“And I was promptly punished.”
“It’s not so terrible to have been rescued by me.” His teasing smile did something odd to her heart.
“Once again, I didn’t need rescuing.” She fluffed her wet hair over her shoulders in the hopes that it would dry in the sun.
“Use my coat as a towel to dry yourself.”
“If you’ll turn around, Mr....?”
“Smith. Of course.” He helped her rise, and then he turned away, staring out to sea as sheused the fine black cotton of his coat to dry herself and take some of the water from her hair. She noticed that it was a very well-cut coat with the name of a London tailor stitched inside.
She drew a sharp, shuddering breath. Could Mr. Smith be one of the remorseless and wicked London rakes her mother was always warning her about?
“Where have you come from, Mr. Smith?”
“Brighton.”
“And where did you grow up?”
“Oh, here and there. I was raised in the countryside, mostly.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. A country-bred man, then, not a London rake roaming the streets in packs like wolves, searching for maidens to defile.
Not that it would matter to her mother. A stranger was a stranger.
She slid her dress over her head and fastened it, taking care to wrap her shawl over her shoulders so that her damp hair wouldn’t get her dress wet.
“Thank you, Mr. Smith,” she said when she was restored to a semblance of order.
“Quite all right, Miss...?”
“Sandrine Oliver.”
Poor, sweet Miss Sandrine Oliver who thought she could melt a duke’s cold, cold heart.
Those blighters at the pub had been dead-on about one thing: Miss Oliver was extremely pretty, with a heart-shaped face and aquamarine eyes the color of a sunlit sea. When her long hairhad been tangled and spilling over her shoulders, she’d looked like a bewitching sea nymph.
And then there’d been the sight of her wet, transparent shift clinging to the soft, swooping curves of her breasts, belly, and thighs.
If he were an honorable gentleman, he would have promptly turned away from the sight. But he was a depraved rake, and so he’d looked his fill at the undeniably arousing sight.
“You have some seaweed in your hair,” he said gruffly, forcing himself to look only at her face and forget about the lush body he’d glimpsed.
If she knew who he was and what he’d inherited, she’d pester him with historical lectures and outrageous demands. And if she knew of his dreadful reputation...
Women in spectacles wrote pamphlets warning their sex about him and his ilk. Everywhere he went, daughters were pulled inside doorways, and other men gave him envious stares.
His curricle was custom-built in France, he bedded only the most coveted of courtesans, wore only the finest leather, raced carriages and horses with his rakehell friends in the Thunderbolt Club, and generally lived a thrill-seeking life of pleasure, the scandalous details of which would send Miss Oliver running back home to her overprotective mother.
“What brings you to Squalton, Mr. Smith?”
“Just passing through your town, Miss Oliver, on my way back to Brighton.” He wasn’t supposed to engage in conversation with the villagers. The less they knew about him and the quicker he left,the better. “There, you’re quite restored. None shall be the wiser.”
“Upon that point, Mr. Smith, if you should happen to encounter my mother, Mrs. Barbara Oliver, during your stay in our little village—not that you would, for she’s a very reclusive and anxious sort of mother—but if you should encounter her, I beg of you not to mention anything about our meeting.”
“I shall feign complete and utter ignorance of your acquaintance, Miss Oliver.”
“Thank you. You can’t know what a relief that is. My mother is very opinionated about what constitutes proper conduct, and chief among her rules is that I must never speak to strange men. Not that I normally have much chance of that.”