Page 12 of A Convenient Fiction

But he wasn’t angry.

He was—much to his astonishment—scarcely thinking of George Wright or Henrietta Talbot at all.

“Is that why you were strengthening your lungs in Talbot’s Pond?” he asked, gazing down at Miss Hayes’s face.

A blush tinted her cheeks.

No doubt she was thinking of how he’d pulled her scantily clad form from the water. He couldn’t help but think of it, too. Not only for the pleasurable memories it conjured, but for those that were decidedly less so.

He hadn’t been in the water—physically in the water—in ages. He’d been on boats, of course. The steamers to France, and the rowboats that paddled him to and from the shore. But he hadn’t held his breath and dived beneath the waves. Not since that unfortunate day in North Devon so many years ago.

Granted, Talbot’s Pond wasn’t the raging sea. It wasn’t even very impressive in terms of woodland ponds. But as he’d crashed below the surface, a host of images had flooded his brain. He hadn’t been prepared for them. Hadn’t wanted them.

It was the past.

A past he preferred to forget.

“Partly,” Miss Hayes said. “My lungs were a little weak after the fever.”

“And now?”

“I’m much stronger. Strong enough that I hope, one day soon—” She broke off, her ebony brows knitting.

He gave a short laugh. “Oh no, you can’t stop there.”

“Can’t I?”

“And leave me in suspense?”

“It’s foolish, really.” Her expression turned rueful. “What I hope—what I dream of—is that one day I shall be able to swim in the sea.”

The good humor Alex had felt only seconds before evaporated into the ether. “That’s your dream? To go swimming?”

“In the sea, yes.” She folded her arms, seeming to rest them on the swell of her skirts. “You don’t care for the water, I take it.”

He focused his attention on the narrow path as it meandered through the wood. “How do you come by that conclusion?”

“After you pulled me out of the pond, you were distraught.”

“Hardly.”

“You were,” she insisted. “Don’t deny it.”

He inhaled an unsteady breath. It was dark and cool in the wilderness garden, the sun through the branches creating a mosaic of shifting shadows that played on the boulders that lined the path—and on the face of the lady at his side. It was the closest thing to intimacy, this brief moment of darkness in the middle of the blazing afternoon.

“When I was a boy,” he said in a gruff voice, “I rescued a friend from drowning. It was a very near thing—for the both of us. It’s not the sort of experience one easily forgets.”

Miss Hayes’s expression softened. “Was your friend in a pond, as I was?”

“He was in the sea. Deep beneath the waves.”

She searched his face. “And ever since you’ve gone about rescuing people, have you?”

He removed his tall beaver hat to run a hand over his hair. “Not in a long while.”

Rather the opposite, in fact.

During his years on the continent, it had been his business to lure unsuspecting gamblers like George out into deep water. It was how Alex made his living. Thousands of pounds wagered on the turn of a card. He had an innate skill for gaming. A cool-headedness that served him well under the most strenuous circumstances. It enabled him to win far more than he lost. And win he did—often substantially.