Chapter Eleven #2
Damn. Damn. ‘No. It’s not true! I’ve been to see her, yes, but a reconciliation? Never. How the hell has this rumour started?’
‘You received a letter from her, didn’t you? Maybe the servants talked. If you want their loyalty, Dan, you need to treat them with a little more consideration.’
‘I’ve come to that conclusion myself,’ said Dan bitterly. ‘So, people are suspecting that I’m back with Cecily?’
‘That’s what they’re saying, and of course many are taking great delight in spreading the news around town. George Melling has been particularly persistent. I’ve heard that he called earlier on Miss Summerby.’
For a moment Dan could not speak. That rogue had been to see Kate?
Without stopping even to change out of his travelling clothes, Dan ordered his horse to be saddled and rode to Clematis Villa. Harriet answered the door, but she looked hesitant when she saw him. In fact, she almost looked as if she wished to shut the door in his face.
He said, ‘Is Miss Summerby at home?’
Harriet shook her head. ‘No, my lord. She’s gone down to the little beach she loves.’
‘Which one is that?’
‘It’s beyond the bathing cabins, on the way to the cliffs. She likes it because hardly anyone goes there and…’
Dan didn’t stop to hear any more. He remounted Domino to ride downhill and through the town, experiencing anger with Cecily, anger with that bastard Melling, but most of all anger with himself.
He pulled up his horse when he reached the eastern shore and saw her near the water’s edge.
She hadn’t seen him yet, but was examining something in her hand: a shell, he guessed.
She wore a yellow spencer over a frock of rose-sprigged muslin. Her wide-brimmed straw hat was adorned with yellow ribbons which fluttered in the breeze, and he guessed that the image of her standing there, so natural and unaffected, was engraving itself in his heart.
She was bending now to replace the shell amongst the pebbles, maybe so someone else could delight in it.
Then she wandered on along the beach, seemingly unselfconscious of the slight irregularity of her gait.
He remembered the old jibe—the debutante who couldn’t dance—and he felt a fresh surge of emotion.
Quite what it was he couldn’t say, but if he was honest with himself, the emotion had been lurking for some time now.
It healed his bitter soul to witness her unaffected pleasure in the beauty of a single shell.
It made him long to see her happy, always…
Always?
He looped his horse’s reins over a nearby railing and murmured, ‘Stay, Domino.’ Then he walked down to the beach and overtook her. ‘Hello.’
If she was surprised, she hid it well. ‘Hello yourself.’ She swept a stray lock of hair away from her forehead. ‘I didn’t expect you back from London so quickly. In fact, I wondered if you’d absconded for good.’
She said it lightly but he thought he heard uncertainty in her voice, as if she was unsure of what his arrival meant. He said, ‘Do you mind if I walk with you for a while? That is, if you’re not in a hurry?’
‘No hurry at all, my lord. As you’ve seen, I was just enjoying the sea air.’
Dan, he wanted to say. My name is Dan.
She had started slowly walking back towards the main beach, where the bathing cabins were lined up in gaudy rows and horses were waiting to pull bathers into the sea for their salt water cures.
But he put his hand on her arm then pointed in the opposite direction.
‘Perhaps we should go the other way,’ he said. ‘Where it’s less busy.’
She nodded. ‘Whatever you wish.’
They walked in silence for a few moments, then he stopped and said, ‘Kate. I believe I owe you an apology. I gather that there has been gossip about my sudden departure for London, and you may have suffered as a result.’
She met his gaze steadily. ‘Haven’t you realised yet how accustomed I am to gossip?’
‘Yes, but this is different. I think this was my fault. I should have spoken to you before I left. I should have confided in you.’
‘Why? You owe me no particular loyalty.’
He shook his head and said, ‘Don’t I? Oh, Kate. I rather think that I do.’
Kate felt overwhelmed by his arrival. She hadn’t expected him for days, for longer even—and the real problem, the truth she would hate him to know, was that his abrupt departure had crushed her.
He looked now as if he was struggling to find the right words, and she could hardly breathe, because he was surely going to tell her about Cecily.
She was right, because at last he said, ‘I suppose people have told you that I went to London to see the woman I once planned to marry?’
She braced herself. Defences at the ready again, Kate. Whatever was coming, she had to pretend she didn’t care, because she couldn’t afford to care. ‘How is Cecily?’ she asked at last.
All right, it was a stupid question, though surely better than remembering the hunger in his eyes when he’d kissed her the other night, the way his fingers had caressed her breasts until she had become a trembling mass of need.
But then he really did stun her because he said, ‘Cecily? She was the same as ever. Selfish, vain and completely devoid of caring for anyone else’s feelings, unless it’s to manipulate them to her own ends.
I went to London because Cecily wanted to tell me something.
I listened, then I came back—because I needed to see you, Kate. I needed to explain.’
Oh, this man. Just then a shaft of sunshine fell on him, and what with the breeze stirring his brown hair and his open-necked shirt showing a beguiling hint of tanned chest, her heart almost stopped beating.
But then, it damn well pounded like a hammer against her ribs.
This man was dangerous because he weakened her powers of reason.
I must not fall in love with him, she reminded herself desperately. I must not.
She forced herself into calmness. ‘You are under no obligation to explain anything to me, my lord. No excuses are necessary, or apologies. What happened the other night between us was my responsibility as much as yours.’
But as she reached to push aside a stray bonnet ribbon she was thinking, I welcomed your caresses, Dan. I longed for them. I wanted to experience what a man like you could give me.
And now it was over. She knew that. He was frowning, so she stumbled on. ‘As I’ve told you before, I am extremely grateful for your help in dispelling the hostility I’ve experienced here—’
She broke off because there was a slight snorting sound and she realised he was fighting to hold back amusement. He said, ‘You make me sound like a guard dog.’
She stiffened. He was laughing? ‘Let me put it another way, my lord! I am under no illusion that you meant our outings to be anything more than a temporary arrangement that suited us both. If you are back with Cecily again, it’s all right, you know. I really don’t mind—’
‘Kate.’ He broke in almost harshly. ‘You still don’t understand. I only went to see her because she wrote to me that she had news about my mother.’
‘Your mother, who left you long ago?’
‘Exactly.’
A seagull was calling out its lonely cry, and she saw Dan watching as it soared high above them. When he started speaking again, it sounded as if every word was an effort.
‘I told you,’ he said, ‘that after she’d gone, my father had every reminder of her destroyed. I never knew what had happened to her. But yesterday, Cecily told me that my mother died long ago in France, alone and impoverished.’
Kate’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, no. I am so sorry. Do you think Cecily spoke the truth?’
‘Maybe someday I shall try to find out. But I half suspect she made it all up, in a twisted attempt to get me back. My chief regret is that I didn’t tell you why I was going to see her, because I gather you’ve heard some evil gossip.’
‘I have no rights over you! You owe me nothing!’
‘You are wrong. I owe you the basics of decency and honesty, at the very least!’ As if to control himself, he thrust his hands into the pockets of his long coat. ‘I’ve heard how George Melling has been pestering you with tales about me, and that’s unforgivable. I shall deal with him myself—’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I do not wish even more stories to be made up about you and me! I do not want anyone to think there is anything happening between us!’
She felt vulnerable and exposed, and was she actually making her own situation any better? She guessed not. Spending too much time in the company of a devastatingly attractive man was demolishing all of her carefully built defences.
At last, he said, ‘I can guess how you dealt with Melling. You threatened him with your aunt’s handbell, didn’t you?’
She caught her breath. There was a spark of mischief in his eyes and she found herself brimming with sudden, absurd happiness. ‘I only had to look at that bell,’ she said, ‘and he stormed off.’
He laughed. ‘That’s him sorted, then. Good for you. And Kate—we’re still friends, I hope?’
She felt a little deflated. For one magical night she had hoped they might be more, but she said, ‘Friends. Of course.’
He raised one eyebrow quizzically. ‘Then might I suggest another outing?’
Her wayward heart fluttered again. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Well, maybe not the opera this time—although I certainly deserve the punishment it would provide.’ He smiled that dazzling smile of his, and she couldn’t help herself, she smiled back. Then he took her arm and said, ‘I am serious, Kate, about seeing you again. Shall we walk a little further?’
So, she walked along the beach again, by his side, because really, what else could she have done? Silence reigned for a short while, but it wasn’t long before he spotted a shell, which he picked up and held out to her.
‘This is an oyster shell,’ he said. ‘It must have washed up from the oyster beds in the Thames, or possibly even from France.’
She nodded, reaching out to touch it. ‘Such a long journey for a small creature.’