Survivors' Club: The Escape Part 16

"There were a few steep paths," he said. "The others went down all the time, even Vincent, despite his blindness."

"There is nothing to stop you from walking on the beach here," she said. "It is not far away and the slope down to it is not steep. The sand looks flat and smooth. Shall we go?"

"Now?"

It was human nature, he had realized long ago, always to want the one thing one could not have, even if one had been gifted with a superabundance of other blessings. He had always longed and longed to be able to go down onto the beach at Penderris. Hugo had once offered to carry him down, but he had declined so firmly that the offer had never been renewed. Not that Hugo could not have done it. He was as strong as any ox. But Ben would have been humiliated. He had consoled himself with the thought that there was nothing down there except sand to get in his hair and his mouth.

"I was hoping you would come early," she said, falling into step beside him, her hands clasped at her back, while Tramp went loping ahead of them. "I have been longing to go down there myself, but I wanted you with me the first time. I want to be able to remember that."

That? The fact that he had been with her this first time?

"I have a confession to make," she said. "I have never, ever been on a beach. Is that not strange when my mother grew up here?"

He turned his head to look at her. Her exertions in the garden and the sea breeze had whipped a healthy color into her cheeks. Her eyes were bright.

"May I suggest," he said, "that you remove your shoes and stockings before going out onto the sand? Otherwise you will have your shoes full of grit before you have walked any distance, and you will spend the rest of the day shaking sand out of everything and fighting blisters."

She laughed. "And you too?"

"I am wearing boots," he said. Besides, he was not about to expose any part of his legs in her presence.

"It sounds like a very improper suggestion, sir," she said, "but a very sensible one nonetheless."

She looked about and chose a flat-topped rock at the bottom of the slope on which to seat herself. She removed her shoes and stockings while he watched. Too late it occurred to him that it would have been far more gentlemanly to turn his back. She had slim legs, trim ankles, narrow, pretty feet-which he had seen before at the inn above the Wye Valley. She rolled her stockings neatly and placed them inside her shoes, and then she stood and set her shoes on the rock.

"Oh," she said, wriggling her toes in the mixture of gra.s.s and sand on which they stood, "that feels lovely. But it does feel sinful to be unshod outdoors."

They walked through the gap onto a wide, flat beach. Sand stretched to right and left until it met outcroppings of rock that enclosed the area into a private beach. Rocks rose behind them on either side of the gap to provide further privacy. The tide was low, though the breakers along the edge of the water indicated that it was coming in. The breeze was fresher here, though at the same time the sun was warmer. Seagulls cried overhead.

Ben's canes sank into the sand, but he found walking here somewhat easier than on hard ground. Samantha ran ahead of him a little way and then stopped and turned, her arms stretched out to the sides.

"Freedom!" she cried, just like an exuberant child. "Oh, tell me this is no illusion, Ben."

The dog pranced about her, barking.

"This is freedom," Ben said obediently, grinning at her, and she tipped back her head to look at the sky and twirled about in three complete circles while he laughed. Her dress billowed to the sides, and her bonnet brim flopped about her face.

Was this the austere, black-clad lady he had first met in County Durham?

"There are such moments, are there not?" she said. "Oh, I had forgotten. It has been so long. But there are moments of pure, unalloyed happiness, and this is one of them. I am so glad I waited for you to come, for such moments need to be shared. Tell me you feel it too-the freedom, the happiness." She stopped spinning to direct a look at him, and he read sudden uncertainty there.

But he did feel it too. As if for this moment the world had stopped and they had stepped off and nothing would ever matter again except this stopping place.

"I am glad you waited for me," he said.

Her arms fell to her sides and she gazed at him, her face alight.

"Which way shall we go?" he asked. "East? West? South?"

"Oh." She spun about to consider each direction. "South. To the water's edge. Will you be comfortable walking that far?"

The dog had already made off in that direction.

"I am on a beach at last," he said. "Let me at least dip the tip of a cane in the water."

The tide was farther out than it had looked. But walking on the sand really was relatively easy, and he would ignore any discomfort anyway for the pleasure of doing what he was doing. This was food for the future. It was her first walk on a beach. It was his first in years. And they were doing it together.

The dog was running along the edge of the water, kicking up a spray as he went.

"Dare I?" Samantha said. It was not really a question. "I suppose the water is dreadfully cold."

She was gathering up the sides of her dress even as she spoke, and she stepped into the shallow water, which barely wet the sand, and then over the nearest ripple of the incoming tide until she was ankle deep.

"Oh, it is cold," she said on a deep inward gasp. "And my feet are sinking into the sand. Oh, this is lovely, Ben." She lifted her head to look at him, her eyes sparkling. "Come in too."

He really ought not. If her feet were sinking into the sand, what would his canes do? And his boots would be white with brine after they dried, and Quinn would look reproachful and long-suffering. What if he lost his balance and fell in? How the devil would he get up again?

She had stopped moving.

"It feels cold only for the first few moments," she said. "It probably would not feel cold at all through your boots."

"That was all I needed to hear," he said and stepped into the water while she shrieked with laughter.

He could feel the coldness even through his boots and stockings. And his canes were indeed sinking rather alarmingly into the wet sand. But though he was only a few feet from dry land, it felt as if he had stepped into a different element. The sun beat down hot upon them. The sea sparkled about them.

He felt a sudden longing for George or Hugo or one of the others to see him now. He laughed.

She stepped closer to him, gathering her skirts into one hand as she came, and she took one of his canes in the hand that held the fabric and stepped closer still.

"Put your arm about my shoulders," she told him.

"My weight would be too much for you," he protested.

"Do it, anyway," she said. "I promise not to collapse."

He felt embarra.s.sed, even a little humiliated, but he had no choice short of s.n.a.t.c.hing back his cane and perhaps offending her-or throwing himself off balance. He made it a practice almost never to lean upon anyone. He set an arm about her slim shoulders, and she fit herself against his side and wrapped her free arm about his waist.

Oh, Lord.

"We are not a cripple and a poor, long-suffering nurse," she said, laughing up at him, her flushed, bright-eyed face alarmingly close, "but a man and a woman who have found a perfectly reasonable excuse for being close to each other."

He thought he was probably flus.h.i.+ng too.

"Do we need an excuse?"

"It would seem so," she said, beginning to walk along the edge of the water with him. "We have been very careful to leave a decent sliver of air between us since that night we shared a room. You are lean, Ben, but you are certainly not frail, are you? Quite the contrary, in fact."

He was not going to respond with any description of her body.

"Am I leaning too heavily on you?" he asked. He was trying to put most of his weight on his cane, but that made it sink deeper.

He could feel the generous curves of her body all down his side. One firm, heavy breast was pressed against his coat. She was tall, though not quite as tall as he. He was aware of the faint scent of gardenia over the saltiness of the sea air. Her body felt warm through the flimsy barrier of her dress and stays.

And so was his body, by Jove. Warm, that was. Warmer than warm.

"You are avoiding the issue," she said.

"Which is?"

"The fact that we have needed an excuse to touch," she said.

"I promised," he reminded her, "that you would be safe from me."

"Sometimes," she said, turning her head to look out to sea, "safety seems a dull, unadventurous thing."

And by G.o.d, she was right about that.

"After you have left here," she asked him, "will you regret that you were the perfect gentleman the whole time we were together? Well, almost the whole time."

"How could I regret behaving like a gentleman?" he asked her. "That is what I am."

Would she regret it?

They had stopped walking. He was feeling ruffled, even a bit annoyed. Being a gentleman was important to him. And yet ... He would have let go of her, put some distance between them, but she still held his cane.

"It is just that freedom is a precious gift," she said. "One ought to be able to use it to do whatever one most wants to do, provided one is hurting no one else in the process. We are almost never allowed to act freely, though, are we? There is always someone or some rule or convention that says, no, it is not at all the thing. And so we toe the line of propriety and deny the freedom that has been offered us and lose our chance for some happiness."

What she was suggesting, he thought, was that they become lovers before he left. And it all made perfect sense when they were out here on the beach together like this. Why should they not do something ... free? Something they both wanted to do. Except that this was not the world-this beach. And they could not live out here forever.

He would regret it. For he would surely be an inadequate lover and would disappoint both her and himself. He would regret waking the sleeping devil of his s.e.xuality-except that it had already awakened, had it not? He would regret the end of the affair. He would regret having to leave her, for he could not stay and she would not want him to. And she would regret it if they had an affair, even if she was not disappointed in his performance. For no one had ever been constant in her life. Even her mother had died young. She needed more than a temporary lover.

There would be pain.

There was always pain.

She was gazing into his eyes, and he was the one now gazing out to sea.

"You are tired from all the walking," she said. "I have had my eye on that large rock over there since we started along the water's edge. Let us go and sit on it for a while."

He did not argue. He really did need to take the weight off his legs. A lower ledge of the rock she had indicated was flat enough to sit on, and it was just wide enough and at just the right height for the two of them. The dog dashed off to chase some gulls that had landed at the water's edge farther along the sands.

"Have I spoiled your first visit to a beach?" he asked her.

"By being tired and needing to sit down?" she said. "No, of course not."

He took her hand in his and laced their fingers-probably very unwisely. She dipped her head to rest on his shoulder. The soft brim of her bonnet bent easily to accommodate her.

"It is lovely here," she said. "I will always remember today. Oh, but look, your poor boots are caked with sand."

"It is more poor Quinn than poor boots," he said.

"I am going to swim here," she said after they had sat in silence for a while. "Not now, but soon. I am going to get right under that water and swim. Do it with me, Ben. You can swim. You told me so."

"That was when I was a boy and had two fully functioning legs," he said.

"I do not suppose you have forgotten how." She twisted her head so that she could look up at him. "You walk even though I daresay every physician you ever consulted warned you you never would."

"I am not exactly proficient at it," he protested.

"You walk," she said, lifting her head and glaring fiercely at him. "Swimming would be easier, would it not? You would not have to put weight on your legs."

"I would probably sink like a stone and never be heard from again."

He grinned at her. But could she possibly be right? What if he tried to swim and could not and was then unable to get his feet under him again? But what if he had listened to all the what-ifs with which his mind had bombarded him when he had tried to walk? He would still be lying on a bed or sitting confined to a chair. He may not be walking very well, but he was walking. He was here, was he not, sitting on a rock in the middle of a beach, a fair distance from the cottage?

"Coward," she said.

He kissed her.

She tasted warm and salty, and he reached his tongue into her mouth to taste more of her. He gathered her more closely into his arms, and she twined both her own about his neck.

They were both breathless when he drew back his head.

"When?" he asked her.

"Tomorrow," she said. "In the afternoon."

They held each other's eyes.

"I will have Mrs. Price cook dinner for two before she leaves," she said. "We are bound to be ravenous after swimming."

Ravenous.

They would be alone in the cottage.

She did not look away from him or he from her.

"I daresay I will eat every mouthful set before me, then," he said.

"If you have not drowned." She smiled dazzlingly.

He had not told her what he had learned about her grandfather, he remembered suddenly. Had anyone else told her? But he doubted it. Surely she would have greeted him with the news if she had heard.

But now was not the right time.

They were going to swim together tomorrow. And then dine alone together at the cottage. Both servants would have returned home for the night, I promised that you would be safe from me.

Sometimes safety seems a dull, unadventurous thing.