Summer Is for Lovers (12 page)

Chapter 15

“T
HEN YOU SHOULD
be dancing with him instead of me,” David told her as he maneuvered them across the pavilion floor.

Caroline blinked against the hurtful words. The light breeze coming in through the pavilion’s open walls held not even a prayer to cool the sudden scald of humiliation that washed over her. “I . . . I thought . . .” she stammered, every bit as tongue-tied as her sister usually was.

He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. A
brotherly
squeeze. The blue eyes she had spent much of the afternoon staring into shifted to scan the other couples, a marked departure from his attentive gaze of just moments before. “Let us peruse the crowd for someone who might be a better partner for you than Mr. Adams or that slavering pup Branson.”

The music from the brass band, which had shimmered with promise only moments before, tarnished in her ears. She didn’t understand. Hadn’t they been getting on well? Hadn’t David kissed her, without any hint of duress, not once, but twice?

Hadn’t he just wrestled her out of another man’s arms, for no purpose other than having a go with her on the dance floor?

“I don’t want to dance with someone else,” she told him. Her mind, which had been tied up in knots, began to slip free. In fact, it started sliding down the steepest of slopes, tumbling end over end, with only one possible outcome in sight. “I want to dance with
you
.”

He shook his head, a notion that made him appear unexpectedly vulnerable. “Whatever you think of me, whatever misimpression I have fostered, I am sorry. Truly, I am.” His voice had gone hoarse, and she latched on to the regret that hung in his words with all the finesse of a drowning woman. “But I am not a worthy partner for you, Caroline. I am just trying to help—”

“Help me?” she choked out. “How are you helping me? By commandeering a dance away from Mr. Adams, who was, by all accounts, a perfectly adequate dance partner? By challenging me to articulate what I want, whom I want, and then implying I don’t know my own mind?”

His arms slackened about her, which made her want to howl in frustration. “By dancing with you to show the crowd how lovely you are. By changing their impression of you from someone worth tormenting to someone worth wanting.”

Caroline stared at him, stricken by the explanation that was so unwanted, and yet made perfect, horrific sense. He didn’t feel for her the same soul-crushing want that she did for him. He entertained a far simpler emotion in his regard for her.

He felt sorry for her.

The music shifted, signaling the end of the current musical number. David’s palm fell away from her waist as if it could no longer bear the punishment. Caroline numbly followed him from the floor. Apparently, his comments about forgetting the dance steps applied to walking too, because she would have been hard-pressed to identify her feet over her kneecaps at the moment.

She liked to think she wouldn’t have said anything, but for the effects of the three glasses of champagne. Surely that was the reason her tongue had gotten ahead of her. Now she was left facing the quagmire of her next decision, without the courage of a glass in her hand.

He pulled her to a quieter corner and levered her back up against one of the columns that held up the pavilion’s roof. Steps away, the cool night air beckoned, as did a forgotten tray of champagne glasses, laid out on a receiving table.

What next? She could apologize for her presumption, she supposed. Tell him she had been joking, having a bit of fun at his expense. She could claim a fierce and sudden headache, or she could pretend to twist her ankle, or . . .

Or she could have another glass of champagne.

Caroline snatched a glass and tossed it back, not even caring that it appeared to have been half drunk by someone else.

David pulled the emptied flute out of her hand. “Do you think that is a wise idea?”

“I seem to be fresh out of wise ideas,” she told him, welcoming the scald of her fourth glass, an indulgence she refused to regret. And least, not tonight.

Tomorrow might be a different tale.

The shadows from outside the pavilion seemed to reach for her, offering relief and anonymity. “I should go home,” she said, seizing on escape as a new option worth considering. Of course, she couldn’t leave without Penelope, and her sister was still spinning about the dance floor in Mr. Hamilton’s arms, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling.

David fixed her with a blue-eyed stare that might have been sharpened on a whetstone. “I hadn’t pegged you for a coward. Let’s address the problem, rather than avoiding the discussion.”

“Oh yes, let’s.” Caroline half hiccupped, already questioning the wisdom of that fourth glass. Her head felt fuzzy, irregular. Her tongue, however, felt as free as the sparrows that performed dizzying acrobatic maneuvers on the air currents above her swimming cove. “I am the girl that people laugh about behind cupped hands. An almost-spinster, spilling out the secrets of her heart to a handsome, eligible gentleman. You do not think of me in a way that might be considered romantic. The problem is solved.”

David sighed, and the sound cut through the fog of her brain like a beacon. He rubbed a hand against the back of his neck, assessing her as if she was a conundrum that required sorting out. “You mistook my interest, Caroline, that is all. I might have even encouraged it. But I am only here for a short time, and will return with my mother to Scotland in a few days’ time. We would not suit as anything other than friends.”

Caroline fought against a disbelieving snort of laughter, forcing herself to acknowledge the rational aspect of his words. Of
course
he didn’t find her attractive. Of
course
this little game he had been playing hadn’t been about any feelings of admiration he might harbor for her.

Why would he be any different from the other gentlemen in Brighton?

David’s explanation and her own self-doubts sent Caroline reaching for a fifth glass, but he placed his big hand over hers and firmly tugged her fingers away. “And I had not pegged you as someone to embrace public drunkenness, given the verbal tongue-lashing you gave me eleven years ago for the same sin.”

She glared up at him, the only gentleman she had ever had to look up to since attaining her full height. There was no way she could see herself clear of the hole she was digging beneath both of their feet. There was no way she could take her words back, no way she could erase such a glaring tactical error. She had just confessed the intensity of her feelings for this man, had given voice to an emotion that had permeated the very fabric of her life since girlhood.

Surely public drunkenness was her only remaining alternative.

H
E HADN’T MEANT
to hurt her. He’d never
intentionally
hurt any woman.

But Christ above, was he destined to do anything else?

She stood stiff-shouldered, fingering a remaining glass of champagne that had been left on a tray by a waiter who ought to be hunted down and flogged. She was going to regret such impulsiveness on the morrow, but short of tossing the entire tray on its end, he had no ability to prevent her from further overindulgence.

He needed to pull her attention away from the danger of the champagne, but far from finding some sort of resolution to the problem she presented, he found he could think of nothing cogent beyond how she had tasted last night, there where her hair lay against her skin. One tempting coil had loosened during their dance, and it now lay draped across the delicate column of her neck. He longed to loosen it and let it fall in its natural state, as he had seen it this afternoon: unleashed, damp, unruly.

And though he was in a public place, though she was angry as a wet cat with him, his body hardened with what was fast becoming a remarkable predictability around this woman.

“I do not want this to damage our friendship,” he argued, trying to approach this as he would a dilemma presented to him in his role as Moraig’s magistrate. The offending party would be expected to offer an apology, and he had done the offending tonight. “I admire you. Respect you.”

“But not enough to offer for me.” Her voice pierced his scrambling thoughts with the surety of an arrow.

David sucked in a breath. Hell, but she was a forward chit. “I cannot offer for anyone,” he said, by way of the most inadequate answer ever crafted by man.

“Can you at least tell me
why
?” She turned now to face him, the glass of champagne finally forgotten in her apparent need for information.

Information he was not, under any circumstances, going to divulge.

David recoiled against the hope he saw etched on her face. He considered how much to tell her. Not enough to destroy all faith in him. But enough to convince her of how inadequate he was for the role of white knight she seemed determined to fashion for him.

He settled on a stilted version of the truth. “I am in love with someone else.”

Her face drained of color, and he heard the ragged intake of her sudden breath. “But . . . but you
kissed
me.”

He welcomed her well-deserved outrage. He
shouldn’
t have kissed an innocent young woman, for all that he had meant to be helpful. He needed the reminder tattooed somewhere on his person.

“The person I love would not object,” he told her, his stomach knotting up to describe it in such terms. “At least not in the literal sense. She died eleven years ago.”

Caroline’s lips parted in surprise, softening the tense line of her jaw. “Oh,” she breathed.

“Her name was Elizabeth Ramsey, the vicar’s daughter. We were both twenty-one. And I loved her very much.”

Caroline’s features settled into a sympathetic mask. It struck him, then, how little she actually knew about his past. In Moraig, any mention of Elizabeth Ramsey among the townsfolk there caused a far different reaction.

“You remind me of her, in some ways,” he told her. “No doubt it has caused me to behave inappropriately in your presence at times, and for that I am sorry.”

It wasn’t precisely true. He had been naïve in thinking that Caroline reminded him of Elizabeth, yesterday on Miss Baxter’s terrace. The physical differences were obvious, of course—Elizabeth Ramsey had been petite and fair, whereas Caroline was anything but. But in their innocence, and in his body’s reaction to each of them, he had thought them quite similar.

He reconsidered that notion now. There was steel in Caroline, a core of strength that even now showed itself in the firming of her lips and the squaring of her shoulders, that Elizabeth had never possessed. If Caroline was a rock jutting out of turbulent water, Elizabeth had been the water itself. Her mercurial moods had been the near death of him, and had certainly been the death of her.

“If the woman you loved . . .” Caroline swallowed, as if the question pained her. “If she has been dead for so long, then why can you not see yourself offering marriage to someone like me? We get along well enough, I think.”

David let out his bunched thoughts on a long, slow slide. The noise of the crowd, which had receded to the point of silence, began to creep back in. This, then was the crux of his problem. Most men would have buried their loss years ago, moved on to find another love. But he was not most men.

And penance was a matter best kept private.

“Elizabeth Ramsey took my heart with her when she died, lass. I am not free to give it to another, and do not imagine I will ever be.”

Her uncertain gaze dropped to a level that would have been shocking had it not come from someone who had already seen him in smallclothes. “Are you . . .
celibate
?” she whispered.

“No.” He permitted his lips to turn up, though it seemed somehow less than appropriate. “Although I am stretched to understand how you even know such a word.”

“Penelope has a book that I read—” Caroline exhaled noisily, then waved her hands about as she searched the crowd, apparently for her sister with a penchant for naughty books. “It does not matter. None of this matters. I am sorry I said
anything
. I didn’t know . . .”

“Of course it matters.” David’s body still felt coiled tight, but this, finally, was getting at what this conversation ought to be about. It would pain him to see her happy with someone else—he was man enough to admit that. But he needed to do this for himself, as much as for her.

His palm twitched, wanting to brush a wayward wisp of hair out of her eyes. He curled his traitorous fingers into a fist instead. “That is what I have been trying to tell you, Caroline. I found my perfect match, once upon a time. I wish the same thing for you.”

Her gaze jerked up to meet his. “You would subject me to this sort of pain?” She met his gaze with a doubtful, arched brow. “Your whole body tenses up when you speak of the girl you loved. It looks as if a lifetime of shuttlecock would be more enjoyable, if you will forgive the observation.”

David welcomed the return of the sharp tongue he admired to the conversation. “I was unlucky to lose my match, but it does not mean you will be. There is a man somewhere in Brighton, and quite possibly on this dance floor, with whom you might have a happy future.”

He swallowed his regrets, and let his smile stretch higher, false though the sentiment might be. “And while I cannot be that man, I can promise to help you find him.”

Chapter 16

S
O
THIS
WAS
what four glasses of champagne felt like the next morning.

Caroline woke to a vicious pounding, not unlike church bells on Sunday, clanging in her skull. Except she was quite sure it wasn’t Sunday. It was Thursday.

The world shifted. Tilted. Slid back into place.

She opened one protesting eye to sunlight streaming across her headboard. It was morning, which meant her hellish night was finally over. But it also meant she must face the day, and that was a thought worth haggling over.

She slid a glance toward Penelope’s bed. “Pen?” she whispered. There was no answer.

Indeed, there was no Pen. Her sister’s bed was neatly made up, the pillows tucked away beneath the smooth, uncreased coverlet. What time was it, if Penelope had risen before her and already tidied her bed?

Caroline buried her face in her pillow, breathing in the familiar smell of the lilac sachets she helped Bess make for the linen closet. The feeling in her head came again. Less of a pounding than a knocking. She should not have had that fourth glass of champagne.

But then the memory of what had driven her to consume the last glass reinserted its ugly head, and she wondered if four had been enough.

Because despite the drinks’ clear effects on her head, they hadn’t erased the memory of her painful conversation with David. Or how she had felt afterward, when he had encouraged her to go on laughing and dancing and—dare she acknowledge it—flirting with other gentlemen, as if he had not just inverted her world and tossed it onto the rubbish heap.

The last glass of champagne and David’s departure soon thereafter had freed her. There had been offers to dance. So many she lost count. She had thrown herself into the remainder of the evening, convinced that nothing else that might befall her that evening could be worse than what had already happened. For the first time in her life, she hadn’t cared what kind of an impression she was making, or whether her eccentricities might scare off a potential suitor.

Anything to prevent her from thinking of David’s heart-wrenching past, and his inability to move on from the woman he had loved and lost.

More knocking interrupted her thoughts. She groaned. Burrowed under the covers. Willed it to stop. It was curious how the sensation ebbed and flowed. She would have thought post-alcohol misery to be a constant thing, like a hammer chained to one’s bones.

The sound of the bedroom door slamming proved the worst possible accompaniment to the racket that would not loosen its grip on her skull. “Caroline!” Pen’s excited voice reached beneath the covers. “You have to s-s-see!”

Caroline pulled down her coverlet and blinked up at her sister’s flushed, pretty face. Penelope was still wearing the same gown she had worn to the dance at the pavilion last night, a sea foam green silk had been remade from an old evening gown of Mama’s. Had she been to bed at all?

“Fl-flowers!” Penelope snatched up Caroline’s hand, tugging harder now. “Delivered this morning. An entire h-house full of them.”

Caroline let Pen pull her to sitting, though the movement sent the room into a nauseating pitch. “From Mr. Cameron?” Her heart began to match the rhythm in her head, foolish,
stupid
organ that it was.

Although, now that she considered it, her head wasn’t actually knocking. The sound came again. Someone was knocking on the front door that sat right below her open window.

Pen shook her head. “Not that I saw. The first two deliveries were from Mr. Branson and someone named Mr. Adams.” At Caroline’s bleary-eyed gawk, she flushed. “B-but Mama and I stopped reading the c-c-cards after that.”

Caroline stared at her sister, aghast. None of this made sense.

The knock below her window came again, more insistent this time, and Caroline could hear Bess muttering something from the porch below. Mama’s higher-pitched, excited exclamation soon followed.

Penelope’s blue eyes danced over the commotion. “Heavens, it sounds like there’s another deliveryman at the door.”

Caroline swallowed. “
Another
deliveryman?”

“The sixth so f-far.”

Caroline contemplated pinching the skin on the underside of her wrist just to see if the pain might be real. The circumstances called for something drastic, because nothing else about this morning could be distinguished from a dream.

“And there’s more.” Penelope rattled a newspaper in front of Caroline’s eyes. “You, my d-dear sister, have made the social section of the
Brighton Gazette
.”

A
HARSH COUGH
tore David’s eyes from the heap of coddled eggs on his plate.

He gripped the edge of his chair as he watched his mother set down the paper she had been reading and labor to draw a proper breath. Hers was a battle he could not help her with, though he would have gladly given one of his lungs had he the ability to make the sacrifice.

“I’d like to fetch a doctor this morning,” he insisted when his mother leaned back against the mountain of pillows. “You seem a good deal worse than when we arrived last week.”

She shook her head, setting limp gray curls bouncing on either side of her nightcap. “I am fine. Just a little tired.”

“But perhaps one of the Brighton doctors could—”

“
No
.” Another cough racked her frail body, but she fought through it. “By my bones,” she gasped, “I would rather expire on the spot than be bled again, David.”

He absorbed her words, contemplating his choices. He could fetch the doctor against her express wishes. Insist she suffer through whatever archaic treatment the man recommended. Demand she put off this foolishness and return home to Moraig, where she had a bevy of household servants and David’s father to dote on her.

But none of those choices would make her happy. By bringing her to Brighton, David knew he had pleased her, even if he wasn’t making her better. And the memory of the last doctor, who had chased his poor prognosis with a recommendation to bleed her every other day until she either improved or succumbed, kept David’s arse settled in the chair.

His mother dabbed her mouth with a napkin, some delicate bit of frippery embroidered with the Bedford Hotel crest. “Let us finish our breakfast without talk of such unpleasantries.” She picked up her crumpled newspaper again. “And please,” she said, nodding toward his plate. “Eat your eggs.”

David stared down at his plate, his stomach objecting to the very idea. He had been eating breakfast with his mother every morning since they arrived, both as a way to spend precious time with her and to surreptitiously sort out whether she showed any signs of improvement. But between the emotional thrashing he had subjected Caroline to last night and the worry he felt for his mother this morning, food was the last thing on his mind. The Bedford boasted an excellent kitchen staff, but even the most accomplished of chefs would have found it difficult to bring life to his appetite this morning.

His mother was visibly, painfully ill. Caroline was probably sick at heart.

And he didn’t see how eating his eggs was going to mend either of them.

He pushed the jiggling yellow mess around on his plate until his mother made an odd noise.

“Is something wrong?” David looked up in alarm.

There was no immediate answer. From the position of the
Gazette
in his mother’s hands, he could see that the upcoming swimming competition was featured on the front page, the headlines declaring it the “Race of the Decade.”

David drew in a sharp breath at the reminder. He didn’t even know if the competition was still a possibility. He had no hope of winning without Caroline’s instruction, and after the muddle he had made of things last night . . . He had done his best to patch things over before he took his leave, but he would not have been surprised to learn that she had returned home and given in to a good cry into her pillow. He hoped she would still want to continue their clandestine swimming lessons.

But he wouldn’t blame her if she changed her mind.

His mother’s voice intruded on those troublesome thoughts. “I see you’ve made the social section.”

David shifted in his chair. Why did his mother sound so accusing?
She
was the one who insisted he traipse about Brighton’s social scene when the sun went down.

“It says here you danced with Miss Julianne Baxter.” The baroness leveled a shrewd glance in his direction over the top of the paper. “And that you danced with someone named Miss Caroline Tolbertson. I’ve met Miss Baxter, of course, and she is a lovely chit. But when were you going to tell me about Miss Tolbertson?”

David caught his breath. “She . . . is a lovely chit as well,” he finished, unsure of what else he could say. He shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth and swallowed the curdled mass far more easily than he swallowed the latest twist to the conversation.

His mother’s lips turned up into a faint smile that seemed at odds with the shadows haunting her eyes. “Well, you’d best move fast if you’ve an interest in that one, dear. Because according to the newspaper, Miss Tolbertson is the surprise sensation of the summer.”