Banished to Brighton by Sydney Jane Baily
Chapter Eight
Helplessly, James leanedin and claimed Miss Talbot’s perfect mouth, tasting the tart and sweet lemonade when he did.
With his hands going to her slender waist, he drew her close, feeling her breasts press against him. Her hands circled up behind his neck and rested there.
The familiarity of their kiss astonished him, considering how infrequently it had happened before. The jasmine and orange blossom scent clinging to her skin and her clothing filled his head, and he crushed her closer as he’d wanted to do since first seeing her in the hotel’s café.
And exactly as in London, his body reacted with absurdly strong desire.
“Mm,”she hummed against his mouth.
When he drew back, her brown eyes opened wide, her visage appearing shocked. In truth, James was surprised too, believing until that moment he would be perfectly capable of ignoring the attraction between them. Even for a rake, it was rash behavior to do such a thing in the middle of the day and in the middle of a room with large windows.
Should he offer his profound apology despite not feeling the least bit sorry?Feeling quite the opposite and with her staring at his mouth with blatant interest, there was only one thing he could do.
Tilting his head to the other side, he fused his mouth to hers again, deepening the kiss. With longing coursing through him, James wished it wasn’t broad daylight with Prinny and all his courtiers directly outside the Pavilion, probably awaiting their return. Elsewise, alone with her in the palace’s cool interior, it would be tempting to test that comfortable sofa.
Sliding his tongue across her lower lip, she opened her mouth. The tip of his tongue charged in like the Royal Calvary to stroke and explore. When her fingers tugged on his hair, the sensations sent a direct tug to his shaft, too.
“Grr,”she growled, astonishing him until he realized the noise emanated from her stomach.
Leaning away, he looked down to see her smiling ruefully, her cheeks pink with embarrassment.
“My apologies for such an ignominious sound.”
“No, it is for me to offer mine. I know you’re all but starving, yet I detained you.” Detained was a mild term for dancing with her tongue and sucking on her lower lip. Yet if she wasn’t going to refer to the inadvisable breach of propriety, then he wouldn’t either.
“Let us hasten to get you fed, lest you fall into the sea during the next event only to be carried away into the Channel.”
He would miss her if she did.
She chuckled softly, her gaze holding his.
“My bonnet,” she asked. “Still straight?”
He nodded and offered her his arm.
***
When beauteous fair-ones to the beach repair,
To taste the wave, or breathe the sea-fraught air;
Or wait in turns, their lovely forms to lave,
And steal fresh beauties from the ambient wave.
– Brighton. A Poem by Mary Lloyd, 1809
GLYNNIS FELT PERFECTLYsatisfied when the Prince Regent announced it was time to stroll down to the beach and the bathing area. She’d been thoroughly, toe-curlingly kissed! Hargrove was a master at it, and all she could think of was “More, please.” She could easily imagine a lifetime of his kisses.
Beyond that, her satisfaction was due to filling up on Scotch eggs, cold roast beef, ribs of lamb, roast duck, and the sausage rolls she’d been hoping for. There were even pork pies, spinach pudding, and pickled vegetables, along with tray upon tray of sweets, as well as comforts coated in sugar.
She hoped she wouldn’t sink to the bottom of the ocean floor.
And at the end of it, when she thought the picnic was surely over, servants rolled out two buckets filled with ice and salt. Inside each was a metal pot holding perfectly blended ice cream.
The ladies clapped, and even the men looked rather chuffed as they all stood and swarmed the servants under the shade of the largest tree.
“It’s like being at Gunter’s in London,” Glynnis said to Hargrove, who appeared by her elbow. Even he couldn’t be grumpy about Brighton when there was such a treat.
When everyone had their fill of the blackberry and the strawberry ice cream, trays of a sweet cold ginger drink were brought out.
“To aid the speed and ease of your digestion,” the Prince Regent assured them.
“So we can all stuff ourselves again tonight,” Hargrove muttered to her. She’d nearly forgotten there was another assembly that evening.
“I’m looking forward to bathing in the sea first,” she confessed. “I have never done it.”
“Never?” He seemed surprised although she had difficulty picturing him stripping off in a bathing machine and splashing about while being held by a dipper. It seemed undignified for a man, and yet everyone knew King George had enjoyed it as did his son and other members of the royal family. So why not Hargrove?
“I found it too cold off the coast near my home, although Swansea Bay is usually calm and the beach is soft and sandy,” she explained to him her lack of experience. No point in disclosing how she’d never been invited by any of the London quality folk when they took excursions to the seaside or even to the Serpentine for that matter.
“Then I hope you will find it enjoyable,” he said, trying to lead her away from the picnic area.
But she held back, scouring the base of all the trees.
“My parasol has gone missing.”
He joined her in the hunt. The other guests had left as she and Hargrove circled the trees and even looked under the tables, before he asked one of the remaining staff who was cleaning up.
The man shrugged and said he would look into it.
Glynnis couldn’t believe she’d lost two pieces of her personal property within two days. So far, this seaside trip had not gained her anything, certainly not a husband. She was out a reticule and now the only parasol she had with her. Drat it all!
“If we see it in the pilfering hands of some lady,” Hargrove began as he offered his arm and they proceeded to follow the prince’s party down the Steyne to the bathing area at its end, “I shall wrestle her to the ground in your honor.”
That made Glynnis laugh. “I’m sure I shall be able to handle her myself, but I thank you. It seems you have become my protector.”
And more than that if his kiss was any indication. She felt warm every time she looked at him. Her body had become molten liquid when his mouth crushed hers and his tongue had fenced with her own. Yet after that, he’d hardly looked at her, giving his attention to some fair-haired lady while she listened to the Prince Regent’s tall tales.
If she knew anything at all about attraction, she would say Hargrove felt the intense pull between them and was fighting it tooth and nail.
And then there it was, Brighton’s splendid beach if one didn’t mind the rocks and flinty pebbles from the chalk formations upon which the town was built. From humble beginnings as a fishermen’s village, the idea that bathing in the sea was good for one’s health had been the beginning of its development into a humming town that bustled with the gentry and commoners alike.
The prince was already in his royal bathing machine, a sturdy horse having pulled it into the sea. Dippers awaited his exit out the back while someone inside the little hut on wheels helped him to undress. At the picnic, he’d said he wished old Martha Gunn were still alive as she’d been helping him to bathe in the Brighton sea since his first visit in 1783 when he was only twenty-one years old. Sadly, she’d passed away in May, and he would have to make do with another keeping him from sinking like a stone.
Glynnis faltered at the shore’s edge, seeing ladies from their party climbing into the bathing machines, mostly by twos. Their maids had waited during the picnic for the sole purpose of helping them undress in the small confines of the wooden bathing machine. Would she be brave enough to go alone?
“Well, Miss Talbot, here is your chance to renew your constitution with the vitality and health of the sea. Did you bring your own bathing dress?”
Oh!She looked around the beach to see what people were wearing, but of course, on the sand, everyone was in their regular clothing.
“I was told the people who own the bathing machines provide something suitable for bathing.”
“Undoubtedly they do. However, at the table where I was seated, the ladies were all discussing a certain Mrs. Bell, who has posted advertisements in a London fashionable magazine,” Hargrove informed her. “She has created some novel garment called a bathing preserver, although whether it is designed to preserve modesty or your life in the sea, I cannot say.”
Glynnis looked around again to see those waiting to enter the little huts on wheels. Most if not all of them had some small bag.
“Surely they don’t have bathing dresses in their reticules.”
“Naturally, I am no expert,” Hargrove continued, “but during the picnic, I was forced to listen to talk of these bathing preservers made of such delicate, light materials a lady may carry the garment in her purse. And apparently it comes with an oil skin cap to keep one’s hair dry.”
“I didn’t know any such thing existed,” she confessed. Besides, she wouldn’t have had the money for such an extravagant item as a dress made to wear merely in the sea. “I shall be fine with whatever the dipper gives me to change into.”
“The ladies expressed distaste at wearing something others had worn a hundred times.”
Glynnis hadn’t thought about that.
At her distraught expression, he added, “But if seawater is a restorative for the body, surely it can also clean a bathing dress.”
“Yes, of course,” she agreed. Those other ladies were being overly fastidious because they could afford to be. Undeterred, she would take a dip. No one would see her, nor what she was wearing. After all the women were mostly at one end of the beach while the men were taking their dips in the other. Or so she’d understood. Now, while she took another look, she noticed those in the Prince Regent’s party were scandalously mixing company.
“Are you coming?” she asked.
Hargrove had halted his progress a few yards from those awaiting their turn in the bathing machines.
“No. I prefer the pristine lakes near my country estate. I’ll watch the fun from here.”
She smiled at him, thinking he found the whole notion unbecoming, which it probably was. Regardless, there had been some handsome bachelors at the picnic and now they were heading into the sea, so she would do the same. Moreover, from what she understood, the men often wore nothing at all when they climbed down the ladder-rung steps on the other side of the bathing machine, facing the ocean and God.
“Shall I put your reticule in my pocket so it doesn’t come to any misfortune?”
“Thank you.” After handing it to him, she moved closer to those waiting their turn, knowing the Prince Regent had paid for all his guests. If she waited and came on her own, it would cost her one shilling and six pence by the half hour.
In a very few minutes, she had entered through the front door of the bathing machine and a horse had drawn her into the water before turning to face the beach, at which time, it had been quickly unharnessed. The dipper who’d accompanied her stepped out the back, a middle-aged woman with arms like tree limbs.
“I’ll be right here waiting, miss.” And then she closed the door.
With only the smallest cut-out square at the top to let light in, Glynnis removed her clothing as swiftly as possible and put it all in the bag they said was oilskin and, thus, waterproof. She put it upon the high shelf for safe-keeping along with her shoes and her hat and took down the folded bathing garment.
Shaking out an ugly dun-colored felt gown, she draped it over her head, tugged it into place before tying it in the front at her neck. With long sleeves and the hem falling to her ankles, she felt sufficiently concealed for her adventure. Then she dragged the bathing hat over her hair, which was already up in a twist.
Opening the door, Glynnis saw so many from the picnic already splashing about. Some were able to swim, most simply stood in the thigh-high water. Some, like her, had a dipper to hold her arm and keep her upright.
“It’s most exciting,” she said. “This is my first time bathing in the sea.”
“You’ll love it, miss,” her sturdy dipper said, assisting her down the steps. “But you’re dipping. The men are bathing.”
“I didn’t realize there was a difference.”
The woman laughed. “No, miss, there’s none at all.”
When her toes touched the cool water, Glynnis almost lost her nerve. Since her bathing machine was at the end of the line of them, she could peer around it and still see Hargrove on the beach. He was chatting with another couple who also appeared to have no interest in the restorative water.
“Come along, miss,” her dipper beckoned. “It only feels cold at first, and then it’ll be fine.”
With the woman holding her arm, Glynnis climbed down the rungs that disappeared under the water until she could step off onto the ocean floor. It was a little sandier than the shore, but still mainly pebbles.
“Sink right down,” her dipper insisted as one of the other ladies splashed water in her direction. When it hit her sun-drenched cheeks, the sea felt like ice.
“Maybe just for a moment,” Glynnis said. “I didn’t expect it to be so bracing.”
The dipper only laughed. “Good for you. Not merely bracing, but refreshing.”
With that, she tugged Glynnis down so quickly, her feet went out from under her and before her bottom hit the pebbles, her head went under.
Stupidly she gasped, got a mouthful of foul seawater, as bad as the mineral water she’d tasted in Bath with Aunt Mim, and came up spluttering.
“There,” her dipper said, while Glynnis struggled to void the ocean from her lungs and catch her breath, “I bet you feel warmer now.”
She glared at the woman. When she finished coughing, she stood up again, but pulled her hand out of the dipper’s reach.
“I think I’ll remain here a minute and take it all in, and then I’ll be done. I don’t need your services any longer, thank you. I don’t intend to swim.”
The woman looked disappointed, but Glynnis didn’t care. There must be some other person the dipper could try to drown.
“Isn’t this fun?” said another of the guests from the picnic, and since it was the only time the lady had spoken to Glynnis, she hastened to answer.
“Indeed. Is it your first dip in the sea, too?” she asked her, noting with envy the other lady’s pretty cream-colored bathing dress.
“Of course not,” the lady gloated. “I come to Brighton to swim with the Prince Regent nearly every year.” And then she stared hard at Glynnis’s unsightly bathing gown before turning away.
Nearby, another lady floated on her back. It looked easy, but when Glynnis tried, she sank and again coughed up seawater. Suddenly, a man appeared beside her. Not exactly Poseidon in stature and dressed in a gown as ugly as hers, but still he had good breadth to his shoulders underneath the felt. Glynnis couldn’t help staring since being close under these circumstances seemed so improper.
“Are you well?” he asked.
“Fine, yes, thank you. I seem to keep swallowing the sea.” She gave a little laugh as if her words were witty, while knowing they weren’t.
However, at least she had the attention of a man, although his gaze was fixed upon the fabric clinging to her breasts. Nothing wrong with looking, she supposed. Besides, with her hair under the cap, and the way she was squinting into the sun, she had no other assets for him to admire.
“You were at the picnic, weren’t you?” she asked.
“Indeed. I am Lord Dodd. A pleasure to meet you.”
“Thank you, my lord. I am Miss Talbot, daughter of—”
Before she could finish, he lowered himself down into the water.
“Do you swim?” he asked before swimming a few feet away and then back to her, showing off his form.
“No, I don’t.”
“Perhaps I could assist you if you care to learn.”
He had kind brown eyes, and he could be an unmarried man, ripe for plucking. Or was he?
Deciding not to beat about the bush, she asked, “Are you married?”
He appeared startled. “No. Why do you ask?”
She smiled. “If you are to become my swimming tutor, I would hate to anger your lady upon the beach.”
“Very thoughtful, but I am a bachelor.”
Glynnis wished she could ask him if he was in good standing with his bank or whether he had caused the birth of many babes on the wrong side of the blanket. That would be beyond the pale. Therefore, despite no longer being able to feel her fingers or toes, she decided to let this man give her a swimming lesson.
“Start by crouching in the water thusly,” he directed.
She copied what he did.
“And now reach your arm over and out and pull it back toward you. That will propel you forward, especially if you give a few kicks once you get going. You can keep your head up above the water the entire time. Try the other arm.”
She did as he told her until her arms were going in and out of the water. At least she was warming up.
“Try to become horizontal upon the sea’s surface by pushing off with your legs. Go ahead, I’ll help you.”
As she followed his instructions, he boldly placed a hand under her stomach and another on her back to keep her from sinking.
“Keep your arms going, Miss Talbot. I will support you.”
She was actually swimming. It was invigorating, and she felt the glory of her success.
“Now kick your feet, as if you are fluttering them, up and down.”
As she did, Lord Dodd gave her a little push and sent her farther away from the shore. Immediately, Glynnis panicked and let her legs drift downward. The ocean floor had disappeared until finally the tip of her toes touched it. With the water up to her chest, she felt more than a little alarmed.
Glancing toward the beach, her gaze sought out Hargrove, to find him watching intently, with his hand shading his brow under his hat. Had he witnessed Lord Dodd’s lesson?
Sighing, she would rather have had the viscount’s hands upon her, but that was out of her control. Moreover, the wind was picking up, as were the waves rocking everyone nearby. Her enthusiastic tutor paddled toward her.
“A good time to go in, I believe. The winds have shifted. There may be rain by nightfall.”
And then his warm hands were upon her again, and a little more easily, Glynnis stretched out, using her arms and legs to propel her the few feet back to the bathing machine. The Prince Regent had already gone back inside his royal one, and a horse was pulling it to the shore.
All around her, ladies and gentlemen were also retiring.
“Will you be at the Castle Hotel assembly room tonight?” Lord Dodd asked.
A shiver went through her, perhaps because he seemed genuinely interested, perhaps because her blood had frozen in her veins.
“Yes, most assuredly I shall.”
He offered her his hand to help her up the steps to the open back door of her bathing machine. No gloves, simply wet bare fingers against wet bare fingers. How thrilling!
“Thank you for the lesson.”
“Perhaps we shall swim again, Miss Talbot. Or at least have a dance tonight.”
“I would like that. I will see you later, my lord.”
She closed the door and was plunged into darkness until her eyes grew accustomed. First things first, she told herself, yanking the string that caused the flag on top of the bathing machine to rise, indicating she was ready to be pulled in. It came away in her hand.
Drats!
To be sure the flag hadn’t been raised, she opened the backdoor again and tried to see the roof, but she feared she couldn’t without descending into the water and paddling away from the hut.
Not liking that option, especially given the thunderclouds on the horizon and the size of the waves now coming toward her, Glynnis popped back inside and opened the front door A flurry of activity upon the shore caught her eyes.
Two horses were taking turns bringing in each bather, and she was last in the line of machines, so she would simply have to wait. They seemed to be moving quickly and getting people to shore in a hurry. Surely, after the one next to her was taken, hers would be next, flag or no flag.
Seeing Hargrove, she gave him a jaunty wave and closed the door. Despite the waves now rocking the little hut, Glynnis began changing out of her wet dress. First, she removed the cap, displeased to find her hair was actually wet. Taking a moment to squeeze it out, so it wouldn’t drip on her gown, next she whipped the felt bathing dress up and over her head.
Already shivering, she worked quickly, dragging her bag off the shelf and opening it. Sure enough, her clothing had not a drop of seawater on it. Feeling pleased and looking forward to being dry and warm, she lay everything on the small bench and had just started to draw on a stocking when a wave crashed against the back steps. Glancing out the door she’d left open for the light it provided, she could see how choppy and gray the sea had become. A shard of alarm sliced through her.
Luckily, she could hear and then felt a horse being harnessed to the front of her bathing machine. Another wave came over the narrow rungs of the steps, and this time flooded the interior covering her feet.
“Oh, bother,” she said, as one of her stockings was now soaked. Recognizing the good sense of the Brighton bathing machine’s architect in making the back door open inward, instead of having to lean out, Glynnis had only to give the door a shove and it closed. Quickly, she latched it and, feeling secure, began to draw on her other stocking.
A moment later, however, the sea rushed in under the door and flooded the little hut up to her ankles.
“Blast it all!” she exclaimed. At the same time, she was relieved to feel the hut in motion.
Then too many things happened at once for her to comprehend. She heard a booming clap of thunder that made her jump. A man shouted. The front end of the bathing machine lifted, and she knew at once the horse had spooked. Then the hut turned sideways to the shore.
In the next instant, one of the large wheels either went down a rut, snapped, or perhaps it encountered one of the infernal small boulders the dippers claimed were mere pebbles. In any case, one side of her bathing machine lurched lower than the other, and she was flung against the wall while seawater seeped in.