Her eyes darkened and she returned her shaking hands to her lap. “First timeonit, anyway.” Before he could ask for clarification, she added, “Mother would never let me aboard anything so common as aboat.”
His back straightened defensively until he realized that her softly mocking laughter was directed at herself, not him.
“And why not?” she demanded. Her direct gaze pierced him as much as the wistfulness in her voice. “How grand would it be to sail to India, see the world, have a little adventure now and then?”
He’d never been to India, but he well understood the allure of adventure. Would die without it. She appeared of the same mind. He felt an odd connection to her deep within his chest.
Evan suddenly wished they weren’t in a rowboat after all. He’d very much like to kiss her. But though he’d been teasing earlier about leaning too close toward the fishes, they most likelywouldcapsize if he did anything so foolish as join her on her tiny bench and pull her into his arms.
So he picked up the oars and rowed for shore. He would kiss her there, the moment they arrived. Well, he’d get her to dry land first. Maybe take care of his boat. But then he’d smile, hug her tight, and kiss her.
Unfortunately, a lone figure appeared in the distance and ambled ever closer to where Evan had planned to bank the rowboat. Not just any lone figure. That nettlesome magistrate. The man was a plague among plagues. Evan gripped the oars in frustration.
So much for kissing.
Miss Stanton twisted around in her seat to see what he’d been frowning at.
“Look, it’s Mr. Forrester!” Her surprised tone turned pensive. “I thought he left. What’s he doing out here?”
An excellent question, that.
“Before he’s upon us,” Evan said, “we need to discuss what happened in town.”
Miss Stanton’s unblinking gaze met his. “The part when you ruined my reputation beyond all hope and compromised yourself with me in the process?”
He inclined his head and tried not to feel ill. Put that way, what had seemed like the lesser evil at the time now sounded like total folly when phrased so starkly. He had not really been thinking of compounding the situation by kissing her again—had he?
“Luckily for me,” she said slowly, “no one here has the ear of anyone in London. The tainting of my reputation is, for now at least, confined to Bournemouth. Unluckily for me... so am I.”
“I suppose the gentlemanly thing to do would be to offer for you,” he somehow managed to say over the currents swirling in his stomach. The impromptu kiss now seemed a death knell.Marriage.Much as he still longed to hold her, to possess her, to pleasure her—he had not envisioned a permanent situation.
But she was already shaking her head.
“Thank you for offering, but you needn’t bother. I’ve plans for my future and they don’t involve being trapped in this godforsaken town. I’d rather spend the rest of my life imprisoned in my parents’ town house than another minute on this beach. Er, no offense meant.”
“None taken,” he muttered. And couldn’t help but feel offended. “So... the story is, I asked for you, and you politely declined?”
She had no need to nod her head quite so emphatically.
“You’re in no danger of matrimony,” she assured him, then narrowed her eyes. “But there can be no more talk of being ‘lovers.’ And no more kissing. I cannot take the chance that rumor of my misconduct travel all the way into Town. At least, not beforeIget there.”
He gave a wry chuckle. “Don’t worry on that score. If I so much as look at you lasciviously before the public eye again, we’ll find ourselves before the altar no matter how politely we both decline. And I want that even less than you do.”
Probably.
“Good.” She looked relieved. Too relieved. He might not be a High Society fribble like the fops she apparently preferred, but sharing a future with him couldn’t bethatrepellant an idea. Not with the way they had stood together atop the cliff and gazed upon the sea. Or the way the rest of the world fell away every time they kissed.
Used to kiss, rather.
Evan leaped from the boat as soon as the bottom scraped sand, but the goody-goody magistrate had already materialized at the bow to lift Miss Stanton out. Biting back a growl, Evan had no choice but to drag the boat ashore while the magistrate carried Miss Stanton to dry ground. And kept walking. And still hadn’t put her down.
Evan abandoned ship and chased them. He snatched Miss Stanton from Forrester’s feather grip and hugged her to his chest for a moment before setting her down. On her own two feet. Like agentlemanshould have done.
Forrester gave him a blank-eyed smile. “Why, good day to you, Bothwick.”
Evan fought the urge to knock out his teeth. As if the bounder hadn’t just seen Evan rowing the very boat ashore from which he’d plucked the beautiful Miss Stanton! Five gold coins said that her sharp blue eyes and soft little body were the precise reasons the magistrate kept “forgetting” to travel on to the next town.
Before Evan’s brain could come up with a viable way to fistfight a man of the law without borrowing too much trouble, Miss Stanton’s disingenuousness intervened.
