She rolled her eyes in a fashion Effie dared to think was fond. “What do you wear whenyouswim?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Usually? Nothing.”
It was shaping up to be a clear morning, but the look she shot him felt like a lightning strike. He rearranged his shirt and cleared his throat. “What did you wear sea-bathing the other day?”
“They had bathing costumes on hand. A sort of sturdier version of a shift.” She paused. “I have to admit it was unpleasantly heavy once wet. I propose I remove my dress and wear my shift.”
When she didn’t say anything further, he said, “Are you asking me?”
“No, no.”
“Icouldwear my dress,” she went on, “but I only own two, and I shouldn’t like one of them to get caught on a rock or . . . eaten by a fish. Do fish eat dresses? Probably not, but you take my point. I am keen to protect my dress.”
Effie was taken aback by the idea of a lady owning only two dresses, but then he was ashamed that he was taken aback. He told himself to consider the situation at hand. The way Julianna was talking—rambling, really—with her head dipped almost gave the impression that she was shy.
How curious. He would never have thought to call Julianna shy. She seemed almost pinned in place, so he said, “I think when one is meeting in secret for a clandestine swim, one can wear whatever one wants.”
She smiled and began hiking her dress up over her head.
He was fairly certain that he died for a moment. In any case, he blacked out for long enough that even though he’d only been standing there, he tripped over his own feet. He covered it by acting as if he’d been taking off his breaches, unbuttoning the fall, but then he remembered that he was wearing no smallclothes beneath them. He rarely did. He found them distractingly unpleasant. Something about the way they rubbed his skin.
He would leave his breeches on. He fixed them, removed his waistcoat, and began unbuttoning his shirt. By the time he was rid of it, Julianna had her dress fully off and was clutching it to her chest. Effie gathered his own extraneous garments to his chest in a similar fashion, turned back toward the beach, and hurled the bundle, smiling when it landed clear of the waves.
“I don’t think I have the arm for that.” Julianna walked back to the beach carrying her dress. He caught sight of her previously discarded stockings, for she set her dress beside them.
This should have been scandalous. She was wearing a shift, and he was wearing only breeches. When she returned to his side, he voiced the thought.
“This ought to be scandalous.”
“Yet it isn’t.”
“It isn’t, is it?”
It was a lot of things, including the single most erotic experience of his life, but it wasn’t scandalous.
“It’s because of the feelings,” she said. “You said we have spoken frequently and intensely of feeling. That is why this doesn’t feel scandalous.”
“Because we already know each other so well, you mean.”
“You were right about that, but you were also wrong.”
He didn’t know what she meant by that, but he’d had rather enough of this conversation—the metaphorical lightning strike from before had left the air charged, crackly—so he said, “Let’s walk out a way, and I shall endeavor to instruct you.”
They pushed out against the waves, Julianna inhaling sharply at various points. “It wasn’t this cold two days ago.”
“I think there must be something about the daytime, the sunshine, that changes the experience. Even if the water isn’t actually any warmer during the day, the air is.” Effie was a little ahead of her, and the water was up to his waist. “It’s better to just get in all at once.” He dived, letting the shock cool his head, and surfaced two dozen feet away. “But you oughtn’t to try that,” he called. “I’ll come back and help you.” He reversed course.
“You are a fine swimmer,” she said when he surfaced by her side. “Perhaps no one taught you. Perhaps you are a changeling, a lost son of Poseidon who was born knowing how to swim.”
Wouldn’t that be lovely, to be someone else’s son?
He stood, and while he hadn’t been scandalized earlier, there was something about the way she was looking at his chest instead of his eyes as she spoke, that returned him to that heavy, vaguely unpleasant feeling. Or perhapsunfulfilledwas the better word. It was a feeling that something was meant to happen, something that, frustratingly,wasn’thappening. It was a sensation of being stuck.
“I think I may have been all talk,” he said, just for something to say, and also because it was the truth. “I may be a capable swimmer, but I am realizing I don’t know how to teach anyone else.”
She told him about her experience with the dipper from the other day. “She held me as I floated, and while I appreciate that it wasn’t swimming per se, it was glorious.”
“That is where we shall start, then, with an assisted float.”
