Page 11 of What Happens in Hedone

She cut a look at him out of the corner of her eyes. He sat unconcerned by the salt droplets flung at them by the breeze, a man at ease with the world and his place in it. A man not threatened that he did not know what others might, who was willing to listen. How rare that was.

It made her bold. “I should like to study and write about it, to learn as much as I might and teach others, if I may.”

“And why should you not?” His glance held a trace of surprise, but not the condescension she was accustomed to seeing.

She smoothed out her face. “Have you heard of the Baron Cuvier? Lamarck? Alexander van Humboldt?”

He inclined his head. These were all men who had made profound discoveries about the natural world. “Now,” Effie said, “can you name any women who are famous for their works of natural history?”

To his credit, he spent a moment in thought before he shook his head. “Perhaps they do not harbor those interests?”

“Or perhaps they are helpers and servants to the men. Assistants. Illustrators. Proofreaders. Not the authors themselves.”

“You are ambitious,” he observed.

“No,” she said. “I am curious. And stubborn, I shall be the first to admit it.”

“And why should you not study what you wish?”

“I shall,” she said, drawing a finger through the cold, clear pool. “I shall study as much as I am allowed to. But suppose my husband does not want his wife to be playing on the seashore while there is a household to manage and dinners to prepare and children to raise?”

She felt his gaze resting on her cheek. He did not bluster. Explain. Or chide. She appreciated that. He simply held still, as if he were absorbing the information. Thinking. Listening.

To her.

She leaned forward. Her sleeve brushed his shoulder, and she felt the contact as if their flesh had touched. Her insides quivered.

“This is sea lettuce,” she said. “That is red dulse. And this.” She drew her fingers through the silky fronds, cold and smooth. “This might be hairweed?”

“In Norfolk we call it mermaid’s tresses.”

He watched her still, perhaps studying the color of her hair, perhaps trying to read her face. She thought of the story of the mermaid who had traded her voice for feet so she might follow a human man to his home, hoping to win his love. She did so even when her feet burned like stabbing knives. And when he did not return her love, she went back to the sea and disappeared.

Effie was going to disappear when she married. She was bound to lose that part of her that loved the sea, that freedom to immerse herself for hours of walk or study. Would this man blame her, that she wanted something of her own before she made that last awful trade?

Would he agree to her proposal? Or would he shun her?

“A shrimp.” He pointed, his arm brushing hers. She wondered if he intended the contact. If he longed to touch her as much as she longed to touch him. He’d been so warm last night when she kissed him. As if there were a fire inside him, banked so the world would not see.

She knew what that felt like. “That is a hooded prawn. They look like a tiny lobster.”

He followed the prawn as it pumped its way into a rocky crevice and sheltered there. “This one I know. Acorn barnacle. We have these— Oh!” He startled as a small animal shot out from beneath the rock when he lifted it.

“Sea slater!” Effie grabbed his arm. “They move forward, not backward, like a crayfish. How interesting.”

“That is a woodlouse,” he said with mock sternness.

She laughed; she laughed so often around him. He made her insides feel buoyant, as if she floated on a gentle wave. “That is a crustacean, sir.”

He dropped his gaze to where her bare hand rested on his sleeve. Would he fuss because her hands were wet? Or was he as astonished as she at her boldness?

The shush of waves a yard away, the low tide readying for its next incursion, faded a moment from her ears. The earth tilted gently, leaning her toward him, and something inevitable slipped into place with a soft click.

He moved his other hand, as if he meant to cover hers with it. Her heart bloomed like an anemone in her throat. She had imagined, a dozen times already, holding out her hand to him. She had not known what to imagine once he took it.

A streak of color broke her thought. “Ooh! A cuttlefish!” Grabbing her net, she scooped and had the creature in her bowl before he’d completed his squirt of brownish ink. “I’ve wanted a look at one of these.”

“You might take him home to Hector.” He moved close to peer at her catch and Effie caught his scent, leather and bergamot and rich, dark earth. She drew a breath through her nose, bliss lifting the edges of thought. He would say yes. He had to.