“Not me,” Charles rasped, attempting to breathe deep. “Pulled under.”
Charles could not help but note the look of horror on the fellow’s features. He was pretty horrified himself.
“Are you sure?” the rower asked.
Charles ignored the fellow, of course he was sure. He scanned the surface of the water, looking for a telltale fin. Though, as he did so, he knew it could not have been a shark or anything of the sort. His leg was not punctured as it surely would have been.
He saw nothing at first, and then a small something. “There,” he said pointing east, “that.”
It rather resembled a pole of some sort and did not look like anything that belonged to a sea creature. As quickly as it had appeared, it disappeared below the swells.
Seeing the oarsman’s confusion, Charles coughed to clear his lungs. His voice gravelly, he said, “Row. There.”
“No, my lord, we don’t dare go too close that direction,” the young man said, “there’s rocks what come up close to the surface and you can’t see ‘im until you’re right on top of ‘im. I wouldn’t like to get dumped in the sea while something is lurkin’ underneath.”
Charles nodded between coughs. “Nor I,” he whispered.
“You don’t have a scratch on you though, ‘cept for the red marks round your ankle.”
“Yes,” Charles said. After a fit of coughing, he said, “Maybe a man.”
This sent the oarsman to a shiver. “Don’t you say so, my lord. What kind of devil can swim like a fish and is set on drowning people?”
Charles shrugged, pulling on his pants. It hurt to talk, his throat felt on fire.
“Me mum would say it t’weren’t no man after you,” the oarsman said, rowing with vigor toward the shore. “It were a Kraken or one of them what don’t have teeth and wrap their long, slimy arms round and take you down.”
Charles would have replied that his mother was to be congratulated on her vivid imagination, had he not still been coughing to clear his lungs of seawater.
As they neared the shore, Charles could see Miss Danworth, Mrs. Jellops, and Miss Danworth’s maid standing on shore. Miss Danworth and her maid had exited the sea with alacrity and had not taken the time to thoroughly dry themselves. Both their dresses clung to them damp and Miss Danworth’s curls had loosened in the water.
He really should not be noticing Miss Danworth’s rather statuesque figureorher curls when he’d just been pulled under the waves, and he felt like the bottom half of his lungs were sloshing with seawater.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Daisy had watched as the oarsman rowed and searched the swells for any sign of Lord Dalton.
He could not have drowned. No, he could not have. He was too strong for that. Why would a man go out to the deeper water if he were not an excellent swimmer? He must be an excellent swimmer, Lord Dalton did everything well.
To her relief, she suddenly saw him. It was odd, he seemed to come from nowhere. One moment he was gone and the next he was swimming toward his boat as if he’d been there all along.
She and Betsy had hurried into the bathing machine and thrown on their clothes. Now they stood on the pebbly beach as the boat neared.
The boy pulled his oars up and the boat made a grating sound as the hull scraped the shore.
“Lord Dalton,” Daisy said, picking her way across the stony beach, “what on earth happened?”
The lord very determinedly suppressed a cough and said, “Nothing.”
“You disappeared,” Daisy said. “Your rower was shouting. Then you reappeared.”
Lord Dalton did not meet her eye and said hoarsely, “Can one not dive?”
“You said you was pulled under!” the boy said, his outrage evident.
“Nonsense,” Lord Dalton said to the boy. He might have said more, but was prevented by a coughing fit.
“Whatever has happened, you have clearly taken in seawater and will need a doctor,” Daisy said.
