Which left an unsettling void—again.
Quinn was beside him in the gig, though Ben had protested that he did not need to come. His valet was going to unhitch the horse and get it settled in the barn, and then he was going to walk back to the village. He had wanted to take the gig with him and return with it later to drive Ben back to the inn, but Ben had said a firm no. He did not know what time he would be returning. It might be seven or eight o’clock, or it might be midnight. He did not want to have Quinn arriving outside the garden gate with the gig at some inconvenient time.
He tried not to think about that possible midnight departure. And he tried not to think about swimming and making an ass of himself—or drowning himself. The clouds had moved off and the sun was shining. It was warm. There was no excuse not to swim—unless he offered to guard her towel and clothes while she swam alone.
Coward, she had called him yesterday—just before he kissed her.
Well, he could not allow that accusation to become reality, could he, he thought as he walked from the barn to the house. A coward was something he had never been, except recently.
“Ben.”
She was out in the garden again with the dog. She was wearing the floppy-brimmed bonnet and a high-waisted, short-sleeved dress of white muslin embroidered all over with peach rosebuds. It had a deep frill about the hem. And it was very obvious to him that she was wearing no stays beneath it. She was hurrying toward him, both hands extended. But she looked at his canes when she got close and clasped her hands beneath her chin instead. She was looking agitated.
“Ben, I am quite horribly wealthy.”
“Horribly?” He was tempted to grin, but something about her expression stopped him.
“Mr. Rhys was here this morning,” she told him. “He brought a statement from the bank. I could buy half of England.”
“But would you want to?” he asked her.
“I had no idea,” she said. “My mother did not tell me. Neither did my father after she died or later, when I married. He ought to have told me. John did not tell me.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked her. “About your grandfather, I mean. I have heard that he is away from home at present. Though he is expected home soon.”
“I hope he never comes back,” she said vehemently. “I hope he keeps his distance from me forever. My great-aunt I can forgive. She was strict with my mother, but I daresay she did not mean to be cruel. I can never forgive him.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “people need to be allowed to tell their stories.”
“When has he ever tried to tell his to me?” She looked stormy. “Trust you to take a man’s part.”
“We had better go swimming,” he said.
She looked mulish for a few moments and then visibly relaxed. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s, or I will be quarreling with you when it is not you who has offended me. Let’s forget everything except the sand and the water and the freedom and happiness of a sunny afternoon. And the fact that we are together.”
Sometimes it was good just to forget all that perhaps one ought to remember and simply live for the moment.
Sometimes the moment was all that really mattered.
17
Samantha set her shoes and stockings on the rock where she had left them the day before. Her dress, bonnet, and shift were her only remaining garments. She felt very daring and really quite wicked. But there was no point in walking down onto the beach clad in all the usual finery of a lady. It would only have to come off again before she could swim.
The beach, she had decided yesterday on her first visit, was going to be her place of freedom, the place where nothing mattered but the moment in which she lived and the beauty with which she was surrounded.
As soon as she stepped onto it today, she left behind the heavy burden of her wealth; the disturbing glimpses she had had into her family past; the knowledge that her grandfather, who had abandoned her mother, was as rich as a nabob, to use Ben’s words, and lived in that shining mansion on the hill ironically called home. She left behind the gloom of a recent bereavement, the stern disapproval of her in-laws, the fact that she could not turn for sympathy or help or affection to any member of her father’s family. She ignored the fact that soon, probably very soon, Ben would be leaving to continue his journey and she would never see him again.
He was with her now, and that was really all that mattered.
And they were on the beach, where nothing else mattered but the freedom to enjoy the moment. Everyone should have such a retreat, she thought. How very fortunate she was.
“I have never swum in the ocean,” she said, matching her pace to his, though she would have liked to stride along and even run, and watching an ever-hopeful Tramp go galloping after gulls. “I suppose it is very different from swimming in a lake.”
“In several ways,” he said. “The water is more buoyant because it is salty. But that makes it uglier to swallow and harder on the eyes. You have to watch out for waves breaking over your head. You may wade in until you are waist deep and then swim in the same area for five minutes only to find when you put your feet down that you are chin deep or knee deep—or out of your depth.”
“What if I cannot still swim?” she asked him.
He stopped to look at her.
“Remind me,” he said, “of who it was who assured me just yesterday that one does not forget.”
She laughed at him.
All traces of the morning’s gray weather had been blown away to leave blue sky and sunshine overhead and a sea that sparkled beneath it. The tide was higher up the beach than it had been yesterday morning, almost fully in, in fact. The rock where they had sat was not far from its edge, though the dry sand about it suggested that it was above the normal high tide mark.