton do that this time of year.”
“I do not think that is the reason. She has only just begun to shed her fur, see?” Effie swept her hand, ungloved, along a patch of the creature’s back where what Jay had thought spots were tiny openings in its coat, the old beginning to give way to the new.
“And that is her seal pup out in the channel, crying for her.”
On the word a small yip, eerily like the cry of a child, came from a few yards out in the water, where a sleek tiny head, possessing another set of huge dark eyes, bobbed above the waves. The seal on the beach turned that way and struggled.
“She hauled out on the tide and now she cannot get back,” Effie said. “She might be injured. We have to help.”
“Perhaps we oughtn’t move her,” Jay said doubtfully. The animal was enormous, almost as long as he was tall, and it far outweighed him. He’d made it a practice to appreciate the Hunstanton seals from afar, not walk among the giant, muscular beasts. Effie stroked this one as if she’d made a pet.
“Jay.” Effie fixed him with a reproachful gaze. “We have to help.”
“So this is why you were not in Adelaide Crescent.” He hoped he didn’t sound reproachful in return. He was not going to chase the woman if she didn’t want him.
“Mmm.” She circled the beast, running her hand along it. The seal lay complaisant beneath her palm as if Effie had some magical effect on it. Jay understood; he did the same when she touched him, held still and vibrating, enchanted, waiting for more.
“Illiger gave them a new family when he reorganized his taxonomy,” Effie said, moving to the rear of the creature to study its hindquarters.
“He called them pinnipeds—Latin for fin foot, isn’t that delightful?
I read that walruses can maneuver on land using their back feet for a sort of waddle, but seals are clumsier.
Look at her body, that ovoid shape. She is made for swimming.
And see? There’s another distinction.” She came to stand beside Jay, pointing a finger at the seal’s head. “No outer ear.”
He stared at her. He would chase this woman after all. He would follow her wherever she went, sing beneath her window, pitch a tent at the gate of her home. He would besiege her until she fell in love with him.
She glanced up at him, a question chasing away the softness and wonder. “Did you think I had abandoned our meeting?”
“I had hoped that was not the case. But I see now you have a good reason.”
She held his gaze, hers warm and probing, posing a question he didn’t understand. He stared back, and a lovely blush, like the streaks of a pink dawn, climbed her neck and cheeks.
He would ask her today. This afternoon. He would drop to his knees before her. There would be no finesse, because he had lost all finesse around her, if he’d ever possessed it. There was only the sheer ache of want. Of need.
“So how do we get her in the water?” Effie asked him.
Jay hauled his mind back to the task at hand. “Push?”
Effie shook her head. She wore some pert high-brimmed hat with a bit of net flapping from the brim. “We might injure her further.”
“We could make a sling and carry her.”
“That will take more strength than I have. She’ll weigh at least twenty stone.”
“Roll her like a barrel?”
Effie bit back a laugh, her eyes dancing. “Mr. Burnham.”
“Jay.” He was charmed by her amusement, even at his expense.
“You are brickmaker, are you not?”
“I call myself one.”
“You dig your bricks from the ground. Your brick earth, or whatever you call it. Did I not find you, at this very beach, scooping up mud?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“We dig. We make a path for her, and she can slide back to the sea.”
Jay followed her line of sight to the pup, swimming back and forth, crying mournfully. The mother seal vocalized in return.
“But if she is injured…”
“She needs to be with her baby. And while they pup and molt, I believe, the common seal will gather in groups. So she might have others to look out and protect them from predators.”
Jay regarded the rocky shelf of the beach, the several yards between the seal and the sea. “So we build her a slide.”
She gave him a laughing smile. “What an excellent idea.”
Her leather gloves were thin for the task, and his were not ideal either, but Jay knelt across from her as they began smoothing a path down the rocky beach.
As if she knew what they were about, the mother seal rolled to her belly and pointed her nose toward the water, whiskers vibrating.
She lifted her rear fins, poised for the plunge.
“Would you dine with me tonight?” Jay asked.
Effie glanced up with a shy, pleased smile. “Dine with you? Where?”
“My friend, with whom I am lodging, would like to meet you. You are welcome to bring a guest, of course.”
That smile was another snare, the way one side of her mouth seemed to quirk up.
He was caught in it. She was dressed in some adorable riding costume meant to look vaguely military, the stern cut of her coat, a neckcloth billowing above her bosom and a jewel winking from the white folds.
A warning, late and dim, tugged at the back of Jay’s mind.
“Why should your friend wish to meet me?” she asked.
Good God, he had lost all subtlety with her, if he’d ever had any. “I may have spoken of you to him.”
She glanced back at their captive seal, her smile fleeing. “I hope you are not trying to arrange a marriage for me.”
He felt he’d taken a blow to the head. “No, of course not.” Not when he wanted her for himself. “Why—are you not thinking of marriage?”
“I told you. I am already promised,” she said.