Summer Is for Lovers (7 page)

“It matters not what it looks like,” he interrupted. His moon-touched expression grew serious. “You should share your skill, Caroline. Show someone. Teach someone. Why, employing a stroke like that, I don’t doubt someone could swim all the way across the channel.”

She shook her head. As if she could ever be so brave. “The men in Brighton already consider me enough of an oddity without adding swimming to the mix.”

“Do not berate your skills,” he told her quietly. “I find much to be impressed with in you.”

She gave a self-conscious laugh. His words had her hand skimming the length of her side, though she had spent much of the evening disinviting his visual scrutiny. “Impressed? Look at me, David. I’m taller than Mr. Dermott, for heaven’s sake. My hands are better built to handle a plow than manage a formal place setting. Tonight’s dinner party was a rarity in my world. My mother hoped it might lead to additional invitations, and look how I mucked it up.”

His gaze turned piercing. “Why do you want to be in thick with that juvenile crowd, anyway? You did not strike me as enjoying their company overmuch. Surely you don’t want to marry one of them?”

The man was far too astute. She couldn’t see the color of his eyes in the dim light, but she could imagine the stab of blue, there in her own eyes. “My father did not plan well for the possibility of his death. Papa asked me to take care of Mama and Penelope before he died, and there can be no other way to make good on that promise. Marrying someone from the summer set would mean my family never had to worry about money again.”

“But to be bound to a man who may not deserve your trust, who might harm you in fact, all for a little financial security . . . would it really be worth the risk?”

Caroline’s eye fell on David’s clenched jaw. He spoke of marital vows as if he had given it a good deal of thought and found nothing worth considering. He described a marriage dredged in chains. What of love and affection?

“And why
you
?” he railed. “Why not your sister?”

Caroline shook her head. “You heard Penelope’s stammer tonight. It does not matter to the popular crowd whether she might have a kind disposition, or a vivid imagination. As much as it pains me, I can admit that I need to be the one to marry well. For my own future and my sister’s well-being.”

“Your sister struck me as a capable enough conversationalist during my limited interactions with her this evening.”

Caroline sighed. “She had enough wine tonight that her stammer was hardly noticeable. But come morning, she will be stumbling over her words again. I wouldn’t trade Penelope for anything in the world, but she has had as much, if not more, difficulty securing a good match as I. Therein lies my problem. I am my family’s best hope, but scarcely anyone will speak to me, much less offer for me. Mr. Dermott has made sure of that.”

A beat of silence ensued. “Mr. Dermott doesn’t strike me as a young man worthy of your notice. Why do you let yourself feel so uncomfortable around him?”

The shore beneath her refused to swallow her up. “I . . . I let him kiss me. Just once, but it was enough. He was the one who told me I was a poor kisser. Only he didn’t just tell me. He told everyone. And then suggested there were reasons for it beyond inexperience.” She shook her head. Her sigh sounded long-suffering, even to her own ears. “The summer crowd seized onto it as an explanation for what they already considered my eccentric nature.”

David was silent a long, measured moment. Her heart filled the space with an increasing rhythm. His voice, when it came, curled around her insecurities and threatened to strangle her. “So I was only your second kiss?”

“Yes.” She whispered her response. “My second
failed
kiss.”

He shifted, his body moving the small pebbles beneath her. “Why do you count the kiss we shared as a failure?”

She risked a look at him. “You pushed me away. You laughed at me.”

He shook his head, his lips a grim line in the moonlight. “You misread my response, Caroline. You reminded me of someone. It made me . . . uncomfortable. And as that is a memory I have no wish to revisit, it seemed safer to impose some distance. But rest assured, I was not laughing at you. Far from it.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. And so she said nothing at all, just turned his words over in her head and let them thicken in her chest.

“Besides,” he went on, “that was not even a proper kiss.”

She laughed, a choked, lamentable sound. “I assure you, it seemed more than proper enough to me. Lips met. Amusement ensued. I shall not be repeating the experience.”

“I hardly think that sort of decision will hold you in good stead when you are trying to find a husband. And if you are going to make an informed decision on the matter, you should at least have all the facts.”

“I have all the facts I need.” She turned back to stare at the moon hanging on the horizon. She felt miserable at how wrong a turn this conversation had taken. She had been far more comfortable when they had been talking about swimming.

Then again, swimming was something at which she excelled.

“Perhaps Mr. Dermott is correct,” she breathed. “Perhaps there
is
something unnatural about me.”

His shoulder made contact with hers again. This time it stayed, pressed flush against hers. Her skin fairly sang from the contact with this man. She felt the heat radiating off him, sliding beneath her skin and warming the blood in her veins.

“Put that coxcomb Dermott in a box for now and lock him up tight. Do you feel an attraction for men in general? Or to a particular gentleman who has caught your fancy?”

Dear God, she could not be having this conversation. Not tonight.

Not with him
.

Her eyes stayed anchored on the luminous moon and its orange halo. She wrapped her lips tight around the words that would be a certain declaration of her feelings for him. The cautious nod she summoned felt as if she were being shaken to her core.

“Then look at me, lass.”

She turned her head toward him. His eyes glittered in the scant light, but they might as well have been illuminated by torchlight. She could not look away.

“You deserve to know what sort of a man—and what type of a kiss—you should be looking for,” he said. “So let’s give this another go.”

And before she knew it, before she had time to even draw a breath, his lips were on hers.

Chapter 9

H
E SURGED AGAINST
her mouth like an incoming tide, determined and powerful and impossible to stem. She stilled, sure she couldn’t survive another round of this humiliation, sure she would rather die than admit to herself—again—that she wanted David Cameron far more than he wanted her.

He offers this tutelage to a friend
, she reminded herself.
Nothing more
.

But her body refused to believe her thoughts.

He tasted of the same saltwater that marked her own lips. It lent a degree of familiarity, of rightness, to the intimacy he demanded. His hands came up to tangle in her wet hair, pulling her closer still. She could feel the persistence of his fingers, tight against her scalp.

The book she had read—the one Penelope kept hidden beneath her bed—gave very little information on kissing. She had little to rely upon except her limited past experience. On the terrace earlier, David had touched her gingerly, as if she might shatter if he pressed too hard or too fast. This time he kissed her as if he
wanted
to, not as if he owed her a polite favor. He was far less gentle now, insisting on her participation, dictating the terms of her acquiescence.

“You can kiss me back,” he murmured against her startled, open mouth. “Like this.” His hands shifted to tilt her chin just so, and his tongue moved inside her mouth. She met his offering with a tentative touch of her own tongue.

Shattering became a very real possibility.

Thank God they were sitting in cool, shallow water, because she was sure her knees would have buckled and pitched her headfirst onto the ground had she been standing.

“Good, lass.” He breathed the praise into her mouth, and her heart glowed bright in response. “You’re a quick study.”

Dimly she realized her hands had crept up to grip his bare arms. She curled her fingers against him, wishing her spinning head was clearer. She had never touched a bare-chested man before. Not to put too fine a point on it, she had never
seen
a bare-chested man before. She wanted to savor the vitality of him, explore by touch the rough rasp of hair that seemed to cover so much of him.

But it was impossible to capture such thoughts properly. The sensation spiraling inside her left her grasping at memories that whirled away almost as soon as she made them.

The mortification she had been clutching during the first tentative seconds of the kiss slipped away, lost to the flood of emotions his touch unleashed. She gasped his name, and was rewarded by the sweep of his tongue down the sensitive column of her neck.

His hold on her head loosened as his attentions shifted lower. He lingered along her neck, his teeth nipping at the thin skin there. “Wait for that. Wait for a husband who kisses with a mind to bring you pleasure.” His words were breathed against the curve of her collarbone, and were followed by the press of his tongue there. “He should not stop until you are squirming with need.”

If he was looking to prove some demented point, he was performing admirably, because Caroline was indeed squirming. She had never felt this way. Had not imagined it, even in her most heated of dreams. She had imagined a kiss bringing only a simple, sweet happiness, such as could be found in a good iced dessert, or in the opening of an unexpected gift.

This feeling was not sweet. It was certainly not simple. It was closer in both form and function to one of the wild storms that sometimes ravaged the coast in summer and left all matter of flotsam littering the shoreline. She was tossed by it, broken into pieces, pushed under. She couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t stop.

She gasped as David’s tongue found the damp edge of her chemise. She dug her nails into the skin of his arms and welcomed the warmth of his mouth as he traced the scalloped border of lace. The realization that men found pleasure kissing women in places other than lips was only just eclipsed by the simultaneous discovery that she enjoyed being kissed elsewhere too.

And then her mind skipped several spaces ahead. This was heading nowhere good.

What was she doing? What was she
thinking
?

She sucked in a breath, stunned by a painful clarity that intruded on the moment and demanded closer scrutiny. This interlude might be more pleasurable than her first two kisses, but it was also far more dangerous. David Cameron was not a marriageable sort of gentleman, by his own admission. He had expressed a distrust—indeed, an intense dislike—of the institution of marriage and everything that came with it.

And yet, wasn’t a kiss supposed to be an exploration of compatibility for just such an inevitability? Wasn’t it, if she was lucky and the man was a gentleman, supposed to be only a prelude to a betrothal?

She didn’t know. But her heart, naïve and eager as it was, told her it was
not
supposed to be just a desperate melding of tongues or a carnal fusion of breath or a gnawing ache inside her.

It was supposed to mean
more
than just the moment.

She kicked away from him then, found her feet and stumbled further ashore. She heard David scramble up after her in a clatter of rocks, heard him call out her name. She ignored him, trying to bundle the heavy mass of hair up into a knot against her neck as she lunged for her discarded clothing. Better to leave now, before something happened between them that spelled her ruin.

At that moment, a light appeared. It bobbed around the copse of high grass that bordered the footpath’s entrance to the cove. Her heart, which had been laboring to put some space between her body and the man who made it want so much more, hitched in the complete opposite direction.

“Oh, I say, this is a nice beach.” Dermott’s voice rang out behind the bright flare of a lantern. The light swung in an erratic circle, as if he was inspecting the place. “Why haven’t we come here before?”

“It’s a bloody hour’s walk” came a slurred male voice she didn’t recognize. “And we aren’t usually drunk enough to attempt it.”

“Does that mean you aren’t going to help finish off the bottle I brought?” came a third voice she thought might belong to the red-haired man with whom Penelope had spent much of the evening conversing.

“ ’Course not. There’s always room for another drink, you sodden fool.”

In an instant, David was beside her, sheltering her with his enormous, bristling presence. Her pulse rate kicked higher. She didn’t know whether to grab his hand for safety, or to strike him for putting her in this untenable situation.

Dear God, they could not be seen together. That would be an entirely different sort of ruin from the physical one she had just feared. As if in agreement, he pushed her toward the boulder where he had flung his jacket earlier. She fumbled her way toward it. The danger of discovery felt as tangible as the pressure of his fingers on the small of her back.

The glow from Dermott’s tilting lantern swung around at that instant and caught David in an indistinct sweep of light. She froze behind him, cornered like a small, hunted animal.

And then she was diving for the safety of the rock, all thoughts of kisses and regret overcome by the single, all-consuming urge to hide.

“
S
AY, IT’S
C
AMERON
and some chap!”

David straightened and raised a hand, determined to draw their attention away from Caroline. Dermott came closer and held the lantern high, peering up at David’s face.

Thank God
. If Dermott had directed the light a little to the left, he would have caught sight of Caroline’s hand snatching his jacket off the edge of the rock. A little lower, and he would have caught an equally suspicious eyeful. After all, David’s body was only just beginning to recede to a respectable degree.

“You look like you’ve taken a dip,” Dermott said. He appeared drunk, although not so drunk that he had either forgotten—or forgiven—the insult David had lobbed at him earlier. “Is the swimming here good, then?”

David struggled with dueling urges. On one hand, he was sorely tempted to correct the man who seemed determined to be the village idiot. The beautifully responsive woman who had been in his arms only moments ago was no “chap.” He had a flagging cockstand to prove it.

On the other hand, Dermott’s presumption that Caroline had been just another inebriated gentleman, out for a midnight swim, was a misperception worth encouraging.

“It’s not bad swimming tonight,” he admitted, the memory of his playful romp with Caroline simmering in the back of his head. “Of course, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are a good swimmer. The current here is devilishly strong.”

“I took first in a swimming competition during one of my terms at Oxford.” Dermott came even closer, swinging the damned lantern and casting dizzying shadows far and wide. The smell of whisky-soaked breath assaulted David’s nose as the man sneered, “And I won Brighton’s annual race last year. Perhaps we should have a little race ourselves, here tonight.”

David sought a different diversion, one that wouldn’t take a drunken dandy out into the water. “Perhaps we should have a little drink, instead.” He prayed Caroline had the good sense to stay hidden through the negotiations. Her appearance right now might result in the sort of churlish behavior from Dermott that David would have to reward with a right hook.

Not that the thought of hitting a prick like Dermott didn’t carry a certain appeal.

“I imagine I could drink you under the table too,” Dermott said belligerently.

“Only one way to find out.” David snatched up his trousers and shirt and began the awkward business of pushing grit-covered limbs into them. Tonight, the thought of going on a whisky bender with Dermott and his friends was about as appealing as the idea of swigging a snifter of seawater. His answer seemed to appease Dermott, though. The man squatted and began digging out a pit in the pebble-strewn beach with his hands. One of his friends grabbed a piece of driftwood and began to arrange it for a fire.

David expelled a frustrated breath. How to extricate himself from this mess? If he and Caroline were caught out alone at this time of night, and in such a state of undress, she would be ruined. And he couldn’t offer for her, even if her reputation was shredded, even if there were some who would consider it the right thing to do. Being ruined was not the worst possible thing that could happen to an innocent like Caroline.

Being forced to marry someone like him was.

Besides, after their conversation this evening, he doubted the meager numbers in his bank account would qualify him as a respectable match, no matter that he was the second son of a baron.

“Where’d the other chap go?” Dermott tossed over his shoulder. “Hamilton here has an almost full bottle here he’s willing to share.”

David spared a glance for the gentleman with the bottle. It was the man who had provided Caroline’s sister with the cheroot, unless he was mistaken. Such illustrious company he was keeping tonight.

“He is . . . er . . . already heading back to town,” David improvised. From the corner of his eye, he saw Caroline sneak away from the rock, wrapped in the dark safety of his jacket. The thought of her damp, bare shoulders shrugging into it while she fumed about being called a “chap” brought a reluctant smile to his face.

Dermott’s head swiveled to the left and he spent a long moment staring at something on the ground near David’s feet. “Looks like he forgot something.”

David glanced down too. Dermott was staring at Caroline’s wadded-up gown.

He snatched it up, then tucked it into a ball beneath one arm. “I’ll return it to him in the morning.” David prayed they accepted his harried explanation. With any luck, none of the louts would notice he was holding a ladies’ gown instead of men’s clothing.

He went searching for his shoes. Found Caroline’s corset instead. Cursing under his breath, he kicked the thing beneath a scrubby bush and prayed the group didn’t decide go on a treasure hunt.

Behind the men, he could see a moving shadow that told him Caroline had made it to the western edge of the cove, where the footpath veered off. The quick flash of a long, bare leg extending below the hem of the coat drew his eye. He swallowed, willing his body to stop paying such close attention to her legs.

He had kissed her tonight for no reason other than to show her what a proper kiss could be, to shape her knowledge into something she could use in the future. His point had been made.

So why couldn’t he stop thinking about her?

She finally disappeared from view and he could breathe again. He wanted nothing more than to follow her. To make sure she made it home safely, to be convinced she understood the experience he had offered had been just that: an experience, with no expectation—or promise—of anything else. The sounds she had made, and her body’s eager response, had him worrying that she thought more of it than she should.

But he could not leave and risk this rowdy group following him. And so he sat cross-legged on the pebbled shore as the fire began to snap. Accepted the bottle of swill that Mr. Hamilton produced. Took a long, throat-constricting draught and tried
not
to think about her.

And proved a miserable failure at the exercise.

His body’s reaction during their kiss had startled him. He had progressed from interest to full-bore lust in the space of five seconds. If she had not stopped him, he couldn’t peg what the outcome of the evening might have been.

He was an idiot. She was a
friend
, for Christ’s sake. It had been her proximity and state of undress, nothing more. Dangerous, to be sure, but explainable.

Her body wasn’t even fashioned in a way that would normally interest him. He was more often drawn to women who were soft and pillowy, with curves one could ride into oblivion. He had always preferred breasts that fit in his hands, or better yet, that spilled over his questing palms. In contrast, Caroline was mostly lean muscle. He knew it by feel now as much as by sight; she had been devilishly hard to keep hold of when she had been squirming in his arms.