Page 24 of The Viscount's Pearl
She turned away from the seal, regarding him with her head tilted to one side. “Marry you?”
“A selkie is a seal-bride,” he said. “There is a story of a man who saw a beautiful woman emerge from a sealskin. When he hid her sealskin, she agreed to marry him and was a loving wife,even bearing his children. But one day she found the sealskin where he had hidden it and she returned to the sea, never to be seen again.” He thought. “I never understood why she would be a loving wife but then return to the sea just because she found the sealskin again. Surely, if she loved him, she would have stayed regardless?”
She said nothing for a few moments, and he thought perhaps she disagreed with him or was uninterested in the story, but after a few more paces she stopped and turned to face him, her bonnet ribbons fluttering in the wind.
“I understand why she would go.”
“Who?”
“The selkie.”
“Do you? Why?”
“It is exhausting not to be your true self, to have to wear a mask to be considered acceptable. It is why I do not much like to be in society. I can wear the clothes my modiste and mother have insisted on, I can make polite conversation, I can sit and sip tea at one house after another until I could scream, but when I get home I will sit alone and in silence for the rest of the day, just to recover.” She looked at him, as though judging his expression, then continued. “I know I am not like other people, that you and everyone else finds me odd, but that is the truth of it. I do not know how other women bear the season, though I can see for myself that they can and do, indeed they seem to find pleasure in it.” She looked back at the sea, now empty, the seal having disappeared. “Perhaps the man should have allowed the selkie to come and go from the sea, that she might not grow exhausted by the ways of humans. Perhaps then she would have stayed with him forever.” She turned away from the sea, began walking onwards. “The tide is rising,” she called over her shoulder. “We must make haste.”
Laurence stood, watching her walk away. She had shown hima part of herself he had not been expecting, had countered his light-hearted story of a selkie with a truth buried in the story that had never occurred to him, that tinged the tale with sadness rather than mystery, that the man had not been able to see that his bride was unhappy, had not allowed her true self to be known, had made her hide it away until she could bear it no longer and had abandoned what love had been between them, unable to sustain her human form without respite. He looked back out to sea, but the seal was gone, had dived below or returned to its own kind somewhere else. Ahead, Miss Lilley’s brown velvet and fur pelisse was the only seal-like form on the beach, and he hurried after her.
Within an hour they had reached Botany Bay, where giant chalk stacks rose up out of the water, but Laurence had forgotten how slow their pace was when gathering shells. The sea was already lapping at the stacks. They would not reach Margate, it would take another half an hour to reach that shore. The quickest way off the beach was just beyond the chalk stacks, but the water was already knee deep and rising. They could not retreat, for the shoreline was rapidly receding behind them. Above them were steep cliffs which were unsafe to climb.
“We may have to wait at the top of the beach there, against the cliff, until the tide begins to fall again,” he said. “But it will be a few hours.”
“No need,” she said. “We will walk through the gap in the stacks to the other side, where we can reach the higher beach. There is a little path cut into the cliffs where we will be able to leave the sands and reach the clifftops. From there we can walk to Margate in safety.”
It was an unexpected decision, but he nodded. The water was still only knee high, so he could carry her in his arms. He wouldbe soaked, of course, but it would be safe enough. “I will remove my boots. If you would not mind holding them while I carry you, I think it will be safer than allowing water to get inside, which might weigh them down.”
She frowned at him. “Carryme?”
He stared back at her, confused. “Well, of course, Miss Lilley, I hardly think you can walk through the sea, it is far too deep. It would be dangerous.”
“Nonsense,” she said briskly. “I will be entirely unharmed if we are quick about it.” “Though,” she amended, “my boots will likely be ruined, and Deborah will have plenty to say about seawater on the hem of my pelisse and gown, but she will get over it and my modiste and shoemaker will be delighted to make new ones. Now then.”
To his horror, she strode forwards. The sea was already lapping at her boots, but as she reached the curved archway between two chalk stacks, wider than a large door, the top of the arch towering high above her, she scooped up her pelisse as well as her skirts and pulled them upwards. Laurence saw her cream stockings, the pink silk ribbon bows holding them up at the knee, then one shocking glimpse of the bare white skin above, before the water was already swirling between her knees, threatening to wet her thighs. He stood, staring as she walked through the archway and then disappeared to the other side, before hastily pulling off his boots and following her. The cold seawater drenched his legs and lower breeches at once, but he made his way through the arch and through the shallower water up to the beach, where he found her, skirts and pelisse back in place, her little boots sodden, the pale brown leather turned dark. She watched him as he replaced his boots, unable to avoid sand getting inside them.
“I expect your man will be able to remove the sand and dry them out. Now, we had better use the cliff top walk, for wecannot make Margate, the water is already too high. The path to it is up here.”
She made her way up the beach, soft sand sucking at her feet, making her walk slowly towards the tiny path at the top, cut through the chalk cliffs, allowing them to reach the upper ground away from the beach. Laurence followed behind in silence. He had expected to carry her, would have seen it as the gentlemanly thing to do, had offered it without any intentions of intimacy, of the opportunity to touch her. But her actions had stunned him, both her bravery in risking the deep wading alone, but also her lifting her skirts so high, affording him that momentary image which would not now leave him, the delicate pink bows and above them that flash of skin, the whiteness of her thighs, how the foam had swirled between her legs. He was breathless with desire both at what he had seen and her lack of coyness. And yet she had not been brazen, there had been no intention to arouse in her actions, only her matter-of-fact solution to the situation in which they had found themselves. If he had been the man in the story who had seen, for one second, the stirring sight of the woman beneath the sealskin, he too would have grabbed at the fur and hidden it away to keep her by his side. As he reached her at the top of the cliff, the sea below them, he thought for a moment of pulling her towards him, of slipping his hands beneath the brown velvet pelisse to find her warm body, looking into her wide grey eyes before kissing her upturned lips.
“The carriage will be a welcome sight when we reach it,” she said, looking him up and down. “We are both in need of a warm bath, are we not?”
Her words only brought more images to his mind, the steam rising, the heat and wetness of her skin against his if they were to share a bath together, the pink bows of her stockings lyingdiscarded on the floor… He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the fantasy before it subsumed him.
“You do not think you need to be warmed after that experience?”
“It was nothing,” he managed. “But I admire your bravery,” he added.
“I am not a damsel in distress in need of rescuing,” she retorted. “I have been caught by the tides more than once over the years, which is why I warned you of them. But no matter, there is little harm done. Now, we had better make our way to Margate or the footmen will think us lost.”
They walked in silence back to Margate, where the carriage, as agreed, was waiting and returned them at a brisk pace to Northdown House, where Deborah exclaimed over Miss Lilley’s wet boots and hurried her away for a bath. Laurence refused one, uncertain that he wished to continue his thoughts about Miss Lilley. He changed into clean clothes and left Roberts to deal with the boots, returning to the drawing room, where he poured himself a drink and tried to clear his head. His thoughts about Miss Lilley were inappropriate, and besides, he had no interest in such an odd woman. No doubt he was missing the charms of his usual bedfellows, that was all.
The evening passed with the usual delicious food, some conversation and an early night for all, but Laurence spent a restless night, thanks to dreams of wide-eyed seals diving through waves which rose ever higher while he searched in vain for someone – he could not see whom – lost in the darkening waters, waking more than once with sweat on his brow.
Chapter 7
Christmas
Laurence came down to breakfast the next day feeling awkward, but Miss Lilley greeted him at the breakfast table as though nothing had occurred and so he determined to put the event behind him. He had no real interest in Miss Lilley, after all, and that one unexpected glimpse of her legs was not enough to ruin a perfectly amicable acquaintance. He helped himself to coffee and sat near his uncle as the three of them discussed their Christmas plans.
“I will close up Northdown for the winter months, as usual,” said Lord Barrington. “I miss it when I am away, but it does not do to leave Ashland Manor with no master for too long, they see little enough of me as it is. And Northdown is always at its best in the summer months. Indeed this year I have tarried longer than usual, generally I am gone by November, the cold makesmy bones ache. Frances will be headed to her family. And you, Laurence? Frolicking in London as usual?”
