Clemence woke, feeling warm and relaxed and safe. Her eyes were closed, but she could feel Nathan watching her, those deep blue eyes resting on her face. Why did she have to meet him when she was looking absolutely at her worst? Hair hacked off, face black and blue, what small curves she had ruthlessly suppressed, nothing but a scruffy urchin.
He had kissed her twice, and had managed to restrain his passionate impulses very effectively. What would he think of her if he could see her all dressed up, her hair grown again, her bruises gone? Nothing, probably, just that here was another young lady. And if Miss Clemence Ravenhurst met Mr Nathan Stanier on Jamaica, she assumed he’d be in shackles and on his way to the gallows and in no state to flirt.
On that disturbing thought she opened her eyes wide. Nathan smiled at her sleepily. Whatever happened, she had to make sure he did not get caught if, by some miracle, they got safe back to Kingston. He probably had some gallant notion of delivering her to the Governor; she would have to stop that. He might think he was looking after her, but she suspected it might work both ways.
‘I think I can swim now without sinking,’ she announced, gathering up the remains of the food.
‘How long has it been since you have swum?’ he asked, stopping to help her down the steep part again.
‘Just before my father died,’ she confessed, amused to see that he looked faintly shocked and, perhaps, intrigued. ‘There are lots of bathing pools on the island and many ladies swim. You have to be careful around the swamps, of course, because of the unhealthy airs, but the fast-flowing streams are safe.’
A little frisson ran through her. Nathan was studiously not commenting, which meant, perhaps, that his imagination was running riot, a fact that ought to embarrass her, but did not. It seemed that being kidnapped by pirates resulted in a deplorable lowering of one’s sensibilities.
‘Ladies swim in England, don’t they?’ she asked. ‘In the sea, at any rate. I’ve heard about bathing machines.’
Nathan gave a snort of laughter. ‘Yes, they swim—or at least, immerse themselves in the sea. They wear strange flannel bathing dresses and are guarded by fierce women with arms like blacksmiths whose job is to dunk them right under.’
‘What on earth for? It sounds horrible.’ And wet flannel. Ugh. The joy of swimming was to be naked, to feel the water slide like silk over your limbs, to hang, suspended like a bird, weightless.
‘Because one does not swim for pleasure in England, one does it for one’s health.’
‘I’m sure the men don’t put on strange flannel garments and submit to being dunked,’ Clemence retorted. ‘I’m sure you swim naked where you want to and it is up to the ladies to keep out of the way.’
Was it her imagination or was the back of Nathan’s neck becoming flushed? It was probably just the heat—surely she wasn’t embarrassing him? As they reached the pool, he turned aside. ‘I’ll sit here on this log and keep an eye on the path up from the cove,’ he said, to her ears sounding somehow constrained as he stood with his back to her and the water. ‘There are towels in my pack.’
‘Thank you.’ Touched by his thoughtfulness Clemence reached out, then pulled her hand back. He might misinterpret her action and imagine she wanted…something. She caught herself up, turned her hand towards the satchel and pulled out a thin linen towel. He would be correct—she did want him and he was being gentlemanly about his needs, so provocation was not the action of a lady.
She looked down at her filthy feet as she heeled off her shoes and chuckled. Those weren’t the feet of a lady, either, or the hands. The sight of her masculine attire draped on the bushes would doubtless give her unknown Aunt Amelia in London hysterics, and as for the tale of what had happened in the last few months—well, she couldn’t imagine beginning to try to explain that to a well-bred society lady.
The water was cool to a cautious toe. Clemence sat on a rock and slipped in before she could think about it, vanishing straight down into the depths. She surfaced with a strangled shriek.
‘Clemence! Are you all right?’ She pushed the dripping hair back from her face with both hands and hung there, treading water and looking up. Nathan, knife in hand, was poised on the brink of the pool above her.
‘Yes, sorry I startled you. I’m fine, but it is deep and cold and I jumped right in.’ After that first searching look, he was now staring firmly ahead into the bushes on the far side. Clemence glanced down at herself. Here in the shade all she could see though the greenish water was the pale shimmer of her body. Possibly, from above, she was rather more revealed, but that was all the more reason for them both to be on the same level.
‘Why don’t you swim, too? It is so refreshing once you are in.’
‘Is it deep right across?’ he asked, still not looking down.
‘Yes, very. We could stay back to back,
that would be perfectly proper,’ she coaxed. And cold water was very dampening to male passion, she had heard, so he would not have to exert any will-power. Making that as an additional argument might not be a good idea, so she contented herself with paddling off under an overhanging fern to allow him to undress in privacy.
‘Close your eyes.’ Clemence squeezed them shut, then opened them just a crack in time to see Nathan’s naked body slice through the surface in a shallow dive.
He surfaced, hair otter-sleek to his head. ‘It’s freezing, woman!’ But he was grinning as he sent a great splash of water towards her with a sweep of his arm. So much for modestly swimming back to back.
Clemence ducked and swam underwater across the pool, glimpsing the pale length of his body through the green haze, then popped up behind him. ‘Not if you move about,’ she called, turning on to her back and kicking up a shower of spray to cascade on to his head. Nathan dived like a dolphin, arching up, leaving her with a startling image of fluid body, taut buttocks and long legs, then the surface of the pool was empty except for her and the spreading rings of ripples.
‘Nathan?’ she queried foolishly into the sudden silence, as something seized her ankles and she was pulled down by ruthless hands. Clemence shut her mouth just in time, kicked and they released her, only to fasten on her waist and propel her up, breaking the surface and tossing her into the air.
She landed with a huge splash, flailing and laughing and spouting water. ‘Wretch!’
‘That’s for luring me into your freezing pool.’ He swam lazily towards the little waterfall and levered himself up on braced forearms, twisting to sit on a concealed ledge just under the surface, the cascade breaking over his head and shoulders so he was almost lost in foam. He looked, Clemence thought, like a water god waiting to surprise travellers or perhaps to pounce lustfully on a passing nymph.
She was the nearest thing to a nymph available, she speculated, paddling gently on the spot, watching Nathan who, with closed eyes, was luxuriating in the pounding massage of the water on his shoulders. There was a clump of lily-like blooms growing beside her sheltering fern, the flower trumpets a rich amber yellow with nodding dark-brown stamens. Clemence reached up and broke one off, then tucked it behind her ear.
With her bruised face she would look ridiculous, she was quite certain, but it might make Nathan smile; somehow, his pleasure had become important to her. She swam slowly out into the middle of the pool and waited for him to open his eyes. When he did, he just stared. Her heart sank; he was not amused, merely baffled by her behaviour.