“Is that it?” he asked, the limestone arch behind him.
“You cannot very well enjoy it that way, unless you have eyes in the back of your head.”
He grinned and turned back around, jogging the last few yards toward the human-sized hole in the cliffside. “How much pin money would you bet I could squeeze through that?”
“None.” She laughed and leaned her head through the opening, staring out to the rippled beach and ice-blue water beyond. “When I was a girl, I used to play here for hours.”
“What did you play?”
“Silly things, I suppose. Sometimes I put sticks in the sand by that rock over there and built a castled fortress.”
“To fend off whom?”
“Sea pirates, of course. Then I’d come over here to this arch, and I’d pretend that if I stepped through it, I would come out in a different place entirely.”
“What place?”
“Balls, most always. I’d be wearing a lovely dress, just like the ones my—” She cleared her throat and stepped away from the rock, brushing the dirt from her sleeve. “Anyway, I had wonderful times.”
They walked back toward the horses, where they could see Bridget in the distance bending in search of seashells.
His steps fell in rhythm with hers. “What was she like?”
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
“I was young when she died.”
“You must remember something.”
A pinprick of pain jabbed her. Beautiful dresses, a pale-faced woman in a bed, a wonderful Christmas, then …
“Look.” He stilled her arm, his clasp strong, before he released her to lift something from the sand. He brushed it clean with his glove.
A small tiara hair comb with carved coral beads, beautiful despite the rust climbing along the claws.
He pressed it into her hand. “What do you do with all these lost treasures you find along the shore?”
“I don’t know exactly. I put them in my trunk or in my drawers, or gift them to the servants.”
“And this?” He nodded to the comb. “What shall you do with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you should wear it.” His grin was soft, his gaze penetrating. He seemed ready to say more but instead took her arm and continued their walk down the beach.
A part of her soul flurried. The next time she dressed for an occasion, the old and rusty comb would be tucked into her hair locks.
Indeed, she would keep it forever.
A slight knock rose over the faltering notes of “Minuet and Trio.” Isabella glanced to the window, expecting that a branch had smacked it, or that the wind had thrown a pebble into the pane.
But it was William who stared back at her from the other side of the glass.
She shushed him with a finger to her lips, but he tapped all the more.
Didn’t he know Mrs. Morrey would hear?
