White teeth flashed at her. “Well, that’s brilliant.” His eye fell eagerly on a crowd emerging from the depths of the church. “Oh, there’s Duffington and his mother now. And Branson behind them. Should I tell them our happy news?”
Caroline shook her head, alarmed at the thought of involving Mr. Dermott in such a delicate matter, given the way his chest was already puffing up. “I’d rather do it myself, if you don’t mind. I shall tell them now. I do not want to string them along.”
Dermott’s smile slipped, ever so slightly. “Shall I call on you tomorrow then?”
“Aren’t you competing in the race tomorrow?” she asked, inexplicably hesitant to plan tomorrow, much less the rest of her life, with this man she had had just accepted.
“The race is at eleven. But maybe after? We can tell your family, and also celebrate my win together.”
Caroline raised a brow at his bravado, but she wrangled her instinctive retort into submission. “That sounds lovely,” she said. “Come for tea. That seems as good a time as any to share the announcement with my family.”
Dermott left whistling a bright, airy tune that seemed at odds with the task Caroline had before her. The business of putting off Duffington and Branson was the work of but a moment, but it left her drained and shaking. It had less to do with disappointing them than the realization she was cutting her safety net, as if by declining their offers, she was making her acceptance of Mr. Dermott’s proposal seem more real.
It was almost one o’clock by the time she arrived home. If yesterday had gone differently, she would have been meeting David at the cove right about now. But she couldn’t see herself facing him now, even if that made her a coward. The words they had exchanged, and the fact that he had failed to even consider offering for her, sat like yesterday’s breakfast high in her stomach. Whatever promises they had made each other were through. She had told him their lessons were finished, and that had released him from all obligation.
It released her from obligation too, including the promise she had made him not to swim alone. David no longer required her instruction. He was ready for tomorrow’s race. And she was ready for a hard, fast swim, without the distraction David Cameron had become.
The two o’clock hour came and went before she felt comfortable setting off, presuming David would finally be finished with his own practice. She could tell from the way the ocean lapped at the edge of the footpath that it was approaching high tide, and indeed, she felt the pounding of the waves reverberating beneath her feet, even before she rounded the last turn. It occurred to her, belatedly, that she might have come too late to swim today. At the point of highest tide, when the water surged up along the southernmost edge of the cliffs and obscured the rocks beneath the surface, her refuge was transformed from something enjoyable to something potentially deadly.
But as the little beach she knew so well came into view, she stopped, horrified, at the sight spread out in front of her.
The ocean, while high, was not the only thing contributing to the roaring in her ears. The narrow shoreline was crawling with two dozen or more Brightonians. Women in gauzy white dresses. Children with kites and sailboats. Men in shirtsleeves. A couple had spread a blanket on top of the rock—her rock—and were laying out a picnic feast from the depths of a wicker basket. Behind them, two adolescent boys climbed the chalk cliffs, dislodging clumps of sea grass and knocking the sparrow nests down with pointed sticks.
A shudder racked her as she thought of the baby birds she had watched this summer, not yet fully feathered, tumbling down into the teeming water below.
The danger of this inlet, and its lethal, hidden currents, sent Caroline’s feet running toward the crowd. She grabbed the nearest person she could find and shook the man’s shoulder with a rough palm. Mr. Hamilton turned around, his red hair sticking out beneath the brim of his cap. The surprise of seeing him here paled in comparison to the fear crawling up her spine.
“What is happening?” she demanded. “Why are all these people here?”
“Didn’t you see the article in the Gazette this morning?”
“No.” Caroline shook her head. She had eschewed breakfast this morning, preferring to mope in her room.
“It mentioned this swimming beach. Called it a hidden gem, where the summer residents could escape the clamor of the London day visitors.” Hamilton tossed a dubious eye toward the boys climbing the white cliff walls. “Not that we seem any better behaved.”
“But why would you write such a thing?” Caroline demanded. Hamilton had been one of the men who had stumbled across the cove Tuesday night, and her mind flew to the only logical conclusion. “This is far too dangerous of a beach for the public. These people are in great danger!”
“I didn’t write it,” he protested. “It was in the Gazette’s social section.”
“But . . . you write the social section.” An echo of confusion clamored in her head. “Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.” He looked a little put out. “I am a serious reporter, Miss Caroline.”
Caroline eyed the young man uncertainly. “You didn’t write about my proposal from Mr. Duffington yesterday?”
He shook his head. “No. I write about sporting events. The Brighthelmston horse races, the swimming competition, that sort of thing.”
“Well, who writes the social section?” she demanded.
“I can’t reveal the paper’s sources, Miss Caroline. You know that. It was one of your father’s rules, after all.” Hamilton spread one hand out, panning the crowd, and then held up a heavy black box in the other. “Now that the secret is out, I feel obligated to photograph it. I am thinking of making a book, you know. Photographic Treasures of Brighton. Perhaps they’ll even sell it in London.”
Caroline felt as if the whole of the beach was sliding sideways beneath her feet. This was the cove that provided a cherished connection to the father she had lost, a place that served as a refuge from Brighton’s brighter, noisier scene. Swimming here was one of her few pleasures in life.
Her only pleasure, now that her lessons with David Cameron were over.
And Mr. Hamilton was going to take a picture of it and share it far and wide.
“You can’t do something so irresponsible,” she protested. “If Londoners learn of this beach, then the people who come down for the day will come here instead of Brighton.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “And they’ll destroy everything that is beautiful about it.”
Hamilton shrugged. “I’d say it’s a little late for that. Might as well record it now, while it is still of a piece. This crowd here will destroy it, soon enough.” He offered her a searching glance. “About the swimming race tomorrow . . . I am slated to cover it for the paper. If you haven’t accepted Duffington yet, would you like to come with me?”
Caroline blinked at him in surprise. “I . . . that is, no, thank you. I actually accepted Mr. Dermott’s proposal this morning, so it turns out I am not free to accompany you.”
“Dermott?” Hamilton sounded surprised. “I hadn’t heard he had asked you.”
“Yes, well, it all happened suddenly.”
Too suddenly, truth be told. Even now, the thought sent her blood slowing in her veins. Caroline panned the crowd, wondering if Dermott was here too. She found him almost instantly, holding court among the summer set along the eastern edge of the cove. It occurred to her, as she watched him manipulate the rapt attention of his followers, that he was at home among that crowd in a way she would never be. Her gaze snagged on a familiar head who hovered near the edge of the group, her blond hair bent over a leather-bound journal.
“You might ask Penelope to accompany you to the race,” she murmured, distracted by the way Pen seemed to have attached herself to that group. Did she want to be accepted by the summer set so much then? Didn’t her sister feel the slightest twinge of nostalgia, of anger, at the loss of this private place? After all, Papa had brought her to this beach too.
Hamilton followed Caro
line’s gaze. “I tried. Believe me, I did. But your sister wants little to do with me that way, I’m afraid. She was the one who encouraged me to ask you.” He shouldered the camera, holding it steady with one hand. “Well, best of luck to you, I suppose. Dermott’s a fortunate man.”
Caroline stared after him as he slogged off across the shingle beach, carrying his load. Penelope had turned Mr. Hamilton down? The pieces of this puzzle lay scattered around her, and she was sick of trying to force them into holes that did not fit. Only one thing was clear.
She was not going to get the swim she came for. Not today, and likely not ever again.
As Caroline contemplated whether to stalk Penelope and demand some answers, or spend a moment hauling the gleefully destructive boys off her beloved cliff walls, her thoughts became tangled in the sound of a child’s scream. Shading her hands to scan the surf, she searched for the origin of such a terrified sound. There. A dozen yards off shore. Some well-meaning family had brought their children, no doubt lured by the article in the newspaper.
And one of those children was caught in the current.
She could already see a man who appeared to be the father wading out, his own anxious shouts mixing with the pounding of the waves. She could see the danger the man faced from the water, though he appeared oblivious to the risk.
Then again, she knew these waters. Knew their spinning force, and their potential to drag an unsuspecting body in the exact opposite direction of where you intended.
“Stop him!” she shouted to the clustering crowd. She picked up her skirts and ran as fast as she could, but she was too far away, and he was too frantic, and within seconds the man was as doomed as his son. A woman’s screams joined the mix then, and they built in scale and volume until Caroline was quite sure her eardrums had perforated twice over.
“Stop her, then!” Caroline commanded as she skidded to a stop at the point where water met land. A desperate certainty grabbed hold of her as she took in the two struggling swimmers.
One of them was going to drown. She couldn’t save them both. Not at high tide, with only one pair of arms, and her skirts dragging her under. She was risking her own life just to contemplate the saving of one.
She panned the crowd with desperation, and her eye fell on Dermott in the crowd of gawkers. He had won last year’s race, marking him as the obvious choice. But he stood inert, making no move to help either her or the drowning family. No doubt he was reconsidering the sanity of being tied in marriage to someone who would.
Well, she was not going to stand by and let a small child drown, not if she had even the slightest chance of saving the boy.
Caroline lifted her skirts, preparing to dive in.
And then her knees nearly buckled with relief as David Cameron materialized beside her. His hair was damp around the edges, telling her he had swum these waters earlier today.
“Take off your boots,” he ordered, the command issued in a precise, military fashion despite his apparent exhaustion. “Your stockings, crinolines, anything that might weigh you down.”
She scrambled to follow his instructions, though the lessening of her load was still not nearly enough. “This will be too much for you if you’ve already practiced today,” she objected as he began to strip off his own jacket and shirt. She knew he could swim. Hadn’t she taught him herself?
But he had not been tested against the inlet’s high tide, with exhaustion from an earlier swim weighing him down. “I tackle these waters at high tide with some regularity, David, and it is hard enough when a body is fresh.”
Truly, even she would have thought twice about going in today.
David’s face darkened at her admission. “And the only reason I am not going to scold you for such a risk is that we don’t have time. If I don’t go, one of them will drown.” He glowered at her with a steely determination that made her want to follow his lead, no matter what. “What kind of a man would I be if I didn’t at least try?”
She knew what kind of man he was. She always had.
But it was heartening to hear him acknowledge it.
“All right.” Caroline pushed into the first line of waves. They tangled in her skirts and almost brought her to her knees. The cold sting of the water made her teeth ache. “You take the father,” she gasped. “I shall rescue the boy. He is farther out, but his weight will be easier for me to manage.”
Beside her, David hesitated, and then he jerked her toward him, his hand a vise grip on hers. The heat of him blazed across the spare inch of space. “If you find yourself in trouble, if your skirts prove too great a hindrance, don’t try to make it to shore.”
She nodded, breathless with panic and awareness of this man. She thought, for a heart-blinding second, that he was going to kiss her. He smiled grimly at her instead. A promise, that.
Or perhaps a good-bye.
“Take the child to the rocky shelf,” he said hoarsely, “and then wait for me to come to you.”
Caroline nodded, though she knew the shelf David referred to was several feet over her head at this point in the tide’s cycle. Instead of correcting him, she squeezed his hand. “Go!” she urged. “I’ll be right behind.”
Within moments the current had David in its grip. He handled it well though, sustaining the calm, steady stroke she had taught him as the fearsome current pulled him out.
Then again, going out was not the difficult part.
Caroline dove in and set off toward the child, reaching him in twenty solid strokes. The little fellow was still conscious and he clung to her like a nettle, his eyes wide with fear. To her right, she saw that David had reached the panicked father and was already making good progress back. Breathing a sigh of relief, she started to swim back to shore, then froze as she confronted a new reality.
The mother’s faint screams still echoed from the beach, but now that Caroline was facing north again she could see the woman had started to wade in and was standing in knee-deep water. The woman’s idiocy sent Caroline kicking for shore in a panic. If she came out any further, the woman would be dragged under by those wet skirts.
Caroline ought to know. She was battling the very possibility herself.
“Do not come any closer!” she shouted. But she could barely hear herself over the rush of water. There was no way the woman could hear her.
Caroline looped her arm around the boy’s shoulders and began the battle back to shore. She had never attempted to swim this stretch of water in a dress with full skirts before. The water sucked at her limbs, pulling them both under, and for a moment she felt the boy’s own panic lick at her skin. As water filled her mouth and threatened her lungs, a memory flashed through her mind, of Papa explaining the mechanics of the tide.
Though it took every bit of trust she had, though her body screamed for her to fight, she rolled onto her back, sent up a prayer, and let the current pull her and the boy out toward the horizon.
DAVID REACHED THE shore with his sputtering burden, only to watch with horror as Caroline and the child drifted out to sea. He finally understood her warnings about the strength of the current here at high tide. It was something monstrous and terrifying and beautiful, all at once.
And right now it had hold of the woman he loved.
Why hadn’t she headed toward the rocky shelf, as he had instructed her? Because there was no doubt if she had, he would not now be grappling with the bone-chilling certainty that he was about to lose the second woman he had ever loved.
David tossed the sputtering father onto the shore and wrenched himself back toward the waves, his muscles’ protests damned. But as he turned, he realized definite progress was taking place in the water. Caroline was free of the outgoing current, although she now had twice the distance to swim as before. She was swimming toward shore, one arm looped around the boy’s neck, the other reaching out in a one-handed parody of her usual stroke.
He waded out, ready to share the burden the moment she let him. His heart filled with pride, not only for the she
er physical strength of this woman, but her strength of character as well. She had much to lose in this astonishing demonstration of skill.
And there was no doubt she was putting on quite the display.
Behind him, pushed from the shore, he heard snippets of awed voices.
“Do you see her swim?”
“One of the Tolbertson girls. The tall one.”
And then there was this one, which seemed to get stuck and rattle around for a good minute in his skull: “Dermott says she accepted him this morning.”
The last comment sent a wave of nausea rolling through David’s gut. It seemed Caroline had been busy since they parted ways yesterday. Could he blame her? She had never lied to him about her intentions to marry, had made it clear that he was forcing her to a decision she didn’t want to make. No, he couldn’t blame her.
But he could certainly blame himself.
David forced his eyes to the horizon and the more immediate problem of Caroline’s progress toward shore. He had never been so grateful to see the moment when her feet met the ocean floor. He staggered out to relieve her of the tiny, frightened bundle in her arms. The child began sniffling and hiccupping into the cradle of David’s neck, letting him know that whatever else ailed the boy, a small set of lungs filled with seawater was not the primary worry. Children were resilient.
Of Caroline, however, he was a little less certain. She hitched over at the waist and coughed up a great deal of water.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his eyes raking her for visible signs of injury.
She breathed in, through her nose this time. She braced her hands against her wet skirts and took three more breaths in rapid succession. “I am,” she rasped. “Could you take him to his mother, while I catch my breath?”
David carried the boy to shore, his pulse settling into a more even rhythm. Although the danger had passed, a new worry set in, one that had more to do with who she was than what she had done. He might be proud of her—hell, he was in utter awe of her—but he doubted this current turn of events was going to endear her to Mr. Dermott.
Summer Is for Lovers Page 27
