Page 12 of The Matrimonial Advertisement

He looked more than a little annoyed. “Something like that.”

“Is King’s Abbot the nearest village?”

“If one travels by land, it is.”

Helena went still. “There’s a way to get here by water?”

“Anyone willing to brave the currents can sail straight up to the beach from Abbot’s Holcombe. If the wind’s at your back, the voyage can be made in a fraction of the time it would take a carriage to travel on the cliff road.”

“I didn’t realize.” Her mouth went dry at the implications, her mind already conjuring one thousand and one scenarios—all of them completely unrealistic.

Or so she hoped.

She forced herself to remain calm. “Where is Abbot’s Holcombe?”

“Thirteen miles in the opposite direction. It’s a resort town. Far more fashionable than King’s Abbot.”

“They’ve ever so many shops there, miss,” Bess volunteered. “And a dressmaker with all the fashions from Paris.”

“If one can afford them,” Mr. Boothroyd muttered from his desk.

Helena glanced at the ill-tempered steward. He was still scribbling away in his ledger, seeming to mark his periods and decimal points with extraordinary force.

“I don’t expect I’ll be too expensive,” she said to Mr. Thornhill. “I really require very little.”

“And whatever you require, you shall have.” Mr. Thornhill’s deep voice had an edge to it that was as hard and unyielding as adamantine. Helena suspected his words were intended more for Mr. Boothroyd than for her.

She moistened her lips. “Do you often make the journey to Abbot’s Holcombe?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Because of the distance?”

“Because of the people who live there,” he said, adding, “I loathe the place.”

“Oh?” Helena hesitated. She was a little curious, naturally, but Mr. Thornhill didn’t look as if he’d welcome any probing questions. Even if he did, she dared not ask them, lest he be tempted to ask a few of his own. “Then I shall loathe it, too.”

The corner of his mouth quirked. “That loyal, are you?”

“Of course,” she said. “We are engaged to be married.”

Mr. Thornhill regarded her in silence for a moment, an expression in his eyes hard to read. “Would you like to go down to the beach after tea?” he asked abruptly.

She exhaled a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. “Can we?”

He assured her they could. “There’s a footpath along the side of the cliffs. It’s steep, but if you think you can manage it we can walk awhile and still have time to get you back to the King’s Arms before sunset.”

Justin felt Miss Reynold’s hand tighten convulsively on his arm as they descended to the beach. As fetching as she looked in her gray silk gown, the fashion in large, billowing skirts was not at all conducive to navigating a narrow cliff path in a high wind. It was an exercise in self-restraint not to clutch at her every time the stones skittered beneath her boots.

He’d made the mistake once already, much to his regret. The moment his fingers had closed on her upper arm, she’d cried out, pulling away from him so forcefully that she’d slipped and almost fallen.

“I’m sorry!” she’d said when she recovered her footing. “You startled me.”

“My fault entirely,” he’d muttered in response.

It didn’t bode well for their future that she cringed from his touch. He was a physical man and, though he didn’t mind playing the gentleman on occasion, when he married—if he married—he intended to touch his wife in and out of the bedchamber. He would be damned if he ended up wedded to a fragile porcelain doll who recoiled at the sight of him. Such an arrangement might do for those in the upper classes, but Mr. Bray—the blacksmith to whom he’d been apprenticed as a boy—had been openly affectionate with his wife. Justin had always expected that one day, with his own bride, he would enjoy the same sort of relationship.

Though making any sort of marital example out of the Brays was ludicrous. They’d never treated him particularly well. The long, lonely years of his apprenticeship had been characterized by ragged clothing and a perpetually empty belly. Even so, Mr. and Mrs. Bray had cared for each other, and for their own children, too. As a child himself, Justin had been envious. Had yearned, on occasion, for a gentle word or a consoling touch. But the Brays had had little kindness to spare for the parish orphan in their care.