“Why would they do that?” Charlotte asked.
“They’re working hard,” Diana replied. “Perhaps it’s warm down there.”
Kate laughed. “It’s growing warm up here, too.”
“It’s not the heat,” Susanna said, again surprised how easily she knew his mind. “Their coats are all different colors. Lord Rycliff wants them looking the same, so they’ll act in unison, too.”
Charlotte grabbed the spectacles from Minerva’s hand and lifted them to her own eyes. “Drat. I can’t make out anything.”
“Goose,” Minerva said, giving her little sister an affectionate shove. “I’m farsighted. Those only help with objects up close. And I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss over a few men in shirtsleeves, anyhow. From this distance, they’re just pale, fleshy blurs.”
Except for Bram. There was nothing undefined about his torso. Even from this distance, Susanna could clearly make out the linen-sheathed muscles of his shoulders and arms. She recalled their solid heat beneath her touch.
“We should be heading back to the village.” She rose to her feet, brushing grass from her skirts and folding her Indian shawl into a neat rectangle.
Violet objected, “But Miss Finch, we haven’t yet reached—”
“Miss Highwood is winded,” she clipped, in a tone that would brook no argument. “This is far enough for today.”
The ladies rose in silence, retying bonnet ribbons and preparing to walk home.
“What do you say, Miss Finch?” Kate smiled as the sound of feeble drumming resumed. “How many times do you suppose he’ll make them march that same line?”
Susanna could not have given Kate a number, but she knew the answer just the same.
“Until they do it right.”
“They’ll never get this right,” Thorne muttered. “Bloody hopeless, all of them.”
Bram swore under his breath. For God’s sake, he’d spent all day yesterday just trying to teach these men to march in a straight line. When they mustered on Tuesday morning, he’d decided to make the task even simpler. No strict formations—just marching in time across open land. Left, right, left.
But marching in time was easier with a drummer who could drum in time, and Finn Bright seemed to have been born without a sense of rhythm. Say nothing of Rufus’s ear-stabbing squawks on the fife.
Despite all this, somehow they’d managed to cover the crescent of high ground between Rycliff Castle and the steep cliffs marking the other end of the cove.
“Put them at ease,” he directed Thorne. “See if they can manage to just . . . stand there for a while, without falling on their arses.”
Bram would have fallen on his own saber before admitting it, but he was the one who needed a rest. He looked out across the cove. Perched on the arm of land opposite, sat the castle. So close, if one measured as the gulls flew, but a rather long march back. Blast it, he should have brought his horse.
“So that’s the spindle, I take it?” Colin squinted at a column of rocks punctuating the inlet. The formation was tall and roundish, with a knobby sandstone top.
“I suppose.”
Colin snorted. “Proof positive that this place was named by dried-up old maids. No man—hell, no woman with a lick of experience—would ever look at that and call it a spindle.”
Bram released a slow breath. He had no patience for his cousin’s adolescent humor today. The sun was warm on his back. The sky and sea were having a contest to out-blue each other. Wisps of white dotted both, sea foam mirroring the clouds. Watching the gulls soar on the wind, he felt his heart pulling against its tether, floating in his chest. The water looked cool and inviting, buoyant.
And his knee felt like a collection of glass shards, encased in flesh. Never in the eight months since his injury had he walked this far without his brace. He shouldn’t need the brace anymore, damn it. What was a mile or three across the fields, anyhow?
Tell that to his ligaments. His whole leg throbbed with fiery pain, and he wasn’t sure at all how he’d make it back to the castle. But he would. He would lead them all the way home, and never betray a wince.
The pain was good, Bram told himself. The pain would make him stronger. Next time, he would push himself a bit farther, and it would hurt a bit less.
A bright flutter down in the cove caught his eye. “What’s that?”
“Well, I am growing dangerously out of practice,” Colin answered. “But they look like ladies to me.”
His cousin was right. The ladies—and Bram was certain he recognized Susanna Finch’s tall, slender form among them—were picking their way along the shore. They paused as a group, removing their bonnets and wraps and draping them on the branches of a twisted, scrubby tree. As their headwear came off, Bram caught a glimpse of golden-red flame, and desire kindled to life inside him. He’d know that hair anywhere. It had played a rather vivid role in his dreams last night.
As they reached the shingle beach, the ladies disappeared from view. The curve of the inlet guarded them.
“What do you suppose they’re doing?” Colin asked.
“It’s Tuesday,” Bram said. “They’re sea bathing.” Mondays are country walks. Tuesday, sea bathing. Wednesday, we’re in the garden . . . That promise of gardening gave him hope. God, perhaps tomorrow he’d finally have a chance of escaping Susanna Finch and her maddening sensual distractions. As if it weren’t bad enough watching her climb the hillside yesterday, now he had to suffer the knowledge that somewhere not too far below, she’d soon be wet to the skin.
The Bright twins set aside the drum and fife and joined them at the edge of the cliff.
“It’s no use craning your necks from here,” Rufus said. “They’re well hidden when they change into their bathing costumes.”
“Bathing costumes?” Bram snorted. “Leave it to Englishwomen to civilize the ocean.”
“If you want a better view, the best place to peek is down the ridge a bit,” Finn said, gesturing toward the tapering point of land. When Bram raised an eyebrow, the boy’s cheeks flushed red. “Or so I hear. From Rufus.”
His twin gave him an elbow to the side.
By now the rest of the men had gathered, clustering around the edge of the bluff.
“Tell me about this path,” Bram said.
“Just there.” Finn pointed. “Steps, cut into the sandstone by pirates in our grandfather’s day. Once was, at low tide you could climb all the way from sea to bluff. The path’s eroded now. Breaks off halfway. But follow it down a bit, and you have the best view into the cove.”