Elisabeth Fairchild (9 page)

“That would depend on one’s imagination,” Beau replied evasively. Sinking onto another large stone, he closed his eyes, listened to the sounds of the sea and tried not to think about the many responsibilities that awaited his attention. The sun baked warm on his nose.

Charley would seem capable of reading minds. “When do you mean to cast off this disguise and return to London?”

“End of the week, I suppose,” Beau said.

“Better you than me,” Charley said lazily. “I mean to be here when Priney and the rest of his crew come down. I shall languish here at least a fortnight, drinking, hunting and examining the wildlife on the beach. Have a look.” He laughed. “Those atrociously unbecoming flannel bathing smocks are rather more interesting when wetted.”

Beau stretched out his own rented spyglass and focused on the beach just as the door opened on a red bathing box and the stalwart, if water-soaked, dipper who hovered on the stairway helped its occupant down the wet steps. The woman looked as if she were more prepared to tuck into a feather mattress than the sea, clad as she was in her high-necked, long-sleeved, bathing wrapper.

Charley inhaled noisily, a sign of his delight, and whistled. “Sea water cures all ills. Look there! That flimsy bit of wrapping becomes absolutely diaphonous when wet! Most appealing when the form beneath is worth viewing. It is as if one were privileged to witness a flock of sea nymphs rising up out of the depths.”

“Or a school of whales,” Beau murmured as he collapsed his spy glass. He was not as consumed with the delight of watching shivering sea-bathers embarrass themselves by standing sodden and for all intents and purposes unveiled to their fellow man, in the rolling waves.

Bandit, who had been snoozing at their feet, sat up suddenly, ears pricked. A high-pitched whine slipped his throat.

Charley, gaze drawn from his spyglass, glanced down to see what attracted the dog’s fixed attention.

“Jove!” he said mildly, “Is that not your long-limbed horse leaper from Godstone, heading down to the water just now?”

Beau brought his spyglass whipping out to full length and pressed it to his eye. There below, picking a path between the nets that had been set to dry along the rocky beach, stepped Fanella Quinby, dressed all in white save for the wide rose-colored sash at her waist, that matched the rose-colored lining on the old fashioned straw bonnet that he pleasantly recognize as the one he had bought her. She was further protected from the harsh rays of the sun today by an attractively frilled white parasol, from whose center post, a number of thin rose-colored ribbons fluttered. She was preceded by her aunt.

“Yes, it is she,” he concurred, “but, you a-a-are in for a disappointment if you think to catch a glimpse of the young lady’s charms today.”

Charley chuckled suggestively. “No whale there, eh?”

“It is the a-a-aunt who takes the water cure,” Beau said with benign certainty.

“Drat! I should not at all mind seeing the wetting of that one. Did you get a chance to chat her up, on your way down from Godstone?’

“Miss Quinby is a high-minded young lady, Charley, and while I did not  “chat her up” a-a-as you have so vulgarly put it, we did have occasion to speak. You do her disservice to speak so lightly of her person.”

Charley laughed again. “Do I? One might almost discern a possesive note in your voice, my friend. Any female foolish or free-spirited enough to display her charms in the suds, is fair game for every masculine eye trained in her direction.”

He waved his hand at the crest of the beachhead where sunlight glinted off an array of spyglasses, telescopes, opera glasses and monocles. “If you did not take advantage, and chat her up, perhaps I shall have to do so myself.” He squinted into his glass again, and crowed, “Oh ho! We shall see her wetted yet. It would appear auntie has requested her lovely niece’s company.”

Beau leaned into his telescope, experiencing a confused mixture of breathless anticipation and alarm.

Ursula Dunn stood poised at the top of the set of steps leading into a bright blue bathing box, a flannel bathing smock clutched in one hand, while the other desperately motioned for her niece to join her. One could almost make out the individual words in the steady stream of entreaty.

Looking coolly obstinate as she shook her bonneted head and twirled a parasol in agitation, Nell did not appear inclined to go.

The dipper who manned the bathing box, a stout, sun-browned woman with tightly fleshed limbs and several layers of dripping cloth twisted about her barrel-like figure, entered into the discussion, by offering another of the undistinguished flannel smocks to Nell, and wagging both her tongue and her finger, first toward the beach, where a line of people waited for the bathing boxes that had not been booked ahead of time, and then at Ursula Dunn, who stood uncertainly on the bathing box steps.

“Go on, be a good niece. Go with auntie,” Charley encouraged from behind his glass.

Beau frowned at him, but then regretted his distracted attention, for Charley let loose a whoop. “That’s the spirit! Have a go!”

By the time Beau refocused on the little tableau, Nell Quinby had collapsed her parasol, accepted the bathing garment, and mounted the steps.

“Ah, what I wouldn’t give to be rolling out to sea in that box,” Charley breathed, allowing his glass to fall.

“Oh, button it!” Beau flared angrily, the outburst giving rise to his dog’s ears, and best friend’s eyebrows.

“I say, that’s how the wind blows, does it? I d no idea you were so taken with her. What happened to you on the drive down, anyway? No need to be close-mouthed.”

“Nothing happened,” Beau locked his gaze on the slow progress of the horse-drawn box as it trundled into the foaming surf. He could hear unwarranted irritation in his own voice as he said, “I cannot imagine why anyone would willingly immerse themselves in that briny drink without explicit direction from a physician. Not only does one come up smelling of salt and fish, but you can see they’ve been unloading coal along the pier. The sea is positively black with the stuff in places.”

Charley laughed. “Testy, aren’t we? And awfully quick to change the subject over this  “nothing” that happened. Have they stopped?” He chuckled and fit glass to eye once again. “Or do you mind me getting a good gander at the gel?”

“How can I object,” Beau responded irritably, “When every man-jack along the entire coastline is privy to the scene?”

“You’re a brick, old man,” Charley squinted at the bathing box, which had come to a halt, with the surf knee-deep on the horse. “Ah, the door opens,” he breathed. “Who shall come first? Age or beauty?”

Beau sucked in his breath. Encased in one of the ill-fitting and unflattering smocks, Nell peeped out. Assisted by the dipper, she moved carefully down the wet stepsto sink, gasping at the cold, thigh deep into the water. The dipper indicated that Nell would no longer feel the cold if she would only immerse herself, and gave a lively and splashy demonstration of how to hold one’s breath and nose, the more comfortably to go under.

“There we go,” Charley kept up a running repartee. “All the way under, my dear. Ugh, there goes the hair like a dark mass of seaweed. Now, bob on up again, and let us have a look at you.”

But Nell, once under, stayed under, at least up to her neck.

She seemed to realize that she risked exposure in standing. She splashed about quite contentedly, while her aunt came uncertainly onto the steps, bashfully dipped her toes into a wave, and swiftly jerked them out again.

The dipper seemed unable to coax the older woman into taking to the water, but Nell, cajoled and pleaded and playfully splashed water until her aunt agreed to release her grip on the bathing box door, and began to come down, with the dipper’s assistance.

“Help her in, love,” Charley crooned, “The old gel might slip without your shoulder to lean on.”

As if Charley somehow directed the Fates, Ursula Dunn did come close to slipping, and up shot Miss Quinby out of the water, like a glistening nymph swum up from the depths to lend the gleaming wet support of one thinly clad shoulder to her aunt. Beau caught his breath. Fanella Quinby was a water bound sylph, a Venus, a Siren come to life. The outline of her body; breast, waist, and hip, was curvaceous, water-bejewelled perfection against the glittering backdrop of the sea.

“Good God!” Charley breathed. In the same instant that he spoke, a shout was raised from the combined throats of half a dozen officers who lounged along the Steine, also watching her. This accolade was echoed by a little whoop from an old gentleman to their left, who had, open-mouthed, allowed his peering glass to slip out of his eye socket and onto the rocks.

Oblivious to the stir, Charley said, “What an unexpected gem!”

Nell released her aunt and slipped back down into the dark water’s obscurity.

Beau, who held his breath, let it out in a deep, gusty sigh, and lowered his glass with shaking fingers. He knew that body. His hands held the memory of those curves. “A remarkable young woman, Miss Quinby,” he said reverently, and there was something heartfelt in his tone, that drew his friend’s attention.

“Quinby? Not the same Quinby your sister was dragging about London?”

“No,” Beau said absent-mindedly, feeling dazed. “That‘s her sister, Aurora, the beauty of the family.”

“The beauty! Good God, Beau, she must be something head and shoulders above the ordinary! Perhaps Beatrix is right, and you should allow yourself the pleasure of being introduced.”

Beau shook his head. “If I’m to further my a-a-acquaintance with any Quinby, ’twill be this one.”

“What!” Charley sat up abruptly. “Damn it man! What happened on the mail down from Godstone? You must tell me.”

Beau flicked his friend a sideways glance. “I should think that obvious, Charley. The coachman became in-infatuated with one of his passengers.”

Nell stepped down out of the bathing box, reclothed, refreshed and reminded of a gentleman who occupied her thoughts all too frequently of late, in tying her simple bonnet over damply trailing hair. She really must make an effort to forget Mr. Ferd. Chances were, they would never cross paths again. And, it was probably best that they did not. It would not please her family in the least should she become infatuated with a common coachman, no matter that he was in no way common in her estimation.

As she sorted through such thoughts, she spotted Boots, the piebald horse she had spent so much time describing to Mr. Ferd. Still the mild, wide-shouldered, broad-backed beast of her memory, with shaggy mane and shaggier tail, Boots had become bony and thin, a horse so aged in the space of so little time, that Nell found it difficult to believe that he was indeed the same beast. The farrier who had purchased their carthorse had assured her that her old friend would go to someone with light labor needs. Nell did not concur with the idea that as sole bearer of a heavy bathing box, which must be dragged out over the rocky shore, time and again throughout the day, Boots had been honestly done by.

She did not stop to think that she made a spectacle of herself. She just ran, in a rather headlong fashion, considering the rocky condition of the beach, calling, “Boots, Boots old lad. What have they done to you?”

Behind her, Ursula picked her way more carefully, urging, “Slow down Fanella, or you shall most certainly break your neck.”

Brown eye milky with cataracts, Boots could not see her well, but recognizing her voice, he veered away from the straight path he had been picking into the shore. His waywardness earned him an oath and a crack of the whip across his haunches.

“Do not whip him on my account,” Nell cried.

The driver did not argue, only sat open-mouthed as Nell flung her arms around his horse’s neck, as the old nag came to a decisive stop some ten yards shy of where he was supposed to. The driver may have been unable to think of anything to say or do, not so the dipper, who strode around the side of the wagon, come down from her perch on the steps.

“What’s the meaning of this?” she demanded, and as she could clearly see for herself why the horse had stopped, she strode up to Fanella just as Ursula Dunn huffed onto the scene.

“Leave off, girlie.” The dipper said stoutly to Nell, her browned and muscular hands planted on swaddled hips. “I’ve customers waiting."

“What is the meaning of this, Fanella?" Ursula croaked.

Nell looked up at the dipper so fiercely that the woman fell back a step. “Only look at this poor animal’s hooves,” she insisted. “They are horribly split. He cannot see well enough to navigate these rocks.”

“Hazard of the business, missy,” the dipper insisted. “And the business is none of yours.”

“But, he was once our horse,” Tears sprang to Nell’s eyes as she stroked the tangled forelock. “And a grand brute he was. What do you feed him, to make his ribs show so?”

Ursula caught hold of Nell’s arm. “Come away, my dear. He’s no longer yours to worry over.”

The woman who had occupied the bathing box, a great, frazzle-haired thing, with a pasty complexion gone red from too much exposure to the sun, came mincing around from the end of the wagon. “Why are we stopped? Do you mean me to walk the rest of the way across these bruising stones?”

The dipper continued to glare at Nell. “We’ll be delivering you the rest of the route, madame, if you will just nip back into the box. We’ve had a short delay, because this young lady once knew our horse, but she’ll be stepping out of the way now, won’t you dearie?”

“Oh yes,” Ursula agreed. “We are just going, are we not, Fanella?” She plucked at Nell’s sleeve.

Nell ignored her. “Will you sell the horse?” she asked desperately.

The dipper, annoyed by the interruption in her trade, frowned, obviously unmoved by the suggestion. There was an obstinate tilt to her chin, that seemed to indicate her unwillingness to so much as discuss the possibility, but the driver found his tongue at last.

“How much will you gi ’ for ’im.”

Nell’s mind raced. She had only her pin money to call her own, and not much of that.

“Fanella, I forbid you to buy the horse back,” Ursula said firmly, lips compressed. “Your mother sold off the horses because you’ve not the money to feed the brutes, and I defy you to saddle me with a nag such as this one when you know how particular your uncle is concerning his cattle. Let this discussion end right here, love. Give the old fellow a pat on the nose and let us be off.”