“It would not work for us, Samantha,” he said.
“No,” she agreed. “A mutual attraction is not enough, is it?”
He kissed her knuckles.
“But perhaps,” she said, her eyes on their hands, “just for a day—or two or three. Perhaps for a week. Can you bear to stay a week?”
He inhaled slowly. “Your grandfather is expected home in the next few days,” he said. “I suppose he will discover that you are living here. Perhaps he will choose to ignore you. Or perhaps not. Perhaps you will choose to ignore him. However it is, I cannot bring myself to leave until … well, until things are more settled for you. I know you do not like me flexing my male muscles on your behalf. I know you can manage alone. But …”
“But you will stay anyway?”
“Yes,” he said. “For a few more days. A week.”
“Oh, Tramp.” She looked down at the dog, which was making loud lapping noises. “Is my leg salty and must be licked clean? You absurd dog.”
“He is a dog to be envied,” Ben said, and she looked back at him, startled, and laughed.
He swung his legs carefully over the edge of the rock and sat up. He pulled his shirt on over his head. He looked at her and marveled again at the realization that she was the same woman as the morbidly black-clad figure he had almost bowled over with his horse not so very long ago. She was looking disreputable and slightly disheveled now even though most of her hair was still confined in the knot at her neck. She was looking quite scandalously sun-bronzed and bright-eyed and happy. Her nose was shining.
He set his hands on either side of her waist, drew her against him between his legs, and kissed her. She tasted of salt and summer sun.
“You taste salty,” she told him. “Now I know why Tramp is enjoying licking my leg.”
They grinned at each other and kissed open-eyed.
“There is a Latin phrase,” she said. “Something about carps, though not really.”
“Carpe diem?”
“The very one,” she said. “The day flies, or the day is fleeting. Or make the most of what you have now this moment because soon it will be gone.” She rested her forehead against his.
“I am afraid of hurting you, Samantha,” he said with a sigh. “Or perhaps myself.”
“Physically?” she said. “No, you do not mean that, do you? I think I would be hurt more if you just simply … left. Is that what you want to do?”
He closed his eyes and inhaled. “No.”
“Go on back to the house,” she said. “You can change your clothes there and wash with hot water. I am going to have a run with Tramp.”
And she pulled on her dress and bonnet and dashed off along the beach with the dog in hot pursuit. Where were the stays, and the silk stockings and slippers, and the gloves and the parasol, and the mincing steps of a respectable lady of ton? He smiled after her, admiring her bare, sandy ankles and her exuberance.
She wanted him. He wondered if he would disappoint her—or worse.
But enough of that. He was not going to be offering himself for a lifetime, after all, was he? He would give as much of himself as he could for both their pleasure—and pray God there would not be too much pain the other side of the pleasure.
For he feared they were playing with fire.
18
Mrs. Price cooked them a chicken-and-vegetable pie, which she explained was her son’s favorite dish and had been her late husband’s. It was to be preceded by leek soup and followed by jellies and custard. She set out cups and saucers with sugar and milk and a cloth-covered plate of cake on a tray in the kitchen. The kettle was left to hum on the kitchen range with the teapot warming beside it.
Gladys laced Samantha into her stays and helped her into her rose-colored silk evening gown, which she had ironed carefully so that even the two frills about the hem and the small ones that edged the sleeves were free of wrinkles. She dressed Samantha’s still slightly damp hair in an elegantly piled and curled coiffure. She clasped the pearls about her neck and clipped pearl earrings to her lobes before standing back to admire her handiwork.
“Oh, you do look lovely, Mrs. McKay,” she said. “I bet you could turn heads even at one of them grand balls in London town.”
“And all thanks to you, Gladys,” Samantha said with a smile. “But all I have to attend is dinner downstairs.”
“It is with the major, though,” her maid said with a sigh. Clearly she was smitten with Ben. “I bet you will turn his head.”
“If I do,” Samantha said, rising from the stool in front of her dressing table, “I shall be sure to tell him that it is all thanks to you.”
“Oh, go on with you,” Gladys said, blushing rosily. “He will only have to take one look at you to know how silly that is. You could be dressed in a sack and outshine every other lady for miles around.”
Samantha did feel good, even exuberant. She had used to feel just so when dressing for assemblies and balls during her youth and the early months of her marriage. But, it struck her suddenly, perhaps it was unfair of her to dress with particular care for the evening when Ben would be wearing the clothes in which he had come from the village this afternoon, or, rather, the dry ones into which he had changed after their swim.
She was not sorry, though, when she saw the admiration in his eyes as she joined him in the parlor. And he looked very good indeed to her eyes. He must have found a brush with which to rid his coat and boots of all traces of sand. And polish too—his boots gleamed. His waistcoat was neatly buttoned beneath his coat, and he had tied a fresh neckcloth in a style more suited to evening. His hair was neatly combed into a Brutus style, which suited him.