Teddy put his arm around Alex’s neck, his hand gripping tight to Alex’s shoulder. “Go ahead.”

Alex lifted him easily out of his chair, and with one arm around his waist, helped him down the stairs and out to the closed carriage that waited behind the barouche.

Mrs. Bainbridge was already inside. Alex assisted Teddy into the velvet-cushioned seat across from her. “Put this over your legs, my dear,” she said, draping him with a carriage blanket.

“It’s baking hot,” Teddy protested.

Laura came up behind Alex. She held out her gloved hand. “Would you mind very much?”

“Not at all.” He helped her into the carriage, trying not to inhale the intoxicating scent of her. Roses, and lavender, and freshly pressed linen. Trying not to think of how wonderfully her hand fit into his, or to feel the feminine swirl of her skirts against his legs.

She was halfway inside before Henrietta cried out in objection.

“You’re riding in the barouche with us, Laura!”

Laura glanced back. “I’m riding with my family, Hen. It’s only to the rail station.”

Henrietta’s face tightened, but she didn’t argue. Only when she and Alex had resumed their seats in the barouche did she voice her irritation. “It was a mistake to invite Laura’s family.”

“Rubbish,” Squire Talbot said. “It will do the boy good.”

“Much that I care,” Henrietta retorted under her breath. “Laura is supposed to be keeping company with me. Now she’ll give all her spare time to her brother and her aunt. It’s excessively tedious, and much of the reason we don’t socialize any longer.”

George caught Alex’s eye. And then he laughed. “What an entertaining holiday this promises to be.”

Henrietta glared at him. “I don’t know what you find so funny.” She turned her glittering gaze on Alex. “And you, sir. I can’t believe you’ve resigned yourself to sitting on the sand with Laura’s brother. What’s the point of visiting the seaside if you won’t go into the water?” Her voice took on a wheedling note. “Perhaps if my father were to sit with Teddy—”

“I’d refrain from swimming whether Teddy was present or not,” Alex said. “It’s no reflection on you.”

“But if I were to insist—”

Alex smiled at her efforts, even as he felt a faint twinge of regret. She would never truly know him. Never understand what it was that had made him the man he was today. “You may save yourself the trouble, Miss Talbot. There’s nothing on this earth that could compel me to go into the sea. Not even you.”

Chapter 12

Margate, England

August, 1860

With the inevitable train delays, and various confusion regarding the changing of platforms as they traveled through London, they didn’t arrive in Margate until Friday evening. By then it was far too late to venture out onto the beach.