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‘Because I am not a brainless little débutante. I observe things, and I am quite capable of putting two and two together and making four. And,’ she added, becoming quite heated as his expression became positively sardonic, ‘I guessed the other day and I have not mentioned it to anyone else, nor will I, so you can stop looking like a Spanish Inquisitor.’
‘Like a what?’ His attention caught, he let the tiller come over and the sail flapped. With a soft curse under his breath he regained control.
‘An Inquisitor, or at least, a very disapproving and sinister monk.’
Alex Beresford appeared to beyond speech, so Hebe added maliciously, ‘Maria, my maid, says you look like a beautiful, fierce saint.’
‘I suppose I am expected to be flattered by the “beautiful”?’ he began darkly, then suddenly began to laugh, clutching the tiller while his shoulders shook. ‘No, do not answer that, I beg you: for heaven’s sake, Hebe, spare me any more blows to my self-esteem.’ He mopped his eyes on his sleeve and grinned at her.
Hebe grinned back. They were in open sea now, the waves beginning to increase, but she had no intention of pointing this out just yet: suddenly she was enjoying herself very much indeed.
‘Do you not want to look fierce and sinister?’ she teased.
‘Certainly not, I want to look like a perfectly ordinary English officer with nothing more on his mind than drilling his troops and when the next party is going to be held.’ He watched her steadily. ‘Are you not going to ask me what I am doing on Malta?’
‘No!’ Hebe was shocked. ‘I would never dream of asking such a thing. However careful one is, there is always the danger that one might say something out of place, and the island is a perfect hotbed of French spies. Or so one is led to believe.’
‘Possibly not a hotbed, but I suspect there are more than a few. Good grief, look at how far out we are—next stop Sicily at this rate. I am going to be in serious trouble with your mama, which is an alarming thought. Hold tight while I put about.’
Hebe did as she was told, happily ignoring the splashes that spotted her skirts as they came round and headed back. The sunlight sparkled off the wave crests, the gulls swooped and screamed overhead and the sea was dotted with sails. It was a perfect scene, and she knew she was going to remember this moment for ever.
?
?What did you mean just now,’ Alex asked suddenly, ‘when you said you were not a “brainless little débutante”?’
‘Did I say that?’ Hebe looked conscience-stricken. ‘I should not have done so, it was a horrid thing to say. And most of them are very nice girls.’
‘Most of them? You do not count yourself amongst them, then?’ The Major’s blue eyes focused for a moment on something over her shoulder. He adjusted his steering, and looked back at her.
‘Oh, no,’ Hebe said cheerfully. ‘I am too old to be a débutante. I am out, of course, but I have never been brought out—launched, as it were. When we might have returned to England for that, Mama had just met Sir Richard, so we stayed here instead.’
‘That seems rather unfair on you.’
She shrugged. ‘I know everyone here, I go to all the dances and parties.’ She did not add that her mama was just as anxious as the hopeful mama of any fresh seventeen-year-old at Almack’s to catch her an eligible husband. It was just that she had to achieve it in the more limited society of the island, and with the unpromising material that Hebe represented.
‘And you have numerous beaux?’ Alex’s eyes narrowed as he began to steer into St Elmo’s Bay. They were almost back. ‘A fiancé, perhaps, who will call me to account for taking you out to sea unchaperoned in a little boat?’
Hebe’s answering gurgle of frank amusement made him raise his dark brows. ‘I have numerous friends,’ Hebe said, still smiling at the thought of a crowd of beaux all laying siege to her. ‘But no admirers, and certainly no fiancé.’
‘Why is that so amusing? So many officers, both naval and army… Mind your hand on the side, we will be alongside the wall in a moment.’
‘And so many pretty girls to entertain them.’ The boat bumped on the wall. Alex picked up the coil of mooring rope in one hand but made no move to reach for the stanchion.
‘And you?’ he asked, in such a matter-of-fact manner that Hebe was betrayed out of her light, uncaring manner into revealing something of what she really felt.
‘As you may observe, and as Mama frequently laments, I am not a beauty.’
‘No,’ he agreed.
Although she always told herself that she despised empty flattery, Hebe was nettled by this honesty. ‘And not pretty, either,’ she went on, determined to heap up the coals of misery now she had begun.
‘Certainly not pretty.’ Alex finally got to his feet to tie up the boat. Through a haze of hurt tears, Hebe could still admire the easy way he moved about the small vessel, the strength with which he pulled on the rope to bring it tight against the harbour side.
He leaned over to take her hand and help her to her feet and she tried to turn the awkward conversation into a joke. ‘How ungallant of you, Major! You are supposed to protest that I am the epitome of prettiness: neither of us need believe it.’
‘Ah, but I would rather say something that is true and which we can both believe.’ He kept her hand trapped in one of his as she came to her feet and she found herself standing very close indeed to him. The little boat, rocking gently at its mooring, suddenly became an enclosed, private world. Somewhere she was aware of the salt smell of the sea mixed with the more pungent odours of the harbour, somewhere sea gulls were calling harshly and further along, under the curtain wall, children were playing, but they all seemed distant, as though on the other side of a window.
‘You are not beautiful, Hebe,’ Alex said quietly, ‘but then few people truly are.’
