With the toe of her boot, she scuffed at the edge of the line she’d drawn. She was completely shielded from view. Her mother would never have to know.
Her heart pounding, she set her book and herb basket down a safe distance from the sea and began unbuttoning her pelisse. Then she unlaced her boots and removed them. Next, she unfastened her garters and slid her stockings down,folding them carefully and placing a rock on top of them to ensure they came to no harm.
She hiked up her skirts and tucked them into her sash, staring down at the line still etched into the sand. Did she dare? She took a quick, sharp breath, leaped over the line, and ran toward the water.
Cold seawater swirled around her ankles. No thunderbolts from on high arrived to smite her.
How she longed to float for a few seconds, as she’d seen other young ladies do, their bathing costumes filling with water and belling out around them. She’d heard them giggling and exclaiming about how wonderful it felt and how healthful it was for one’s constitution.
She ventured ankle-deep into the water. Mud squished between her toes, and the occasional sharp rock impeded her progress. A mad idea gripped her. Why shouldn’t she go out far enough to lift her feet and float for a few seconds? There was no one to see, no one to report back to her mother. No current to speak of in this sheltered cove.
If she kept walking... but she’d ruin her gown. Get seaweed in her hair. Her mother would discover what she’d done and chastise her most heartily.
It wasn’t like Sandrine was planning to flout her mother’s rules in any consequential way. She was still the dutiful daughter, devoted to caring for her mother, likely marrying the man her mother chose for her, and living the rest of her life in this sleepy little village.
It was only a small rebellion, and if she left her gown on the beach and dried her hair and chemise in the hot August sun, her mother need never know. She wouldn’t go far. She’d still feel the bottom beneath her toes.
Her feet carried her to shore, and she was unbuttoning her gown before she had time to compose objections. And then she was in the water up to her calves... her thighs... wading deeper until she let herself go. Allowed herself to float. Toes level with her head. Wisps of happy clouds above, and blue-green water cradling her body.
Bobbing about in the bracing water with the sun on her face and gulls wheeling overhead. Weightless and giddy with forbidden freedom.
Delicious, unpredictable freedom.
Dane was parched from riding his horse for hours in the hot sun. He needed a dark room and a cold pint. He scratched between the ears of his new stallion, Gladiator. “You’re thirsty too, aren’t you?”
Gladiator whinnied a response, which was clearly a demand for a dark stall and a pail of cold water. As he led him by the bridle through the bumpy cobblestone streets, gathering stares from the good townsfolk and frightening small children, Dane noticed that Squalton-on-Sea was hardly a prosperous seaside resort. Most of the shops were shuttered, and the ones that weren’t displayed more dust than merchandise.
He hadn’t inherited much when his father, the Duke of Rydell, died a year earlier. When thewill had been read, he’d learned the surprising news that he’d been bequeathed the titles to several properties in Squalton that an ancestor had won in a game of cards from his foe, the Earl of Amberly.
Dane’s much older brother, Roman, had inherited the title, the fortune, a vast number of properties, and all the tiresome and weighty responsibilities of the dukedom.
He was welcome to all of it.
Dane preferred to be wild and free. As the spare, he could be.
He and his disreputable friends had founded the Thunderbolt Club, a group of youngbloods who ruled the London demimonde and excelled at riding fast horses, racing jaunty carriages, and making beautiful women swoon. None of which came cheap.
Roman, a humorless and moralizing man with a cruel streak, kept a tight hold on the family purse strings.You’ll only squander it. Your very birth was a mistake. You killed our mother by being born. You caused father to grow bitter and angry. You’ll never do anything but make mistakes.
Dane was here to see whether there was some profit to be had by selling the unentailed Squalton properties to the highest bidder.
He stopped in front of the Squalton Squire, the lease of which he now held.
The building had seen better days. The wooden sign hung at a precarious angle, the whitewashed walls were coated with soot, and the roof was missing half its tiles. Still, one would hope theale on tap would be decent, and that was all that mattered. Dale was only here for a quick pint before viewing the highlight of his inheritance, Squalton Manor, and returning to Brighton, where he’d left his carriage.
When Gladiator was settled in a stall and munching contentedly on sweet meadow hay, Dane found the taproom and approached the bar.
“Charming village you have here,” he remarked to the barkeep after his pint was poured.
The man grunted. “If you say so.”
“Charming, ha!” an older man with worn and patched trousers said. “It’s a village that time forgot. Nothing round here but dead dreams and dross.”
“More like the village the duke forgot,” said another grizzled fellow.
“Dukes. Greedy, rotten scoundrels, the lot of ’em,” said the first man. “Bloody blasted Duke of Rydell.”
All the men in the place raised their mugs, as if this were a prearranged signal.