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She found the return easier and made herself lift her head and sight regularly. There was no exhilaration, only an end, her limbs shaking, the cold taking over.

“You know that your sister is like you, or like you once were, wild and willful, before you took on your mother’s role.”

She ignored him and walked up the beach. There was no answer to that, only vexation with him, with herself, with lessons not learned.

At their meeting place, he spoke again. “If you want to have that ball, you’re going to have to compromise with me.” He pulled the jumper on over his head. She pulled off her cap and drew the coverlet around her; he snatched an end of it and dried his hands. He picked up the sketchbook.

She couldn’t help but speak then. “Compromise? Is that what you call it? You’ve been imposing your will on my family since—”

“Fine, you can call it giving in if you like.” He shrugged. “If you want to host that ball, bring scissors tomorrow.”

Chapter Sixteen

In the morning Cordelia found Graymont waiting for her where the path widened for a brief, level stretch. He watched her descend. A mild breeze ruffled his dark hair, but his gaze was unwavering. Under his scrutiny, the drawstring bag at her wrist dangled heavily with the weight of her sewing scissors.

“You’re late,” he said. “Did you bring scissors?”

“Good morning to you too.” She raised her arm with the dangling bag.

He nodded. “Put aside the coverlet and give me the scissors.”

Cordelia didn’t move. Around them the cries of birds mingled with the thump of small waves on the shore. She might have lost their wager, but she didn’t have to endure rudeness. She waited.

He arched one dark brow. “Please,” he said. “You know it’s a good idea to leave off some of those buttons. You simply won’t admit it because it’s my idea.”

“Which you present with such tact.”

“With frankness, which,” he said, “you prefer to gallantry.”

“You presume to know me well.”

“Do you swim with anyone else?”

She looked at the ground, at his bare toes in the sand. It was true. She’d had the thought herself that he knew things about her because they swam together. She didn’t fear it. It was a passing intimacy, like that of travelers stranded in some inn by icy weather or muddy roads. “Very well.” She would do what she must, humor him if she must. The aim was to make him change his mind, to see that her sisters had their ball. She dropped the coverlet from her shoulders and straightened. He gave the old skeleton suit a thorough scrutiny. With his gaze, he numbered the buttons, seventeen in all, gilded brass, each the size of a haypenny. Six on the breast, two on each sleeve, and another seven fastening the trousers. She did not like to admit it, but one of the inconveniences of Henry’s old suit was the complicated arrangement of buttons holding the trousers to the top. She often found herself impatient with buttoning the suit when the cloth was stiff from drying.

Graymont echoed her thought. “You would think that a nation that prides itself on progress could devise a simpler way to dress its young men.”

“Did you never wear such a suit as a boy?”

“If I did, I loathed it. Scissors. Please.”

She thought of him in the loose Arab clothes she’d seen him wear that first time they met above the beach, and because he was so infuriatingly sure of himself, she couldn’t resist saying, “There must be a portrait of you in a red-velvet skeleton suit with a lace collar. It hangs on the wall of some grand gallery in your ancestral hall.”

He frowned at the words and stepped close, as close as a waltz partner, his hand extended for the scissors. Their bodies made two shores of a narrow channel of air, warmed by their breath. A current of awareness swept between them.

She opened her bag and handed him the scissors. He reached for the top button in the decorative row down the suit front. She nerved herself for his touch. His fingers pinched the rim of the button, and he tugged, pulling it away from the stiff cotton of the suit. Cool air rushed down her chest, pebbling her skin under her thin shift. She caught her breath. His hand froze. His gaze flicked to her mouth and back to the button.

With surprising delicacy, he snipped the taut threads and freed the button. It disappeared in his palm.

“Is there?” she asked, recovering her capacity for speech. “A portrait of you in that velvet suit?”

He paused, his hand on a second button. “There most certainly is not.” His tone was clipped. His eyes did not meet hers.

She took hold of his wrist. “Why not?”

“That ancestral hall that you imagine burned down one night while I was at college.”

“Was anything saved?” she asked. She saw again the page of the blackened ruins in his sketchbook.