What Happens in Scotland (29 page)

This was not that child.

Oh, she had the same freckles and brown tresses, although this time her hair was dry and ruthlessly pulled back from her face. She possessed the same sharp nose, the same flat chest. Christ, she had on the same girlish frock, some unfashionably plain thing that came down only to her calves and looked to have seen one too many summers.

But she was far taller now. Lanky, he would have called her, had she been a horse he was contemplating at auction. Her shoulders seemed ill-contained by her clothing, and strained against the seams of her dress. Her expression was different, too. The girl he remembered—although, admittedly, it was a memory distorted by grief and whiskey—had been extraordinary. Full of life, leaking emotion.

The woman seemed better contained.

“Miss Tolbertson, isn’t it?” he asked as he drew up in front of her, because really, under the peculiar circumstances, what else could he say?

Her mouth seemed to work around the words she wanted to say. “You remember my name, Lieutenant?”

“A man retains certain facts regarding near death experiences. The name of his rescuer tends to be one of them.” He looked down at her, and realized he did not have to look very far. Her nose came nigh up to his chin, a singular experience when one considered he was six-foot-two in stocking feet. “And it’s no longer Lieutenant. I sold my commission last year. Please, call me David.”

Her eyes widened. “I hardly think . . . I mean . . . I do not
know
you.”

“You’ve known me for eleven years. You rescued me from this very spot, when I should have drowned. Formality seems a little pointless, under the circumstances.”

She drew in a deep, audible breath, and then her mouth found a smile that reached her eyes. He recalled that now, too, how one had to search their mind to identify whether her eyes were green or brown or somewhere in between.

“Then you must call me Caroline.” She sent a furtive look in two directions before her gaze came back to rest on him. “It is not as if there is anyone to hear our frightful lack of propriety anyway.” She assessed him in a broad, hazel sweep. “I confess, you have taken me a bit by surprise. I rarely see anyone on this stretch of beach.”

David had not known what to expect on returning to this beach this morning. An epiphany, perhaps. A dark memory of the boy he had once been, and a sharp reminder of the man he must be.

But he had not expected her.

“It
is
a rather isolated bit of coast. And difficult to reach.” He glanced down to the high hem of her skirts and the sturdy half boots that graced her feet. She had dressed properly for the walk.
Practical girl.
He was wearing shoes better suited for a stroll along Brighton’s Marine Parade, and a vicious blister had taken up residence on his right heel.

“Why did you never return?” she asked, her voice lower and huskier than the one in his memory.

David considered his answer. After the events of that fateful day, he had returned to nearby Preston where his infantry unit had been stationed. He had been close enough to have come back any time he had wanted.

But he
hadn’t
wanted. The less he thought of Brighton, and the fewer visual triggers he forced on himself, the easier it had been to go on during those early, guilt-ridden years. He shrugged noncommittally. “I live elsewhere. This is my first visit back since that day.”

“Oh.” Her wrinkled forehead softened. “I suppose that explains why I haven’t seen you again.”

“Do you live in town, then?” Though her accent was more educated than the dialect he had picked up from the few local fishermen he had encountered, it seemed too much of a coincidence to see her twice in two visits if she did not.

“Yes, on the far east side. Our house sits right on the ocean.” As if prompted by the question, her eyes pulled toward the crashing surf. He followed her gaze and caught the diamond flash of waves peaking before boiling over into gray. The tide was coming in, and it was a fearsome sight. The high cliff walls that surrounded them formed an inlet that seemed to force the water into a constricted space, intensifying the effect.

Had the waves been this rough and the tide this high that day, eleven years ago, when she had swum out to save him? He couldn’t remember. But the thought of such danger, heaped on a child’s shoulders by his own stupidity, chilled him thoroughly.

“I wouldn’t want to keep you.” Her voice broke through his thoughts. She motioned toward the footpath down which she had just come. “Not if you have a schedule to keep.”

“I am not expected elsewhere at the moment.” She seemed anxious to be rid of him. He wondered if perhaps she felt a need to hurry him along, in case he was considering another ill-advised swim off this section of treacherous, rocky coast.

Truly, there wasn’t enough whiskey in the world.

“I am visiting Brighton with my mother,” he added, “but she has eschewed my company at present.”

In point of fact, his mother had practically tossed him out of the room they had taken at the Bedford Hotel, insisting she was fine, snapping at him when he tried to plump her pillow or read to her out loud from the novel she kept on the table by her bed. He might have been plagued by troublesome memories in the three days since their arrival, but his mother seemed better, at least. The physician’s prognosis a month ago had not been favorable, but already her lungs sounded clearer. Perhaps there really
was
something to the restorative power of Brighton’s sea water cures.

He had initially argued against his mother’s suggestion for a recuperative holiday here. He had felt no desire to return to the town of Brighton and the nightmares that he sensed would await him here. But he had not been able to refuse his mother when she told him her heart was set on Brighton. Not when she had been so ill for so long.

And not when she had intonated it might be her last request.

“You are here for the summer then?” Caroline asked, thankfully oblivious to the maudlin direction of his thoughts. “So many are, now. The new rail system even permits Londoners to come for the day, if they want. Can you imagine? London to Brighton and back again, in only a few hours.” She wrinkled her nose, stretching a remarkable constellation of freckles far and wide. “Last year they came in droves every Saturday, to soil the beaches and overrun the sewers and generally trample over every blade of seagrass they can find. We have begun to earn the moniker ‘London-by-the-sea’, I’m afraid. I hope you won’t be disappointed here.”

A grin worked its way into residence on his face. She was the same, but different, too. She no longer chattered on with quite the same fervor as she had as a child, but she still chattered.

He was fascinated by the changes time had wrought, both in her appearance and her demeanor. Although he would have expected the opposite reaction, given the circumstances of their history, her voice drew him from his self-flagellating thoughts and diverted him from painful memories.

Suddenly his month’s penance in Brighton no longer seemed so long, or so threatening. He offered her the full force of his smile. “I have not been disappointed in the least. And while Brighton’s popularity among Londoners is certainly a diverting topic, I would really rather talk about you.”

C
AROLINE DREW A
deep breath, wondering why her stomach skittered so at the sight of one man’s straight, white teeth.

David Cameron was not quite as handsome as she remembered. Although his shoulders were every bit as broad as they had been eleven years ago, today they were covered in a brown wool sack coat instead of a diverting military uniform. His unruly curls were the color of new straw, and seemed to mock the shimmering spun gold of her memory. His face had lengthened into the hard planes of adulthood, framed by tiny lines etched by sun and experience, there at the corners of his blue eyes.

Handsome, to be sure, but not that handsome.

Of course, David Cameron
was
the man she had fallen a little bit in love with before she was old enough to know better.

When she had first caught sight of him, framed by scrub and seagrass along the eastern edge of the white cliff walls, she felt as if she had been slammed against the rocks that broke the waves into fragmented pieces, a dozen yards or so from shore. She could still scarcely believe he had appeared after eleven long years. Even more astonishing, he was speaking to her as if he was
enjoying
the conversation.

And so, despite his kind teasing, she was going to do anything it took to prevent the conversation from turning to her.

“You’re from Scotland?” She wet her lips, wishing she didn’t feel so nervous. “Although your brogue is not so strong as my memory.”

He grimaced. “Ah, I treated you to my brogue during our last meeting, did I?” He leaned in, one conspirator to another, and she felt his nearness as surely as if he had pressed himself against her. “I’ll share a little-known secret. My accent tends to come out when I have had too much to drink.”

She pursed her lips around a smile. “Well, that certainly explains it, then. You smelled like a distillery the last time we met.” She took an exaggerated, in-drawn sniff. “Not today, however.” In point of fact, he smelled . . . interesting. Like salt and ocean and, ever so faintly, freshly laundered cotton that had been heated by exertion.

Her cheeks heated at the audacity of such an inappropriate thought, and she cast about for a diversion. “Why does your mother not wish for your company today?”

He sighed, and she could pick apart the different tones of worry and exasperation that formed the sound. “She has been ill, and the doctor prescribed a rest cure. I brought her to Brighton with every expectation of serving as a doting son during her convalescence. But since our arrival, she seems to harbor other opinions for how I would spend my time.”

Caroline suppressed a smile as he ended the explanation on a not-so-silent groan. “Oh?”

“Social engagements.” He made it sound much the same as one might say the word “manure.”

“We should probably keep our mothers apart then,” she observed dryly. “Because mine is possessed of similar intent.”

He laughed then, a spontaneous burst of mirth that the wind snatched up and tossed against the cliff walls. “The baroness harbors aspirations of a social agenda that eclipses anything to be had in my hometown of Moraig. I really don’t understand the fuss. I am only a second son.”

Caroline’s heart thudded in the direction of her knees. She had not known of his status, that day eleven years ago. She had seen his military uniform and presumed him a common soldier, but by Brighton standards, he was borderline royalty. “Well, the son of a baron attracts some notice, especially in a small town like Brighton.” Unfortunately, if he moved in the circles she suspected, he was out of her social sphere.

“I brought my mother here to convalesce, but it seems her constitution is less dire than the pressing matter of her youngest son’s lack of marriage prospects. She has already accepted not one, but
two
invitations on my behalf.”

Caroline gave an indelicate shudder. “Sounds lovely.”

“Truly?” He sounded surprised.

“No.” She shook her head. “I confess I would rather play shuttlecock. And shuttlecock is a game I dearly despise.”

That had him laughing again, and the sound sent her insides into a heated free fall. “If not shuttlecock, what then? We’ve established you don’t mind a bit of impropriety. Do you still swim, mermaid?” he chuckled.

And just like that, the desire to direct the conversation away from her eccentricities circled full round to take her by the throat. Perhaps he hadn’t heard the rumor about her unfeminine proclivities that was circulating like a scrub grass fire among Brighton’s summer visitors, but he
had
once seen her swim. Even if it had occurred eleven years ago, even if it was something they had both sworn to silence, that kind of secret was dangerous to a girl like Caroline, who already hovered on the outer fringes of society.

And while she was not sure she
wanted
to be accepted by the summer set, her mother was insistent she set her sights on more than a life of quiet spinsterhood. And that meant Caroline was expected to conform, even if acting the lady felt closer to a stranglehold than a blessing.

“No.” Caroline squirmed against guilt in her sweat-soaked dress. For a moment she contemplated changing her answer, telling him the truth. But how to explain that, despite her knowledge of Society’s expectations, despite her grudging admittance that her mother’s hopes for her future made perfect, proper sense, Caroline’s soul—nay, her
sanity
—cried out for something different? The ocean might pull and push her. It might occasionally threaten to kill her.

But it did not degrade her. She felt
whole
amid the waves, in a way she never did amongst the crowd.

And so she swam in secret. Furtively, like one of the silver-finned fishes that darted amongst the rocks, escaping the larger toothed fish that sought to consume her whole.

“Ladies do not swim,” she added, weakly to her own ears.

His brow lifted. “You used to swim very well. You had an oddly styled stroke, if I recall, but it was quite effective.”

The warm day and the uncomfortable bent to the conversation made the perspiration break out along her forehead in what she had to presume was a most indelicate sheen. The swim she had come for, the swim which was now out of reach, would have helped restore her to rights. But the reality of her circumstances stopped the words from lifting off her tongue.

David Cameron seemed to like her. Why would she destroy that with a bit of uncalled-for honesty?

“You were drunk that day,” she pointed out, breathless. “You probably don’t remember things very clearly. And I was never very experienced. I doubt I could imagine much more than a bit of uncoordinated splashing now.”

He nodded, as if her lie made all the sense in the world, when it didn’t even make sense to her. And just like that, the idea of telling the truth shriveled into something unrecognizable.