“Golly, I hope not too much. You want a wife who will be faithful to you forever, don’t you?”

He looked at me long and hard. “I know what I want,” he said.

I felt the shiver go all the way down my spine.

“We should see what they packed for us to eat,” I said uneasily and turned to open the hamper. There was a delightful assortment of sandwiches, fresh cheeses, fruit and biscuits. It’s amazing how hungry swimming in a cold ocean can make one. We both tucked in, Darcy sitting close beside me.

“It’s a good thing we started out early,” he said looking out over the ocean. “It seems that the fog might be coming in again.”

And indeed what looked like a bank of dark cloud now lay over the horizon. We put away the picnic, then went for a walk along the beach, hand in hand, with me pausing to pick up shells and interesting pieces of driftwood. We talked about what kind of house we’d like and where it should be and whether we needed a place in town and what kind of servants would be ideal. It was all very silly, given that neither of us had a bean, but it gave us both hope. I kept thinking that I wanted to preserve this moment forever, to somehow catch it in a glass jar to be brought out when Darcy was far away.

“If only I’d been able to do that part in the film,” Darcy said thoughtfully, “I might have been able to make this reality. Do you really think I have star quality?”

I laughed. “Yes, but I’m biased.”

“Do you think I should stay on here and take my chances?” he asked.

“Do you want to be a film star?”

“Absolutely not,” he said, “but I’m willing to do what it takes to get us together.”

“Then I say you should go home. And you should tell these people who hire you for mysterious assignments that you need a proper job with decent pay from them or you are not helping them out again.”

He laughed now. “I’ll take you with me. You’ve got Queen Victoria’s air of authority when you say that.”

We made our way back to our things, had another glass of champagne and immediately felt sleepy. I lay against the rock with my head on Darcy’s shoulder. I think we must both have drifted off because I awoke to something cold and wet hitting me. I sat up to find the dark clouds were now overhead and it was raining.

“Not fog after all,” Darcy said. “I didn’t think it rained in California in the summertime.”

“Maybe just a passing shower,” I said hopefully. As if in answer the heavens opened and a deluge hit us. Immediately after there was a rumble of thunder out to sea.