Summer Is for Lovers

by Jennifer McQuiston

  But heady as those feelings were, and as tempted as she made him feel, he had naïvely thought he could keep those feelings chained. After the frustration of the afternoon, and after the panic he had endured at the thought of her injured, or worse, in someone else’s arms, he could no longer claim his heart was immune to the enigma that was Caroline Tolbertson.

  And that made this a much more dangerous game they played.

  The tall Georgian with the red shutters pulled him as surely as if strings had been attached to his feet. At this time of evening, Caroline’s family would either be preparing to sit down for dinner, or more likely finishing it. Manners dictated he keep going, head for the Bedford, apologize to his mother for arriving late to their own evening meal.

  Well, he had never been one to let a few manners stand in his way. And right now, if he couldn’t have Caroline in his arms, damp from a swim and squirming in need, he at least wanted an explanation for her change of mind.

  He was still several dozen yards away, moving in relative anonymity among the evening beachgoers, when a small party burst out of Caroline’s front door in a flurry of excited feminine chatter. David recognized Caroline’s tall, lean frame and dark hair, wrapped as it was in evening light. He thought he recognized her blond-haired sister, as well, although the other women milling about the porch did not seem familiar to him.

  A cultured voice reached his ears, higher pitched than Caroline’s, but carrying the same rich tones. “We shall expect you tomorrow, a little before noon, for Caroline’s next fitting, Madame Beauclerc,” the woman in black said.

  “Oui. We shall work as hard as we can to have her gown finished in time.”

  David’s gaze arrowed in on Caroline’s face. There was no protest from her lips, no negotiation for another time, no mention of another engagement. If anything, she nodded her appreciation.

  And the edges of his vision turned black.

  David turned away, his body’s stiff-shouldered reaction predictable, even if it wasn’t sensible. His fingers curled into tight fists, and he knew in that instant that if Branson or Dermott had happened to walk by, he would have been hard-pressed to keep himself from exploding with flying fists and battered ego. Had he been in Moraig, he would have sought out his friends and raised a pint or three at the Blue Gander. But he wasn’t in Scotland.

  And his one friend in Brighton had just spurned him.

  David forced himself to head west, toward the Steine and the Bedford’s excellent, attentive staff. To his mother and his waiting dinner and, if he was lucky, his erstwhile sanity. He dodged the revelers and the families and the happy, laughing couples. And all the while, he fumed.

  This was the same girl who had once told him that keeping a promise was the most important part of a person’s character. Today, Caroline had kissed him. Convinced him to agree to her outrageous proposal, promised to meet him. And then she had not come. Not for anything reasonable. Like a coastal invasion by the French navy. Or a raging case of smallpox.

  No, she had rejected him for a dress fitting.

  And he couldn’t understand why it disturbed him so much.

  Chapter 22

  THOUGH SHE HAD told herself she would close her eyes for only a moment, Caroline awoke to a thick, gray dawn threading its way through the lace curtains of her bedroom. She sat bolt upright, cursing even as she tumbled from the bed.

  It was Friday morning. She had intended to pen David a note last night apologizing for yesterday’s missed afternoon. But she had fallen asleep in something akin to a narcotic haze, a side effect of the past two late nights. She recalled Penelope and Bess wrangling her out of her clothes and tucking her feet into bed.

  And then . . . nothing. Not even her usual state of dreams. And that meant not only had Caroline broken her promise to David yesterday, she had done it without a single note of explanation.

  She needed to deliver a note to the Bedford this morning, before her mother awakened and before Brighton began to stir. She and David now had only three days left to practice before the race, and she was desperate enough to demand every one of them.

  She opened the door to the wardrobe, quiet as a dormouse. Her hand paused over the skirt of her lavender gown, the bodice of which was still awaiting Bess’s miraculous laundry skills. It was to be the same blue print dress as yesterday, then. But as she ran through the meager contents of the wardrobe, she noticed with surprise that Pen’s yellow day dress was missing. She turned an inquisitive head toward her sister’s bed, and that was when the first threads of anxiety began to attach themselves for the day.

  Pen’s bed was not just empty. Her pillow was still perfectly squared, with no indentation where a head would have rested.

  Caroline reached back in her mind. She had awoken alone yesterday too, and had thought it odd at the time that when Pen had appeared, she was wearing the same gown she had worn to the pavilion. What was her usually biddable sister up to?

  Mired in this unwelcome distraction, she made her way to the window and pulled the lace curtains to one side. The morning was just emerging from its cocoon of darkness, and through the warped glass she could make out little more than the vague shape of the pebbled beach and, farther out in the ocean, the occasional white-tipped wave.

  “Where in the devil are you, Pen?” she muttered. Her sister’s disappearance didn’t make sense. Penelope was the proper Tolbertson girl, the one who always followed the rules. Caroline was the one who snuck out and met gentlemen by moonlight.

  She turned back to the room, looking for clues. Her search uncovered only one promising lead: Pen’s leather-bound journal sat on the bedside table. Caroline’s fingers twitched over the embossed cover. She had never violated her sister’s privacy before. But worry for Pen quickly overcame any compunction she felt over prying.

  She turned up the lamp and opened the notebook to the last page, determined to rifle through as little of her sister’s secrets possible. But as she examined the ending page, and then the one before, and the one before that, she only grew more perplexed. The journal was not filled with Pen’s yearnings, or poetic nonsense about the color of some gentlemen’s eyes, as Caroline had expected.

  No, the journal was filled with notes about her, in Penelope’s tight, neat script. And the notes were about the most mundane sorts of trivia one could imagine.

  July 20th. Caroline walked along the parade with Mr. Branson.

  July 20th. C—danced with ten different partners tonight.

  July 21st. Caroline took a sea bath. Looked flushed upon her on exit, but did not smell like shite. Note: Ask her what the inside of the box was like.

  July 21st: Caroline and I received invitations to the Traversteins’ ball. New dress ordered.

  She hovered over the entries, more confused than ever. Clearly, she wasn’t going to find a clue to Penelope’s whereabouts within these pages. Only her comings and goings seemed to earn a space in her sister’s journal, which made no sense at all.

  The sound of the bedroom door being opened jerked Caroline from her focused thoughts, and she jumped like a five-year-old caught filching pies from the larder. Pen stood in the doorway, her slippers in one hand. “What are you d-doing with my journal?”

  Caroline closed the thing with a guilty snap. “I . . . I was just . . .” She heaved a frustrated sigh, knowing she had been caught. “Where have you been?”

  Pen pushed her way inside the room, dropping her shoes in a pile on the floor. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went out for a w-walk.” She stalked over and extracted the journal from Caroline’s fingers. “And that d-doesn’t answer my question,” she added, before putting the journal in the drawer of the bedside table.

  Through the window, Caroline could see the first red streaks of morning on the horizon. Her own time to get a note to David was slipping away, but her worry for her sister kept her rooted to the floor. “You must admit, it is an odd time for a walk,” she pointed out. “It’s only a little after dawn.”

  Pen turned
back to face her, her blue eyes flashing in the light from the lamp. “You, of all p-people, have no right to lecture me about taking a little walk.” She sat down on her bed and began to unhook her stockings from her garters.

  That shook Caroline from her shock. “If you went to bed at all last night,” she told her sister, crossing her arms and trying to look imperious, “then I am a garden fairy. Who were you meeting? And why did you feel the need to do it under cover of darkness, instead of inviting them for a proper sit-down?”

  Pen flushed. “I was meeting Mr. Hamilton.” She paused over the unrolling of one stocking and lifted guilt-hooded eyes. “But we only t-t-talked.”

  Caroline shrank back, stunned. She did not begrudge Penelope a few stolen minutes with a gentleman. But Penelope had snuck from the house under cover of darkness to meet a man who had publicly declared his intentions to court her sister.

  “That throws a questionable light on Mr. Hamilton’s character, wouldn’t you say?” Caroline demanded. She hoped Penelope had only walked with the man, and not engaged in anything more serious. She wasn’t very happy with him, given that he was obviously playing fast and loose with both their affections.

  Not that the esteem she held for the man resembled anything close to affection.

  Penelope rose and began to undress, ill-hiding a yawn in the process. “He is a decent sort of gentleman, Caroline. Do not d-dismiss him out of hand. I know his teeth aren’t quite as nice as Mr. Adams’s, and his family is not as distinguished as Mr. Duffington’s, but he quite outshines Mr. Branson, d-don’t you think?”

  “I suppose,” muttered Caroline. She sat down on the edge of Pen’s bed as her sister slipped into her nightclothes. Penelope had just returned from a clandestine meeting with Mr. Hamilton, and now she was pushing Caroline toward the man?

  Caroline really wasn’t very happy with either of them.

  But what could she do about it? Not tell Mama . . . Pen had kept Caroline’s secrets, after all, and covered for her long afternoon walks on more than one occasion. She ought to stay and press Penelope for more information. By all appearances, Pen was doing something potentially dangerous, and Caroline had promised Papa she would take care of the family.

  But the urgency of penning a note of explanation to David also poked at her. Dawn appeared quite serious in its intentions now. A definite shaft of light speared the lace curtains and twisted onto Penelope’s unused coverlet. No matter what business had taken her from the house, Pen was back, safe and sound. Caroline had, at most, a half hour before the rest of the house began to stir, and she hadn’t even finished dressing yet. Her morning’s mission to send a note to David, explaining her conflict and letting him know she would meet him closer to two o’clock today, was becoming more compromised with every new inch of the sun on the horizon.

  Still, she had to try, or he would think she had abandoned him for a second day in a row.

  “Pen—” she began, only to be interrupted by their mother gliding through the open bedroom door. Caroline stared openmouthed, unable to recall the last time her mother had risen before eight o’clock in the morning.

  “You should both be dressed by now,” Mama exclaimed, though she herself was still in her night rail and wrapper. She surveyed them both like a queen considering which peasant to flog. “We need every minute to get you ready.”

  Caroline shrank against Pen’s mattress. “Ready?” she echoed, dread boring its way through her initial confusion. “Ready for what?”

  “You have a fitting with Madame Beauclerc today. Your first ball is tonight. And let us not forget, there is always the possibility of additional gentlemen callers. And so you, my dear, are going to take a bath this morning.”

  As if conjured by her mother’s words, Bess appeared in the open doorway, still in her nightclothes as well. She hid a yawn behind one weathered hand, and then said in a sleepy voice, “I’ve set the hip bath up, Mrs. Tolbertson.”

  Caroline froze at the mention of the copper hip bath that occupied a permanent place downstairs in the scullery. Her mother wasn’t referring to any usual method of washing then, a quick swipe of a cloth while hunched over a china washbasin. “I don’t have time for a bath this morning,” Caroline objected. The errand that had pulled her from bed this morning was slipping further from her grasp. “I have . . . an appointment.”

  Bess grinned, showing the familiar gap between her two front teeth. “Aye. That you do. An appointment with a washcloth and a bar of soap.”

  “But I could take the bath tonight, before the party, so I don’t see—”

  The servant fisted both hands on her wrapper-clad hips, a bristling foot soldier refusing an order to retreat. “I’ve already set up the water, Miss Caroline, and I won’t have you wasting my time when there’s breakfast to cook and laundry to get on. And ’tis more than just a bath, child. We’re going to wash that wild mane of yours.”

  Caroline gaped at the servant, who looked a little too pleased with the prospect of such early morning torture. Hair washing was a Saturday evening activity, not a Friday morning event. And she couldn’t wash her hair this morning, not when she was poised to douse it in seawater this afternoon.

  As if she could read her unspoken thoughts, Mama leaned in close, her blue eyes sparkling in the increasing light of dawn. “And after that,” she added with maternal enthusiasm, “Bess is going to set your hair up in rags to get it to curl for tonight.”

  Caroline no longer wanted to just shrink against the covers. She wanted to wrap the edges around her body and sew herself inside. She hadn’t sat to have her hair put up in . . . well . . . in ages. Her body refused to be still for the length of time such nonsensical preparations required. And any curls Bess managed to get up would be destroyed by the afternoon swimming lesson.

  “I don’t want my hair curled” was all she could think to say.

  “I know.” Her mother spoke soothingly, but her fingers closed over Caroline’s wrist in a definite statement of fact. “But your opinion on this matter does not count, because your appearance tonight will. So you are washing your hair, Caroline, even if Bess needs to hold you down to do it.”

  Chapter 23

  DAVID WAS ABOUT to give up on Caroline for the second day in a row when she appeared around the patch of scrub grass that guarded the entrance to the cove.

  He tried not to smile as she picked her way across the pebble-strewn beach, an hour later than promised. Her tall frame was recognizable, but the closer she came, the more she looked like someone he didn’t know. Today her hair had been tied up in a hodgepodge of mismatched rags, giving her the appearance of a very frustrated hedgehog. She was wearing that old blue print dress again, the same one she had worn yesterday. Only this time she had added an apron that in no way disguised the gown’s obvious ill fit. To add insult to injury, she was scowling in a ferocious manner that would send small children and wildlife scurrying, should they be unlucky enough to cross her path.

  That is, if her hair alone wasn’t enough to do the job.

  “You are late.” David slid off the rock as she pulled up in front of him. “Again.” He tried to remind himself that he was angry with her. It was a little difficult to maintain a solid hold on his irritation, given the distracting way his body was already stirring to life at the sight of her.

  Which was a very concerning thing, given how bloody ridiculous she looked.

  Caroline blew a stray wisp of hair out of her eyes, the lone straggler that had somehow escaped the noose of rags the rest of her tresses had been subjected to. “I owe you an apology, David. I had intended to send you a note explaining it. Mama scheduled a dress fitting for me and then all but chained me to the chair.”

  “You didn’t look chained when I saw you yesterday evening, on your front porch.”

  Her eyes widened beneath the caricature of her hair. “You saw me last night? But . . . why didn’t you say anything?”

  “You seemed busy.” He tried to sound nonchalant, even as he cursed
his stupidity in all but admitting he had watched her in secret. His was not the behavior of a man determined to help her find her match.

  “Not so busy I didn’t worry about disappointing you.” Muddled green eyes met his over the few feet that separated them. “Given my morning, ’tis a miracle I’ve made it at all.”

  He pursed his lips and permitted his gaze to meander across her. He decided in an instant that the apron was the thing he hated the most about today’s fashion monstrosity. It bisected her chest, but came nowhere close to delineating her waist. “Yes, I can imagine. You look as though you’ve been playing dress-up with a three-year-old.”

  All hint of her earlier remorse vanished, and her chin notched up. “Shouldn’t you be undressed? I’ve an hour to devote to this, at most. Mama has declared that it shall take three hours to get ready for the ball I am expected to attend tonight. What could they be planning, given that I have already been scrubbed halfway to Sunday and had my hair wound tight as a bobbin? I could swim to France and back in less time.”

  David fought a smile. There was something wrong with him. This was, after all, the girl who had rejected him for a dress fitting yesterday, and then made him wait in the heat of the sun today. He ought to be mad as hell.

  Funny how at the moment he leaned more toward snorting in amusement, instead of giving her the dressing-down she deserved.

  “Are you referring to the Traversteins’ ball?”

  “Yes.” She wrinkled her nose, no doubt weighing the displeasure of the event against a game of shuttlecock. “A little faster with those buttons, if you please.”