“You, Edward, are far too used to the company of foreign ladies, who are, I daresay, quite indolent.”
“Just because foreign ladies do not swim in the sea, Cassie, I would not say that they are precisely lazy.”
“I hope, Captain Lord Delford, that your neck has not grown stiff in your collar.” She shivered as the sun dipped behind a cloud.
Edward pulled off his riding coat and draped it over her shoulders. “You must dress, Cass, before you take a chill.”
“Now that you are returned, my lord, that would never do. Oh, Edward, it’s been such a long three years. I have missed you so.” She slipped her hand through the crook of his arm and squeezed him to her. “You have much abused me, my lord. I have been waiting and waiting ever since I got your letter two months ago. I did not even know where you were staying in London. Your mother just sighed helplessly in that way of hers when I asked her where you were.”
Edward paused a moment, and said only, “One never picks fruit from the tree until it is ripe.”
She waved away his words. “I will thank you, my lord, not to liken me to an apple or a pear. And if you are not careful, you might find that I will fall into someone else’s basket.”
Though he felt a moment of uncertainty, he said lightly, “I found that I wished to conduct my business in London; it was better done there in any case.” He paused a moment and gazed about at the calm sea and up at the ageless cliffs. “Life is different here. It’s as if time touches life here only insofar as the fashions in clothes change. It is not so elsewhere, you know.”
“You so dislike the blissful existence in this Garden of Eden?”
He smiled crookedly. “You have always had the knack of boiling things down until there was no water left in the pot.” He looked a moment at the soft tendrils of her hair that the sea breeze pressed across her cheek. “Where is your chaperone, Cass? Surely you would not come to a deserted beach alone.”
“It would seem to me, my lord, that you would have been much embarrassed if Miss Petersham had been witness to your exuberant welcome.”
“What? Becky is still with you?” The plump, brisk little woman had been with Cassie as far back as he could remember. Although she had always been polite to him, he had had the inescapable feeling that she somehow did not approve of him. “The mother lion is still guarding her cub,” he said aloud.
Cassie laughed, and Edward watched her soft tongue dart over her even white teeth. “Becky the lioness. What a marvelous metaphor. She has become quite like a mother to me, you know, Edward, and a watchful one at that. She is quite fond of a nap after lunch and thus I was able to come here alone. I refuse to believe, my lord, that you would have preferred meeting me for the first time after three years across the expanse of the drawing room.”
“It would have been better for both of us had I seen you fully dressed and not soaking wet like some half-naked sea nymph.”
Cassie drew to a halt beside him and said softly, “But then I probably would not have been certain that you still cared for me. You would have been all stiff and full of trite, formal phrases.”
“I would have been far more the discreet gentleman.”
Cassie felt a stab of apprehension. “Edward, you have not found another lady, have you? Is that why you stayed away from me in London?”
“Dammit, Cass, you’re but eighteen years old.”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “and a woman grown.”
“If you’ll recall, you told me in great seriousness that you were nearly a woman grown when you were eight years old.”
“Good heavens, I had forgotten all about that. It was, as I recall, the first time I ever proposed marriage to you, my lord. But you, if I do not disremember, were a stiff and starchy lad, full of ambition, and would not take me seriously.”