Page 14 of The Etiquette of Love (The Academy of Love #7)

P limpton knew even as he grabbed for the locket that he would never reach it in time. What he did not know was that Winifred would lunge for it as well and their combined weight would not only tip the boat but turn it over completely.

The water was shockingly cold, especially given that the day was so warm, and his wits momentarily froze. Only when he heard splashing and a muffled, “ Help !” did he regain his senses and tread water, turning in a circle.

He saw…nothing.

“Winfred?” he called. Good Lord! Had she gone under?

Another muffled cry came from the dinghy’s hull, which was right beside him.

Plimpton shoved his hand beneath the rim of the boat. “If you can hear me, take my hand,” he shouted.

After a moment, slim, cold fingers tightened around his. “Can you swim out?” he asked loudly.

“My skirts are too heavy. I will sink if I let go of the gunnel.”

“Release my hand for a moment and I will come under with you and then we can leave together.”

There was a slight pause before her fingers slipped away. Plimpton took a deep breath and dove beneath the surface, keeping one hand on the lip of the boat to guide himself.

A few seconds later he popped up into crepuscular light. “Winifred?”

“Right here,” she said in a breathy voice.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, I am fine.”

“Take my hand and on the count of three stop treading and let me guide you out.” He reached out, his fingers encountering something hard and wet—a shoulder, perhaps—and she clasped her hand around his.

“Deep breath—one, two, three. ”

He kicked strongly to get free of the dingy and bright light streamed down through the crystalline water. A moment later his head broke the surface, Winifred’s a second later. She sputtered and shook her head, sending diamonds of water flying. Plimpton wiped the water from his eyes, and when his vision was clear, he saw that she was holding one hand fisted above the water.

“Is your arm hurt?”

“No, I have your locket in my hand. At least I think it is a locket.”

Plimpton gave a disbelieving snort. “Good Lord. That was an amazing catch. And, yes, it is a locket.”

“Considering that I am the clumsy oaf who sent it flying in the first place, it seemed only fair.”

Despite their current situation—treading water in his shirtsleeves in the middle of a lake—he was amused by the thought of her being a clumsy oaf.

“Can you swim at all?” he asked, already guessing the answer.

“Not with this lead weight around my legs.” Even in the cool water her cheeks reddened at the unladylike word legs.

“Take the skirt off and I will carry it.”

Her eyes and mouth rounded into O’s .

“If it is too difficult to remove, I can help you to—”

“No, no, it is not that. It unbuttons at the waist, but—”

“But what? Take it off and then we can swim to shore.”

“Can we not flip the boat over?”

Plimpton already knew that flipping the boat would not be possible, but he could see she did not wish to remove her habit and was ready to argue, so…

“I can try,” he said, and glanced at her hand, which was resting on his arm. “Are you sure you can stay afloat?”

“For a minute or two,” she said in a breathless voice.

Plimpton curled his hands around the edge of the dinghy and lifted. Not surprisingly, he immediately sank.

“No chance,” he said, turning to her. “I am afraid we will have to swim.”

She cast a yearning glance at the island.

“The island is closer, but there is no boat to take us back. If you do not want to remove your skirt you can clasp your arms around my neck and let me—”

“I will remove my skirt.” She began to twist and bob and contort in the water.

Plimpton gave a bark of laughter and her eyes widened. “I beg your pardon, Winifred. I did not laugh at you, but the situation.”

“I did not think you were mocking me. I was just stunned that you can laugh.”

That made him smile.

“ And you can smile!”

“Very droll. You will be even more thunderstruck when you learn my teeth can chatter.”

“Oh, sorry,” she muttered, taking his unsubtle hint and struggling one handedly with her garment. “Well, blast. What am I thinking?” She thrust a hand at him. “Here, hold this.”

Plimpton took the locket from her hand. He suspected it was now ruined, despite her best efforts.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice breathy and her arms in motion beneath the water.

“A locket.”

She rolled her eyes. “I had guessed that much.”

“It holds a miniature of my daughter that Honoria painted for me.”

“Oh, no! It will be ruined. I am so terribly sorry that I—”

“It was hardly your fault,” he said. “And if it is ruined, I suspect I can prevail on Honoria to paint another one for me. It is one of the many benefits of having a painter in the family. Now, give me your skirt.”

Her color flared as she lifted the sodden cloth out of the water. Plimpton took it, momentarily thrown off by the weight of it. “Good Lord. You are to be commended for treading water for so long.” He draped the skirt around his shoulders. “Are you ready?”

She nodded and they set off.

Unhindered, she was indeed an excellent swimmer. They swam in silence, the exertion slowly burning away the chill wrought by the water and allowing him to appreciate more fully the humor of the situation.

You certainly know how to charm the skirts off a woman, Wyndham, his brother Simon would say if he could see him now.

“Shall we take a break?” he asked after they had swum about half-way.

“Keep…going.”

Plimpton smiled to himself at her doggedness. And then he resumed swimming.

***

Freddie was positively mortified. First, she had flung one of his prized possessions from the boat and then she had thrown him into the water.

And now she was half-nude.

At least it is the bottom half.

An utterly inappropriate urge to laugh—more from hysteria than humor—threatened to sneak from her tightly pursed lips. She eyed the rapidly approaching shoreline with trepidation. Her misery was not over yet; she would soon need to struggle back into her skirt in the water and then walk out of the lake with every article of clothing plastered to her body like a second skin.

Or perhaps she should keep swimming around the lake until darkness fell. That would eliminate the embarrassment of climbing out of the water like a half-drowned rat.

But then she would need to ride home in wet clothing in the dark.

Beside her, the duke began to walk and a moment later she, too, could reach the sandy bottom with her poor, ruined ankle boots. When she thought about the duke’s lovely footwear—or formerly lovely, now—she felt the urge to weep.

“Could I have my skirt back?” she asked as her shoulders emerged from the water.

He stopped and turned to her, the water lapping at the bottom edge of his waistcoat. She could not help admiring how nicely the thin material of his shirt clung to his shoulders and biceps.

It was always good to find a silver lining.

“Surely you are not going to wear it?” he asked.

“Of course I will wear it,” she retorted. “I hardly wish to ride home in my ch-chemise.” It irked her that she stumbled over the word.

“Perhaps there is something in the boathouse we could wear?” He glanced at the sky. “Although perhaps changing into dry clothing—if we can find some—is rather pointless.”

Freddie looked at the sky and saw that it had filled with dark clouds as they had been swimming. “There used to be spare clothing for accidents like this one. But I still need my skirt for now.”

He handed her the garment without a word and politely turned away while she struggled into it.

“You can turn back now.”

He did so and offered her his elbow.

Freddie laced her arm through his as they resumed their walk toward shore. The further they got out of the lake the more she had to lean on him. Only when the water was ankle-deep did she dare release him and wobble the last few steps alone, lifting the hem scandalously high to wring out as much water as possible before ascending the limestone steps that led to the boathouse door.

The sitting room, with its wall of windows, was sweltering from being tightly shut up, the still air rippling with heat. The furniture was draped in holland covers, but there was very little dust so the house must have been cleaned not too long ago.

“It is rather stultifying in here. I will open some of these windows to allow in some fresh air,” the duke said.

Freddie nodded. “I will go upstairs and look for some clothing.”

The cottage had four rooms, but two were completely empty, even of furniture. The third had a cupboard full of clothing, unfortunately all of it was for young boys.

The last room must have been used by her nieces because it held garments suitable for young girls.

Freddie had just begun to give up hope when she found a banyan shoved into the corner of the armoire, the faded maroon and heavy gold braiding a style from at least fifty years ago.

Freddie smirked to herself as she imagined the duke wearing such a grand, old-fashioned garment.

Unfortunately, that was the only article of adult clothing she could find.

Freddie chewed her lip and her gaze settled on the bed.

***

Plimpton stripped off his waistcoat and hung it over the back of a chair he’d set in front of the window.

He would have liked to remove his shirt, which was sticking to his skin, but if Winifred did not find any clothing, then—

Plimpton heard a step behind him and turned. His eyes bulged out of his head and his mouth quite suddenly went dry.

“I found this for you,” she said, holding something out to him.

But Plimpton could not pull his gaze off her person. Intellectually, he knew that what she had done was fashion an astonishingly attractive toga from a bedsheet. But his body responded as if she wore a negligee composed of nothing more than a few scraps of lace and wicked intentions.

Other than a rapidly spreading blush, her skin was as pale as the soft white sheet, an effect that made her look as if she had just been deposited on earth by way of a beam of sunshine—or a moonbeam would be more like it.

The fact that he was even thinking such drivel shook him out of his daze. He wrenched his hungry gaze from the elegant slope of her bare shoulders to her face, which was flushed a fetching pink.

She looked stunned, almost as if she could read Plimpton’s mind, which was currently entertaining visions of stripping her naked and taking her right there in the blazing sunshine.

“Er, Your Grace?”

“I beg your pardon?” His voice sounded as if he had been parched for days.

She lifted her outstretched arm higher, which was when he saw she was holding some godawful scarlet and gold fabric.

He reached for it, out of courtesy more than interest. “Thank you,” he said, and then forced himself to look at the garment in his hands, eyeing it dubiously. Her laughter brought his attention back to her beautiful face.

“You should see the expression on your face.”

“Abject horror?” he guessed.

Her smile grew into a grin, the joyful expression more devastating than her Grecian apparel.

“If I can wear a bed sheet then you can wear a robe from the reign of George I. If you like, there are even red-heeled shoes with jeweled buckles on them. I could fetch them for you.”

“You cannot be serious.”

She laughed. “No, I made that up.”

“Very droll. And this”—he raised the garish robe—“was all you could find?”

“You don’t sound like you believe me.”

He snorted at her wide-eyed innocent look. “I will go up and change.”

“Oh! I forgot my wet things upstairs.”

Before Plimpton could tell her that he would bring them down with him she scampered back up the stairs, giving him delicious glimpses of elegant ankles, shapely, high-arched feet, and a generously rounded rump pressing against the thin sheeting.

Once he reached the second floor she motioned him toward the first room. “You can use this one, my clothing is in the other.” She paused and looked him up and down. “Will you be able to remove those boots yourself?”

“Not without a great deal of effort. I will just dry my shirt and waistcoat.”

“But you must be dreadfully uncomfortable in all that wet leather.”

“It is not pleasant,” he admitted. “But it is bearable.”

“Were you not the one who mocked me about my skirt, Your Grace?” Before he could say it was hardly the same thing, she gestured to one of the other rooms. “Come. You sit and I will pull them off.”

Plimpton knew he should not like the thought of that so much.

He should politely but firmly decline.

She gestured to the room’s only chair, giving him an impatient look. “Come. It will be hours before my habit is fit to wear. We can relax and enjoy a picnic lunch while everything dries.”

When put that way, it sounded foolish to sit around in wet boots and leathers.

Plimpton sat.

“Give me one foot,” she commanded.

He lifted his boot and grimaced. “It’s covered with sand.”

“Sand washes off.” She grabbed his ankle and pulled. Not surprisingly, the soaked leather did not budge. She caught her lower lip with her teeth—an action that did nothing to loosen his footwear but tightened his breeches—and considered the soggy boot before giving another tug, harder this time.

That did not work, either.

She scowled at his boot as if it were personally defying her.

Although Plimpton could have happily sat there and watched her fondle him—any part of him—all day, he had mercy on her. “Well, thank you for trying, Winifred.” He began to lift his foot from her grasp, but she held on to it.

“I will use the other way.”

“What other way?”

She pursed her lips. “ You know what way.”

Plimpton was beginning to enjoy himself. “Oh, you mean the way a valet sometimes does?”

“Yes, that is the way I mean.”

Plimpton did not think he had imagined the slightly dangerous undertone in her voice. “I could not ask you to—”

“You are not asking. I am offering. But you will close your eyes.”

“I will?”

“Yes, you will.”

“Very well, I will close my eyes.” Plimpton fit deed to words and listened to the sound of cloth rustling—the lifting of her toga, he presumed—and then felt warm, firm flesh clamp around his knee.

Plimpton opened his eyes—truly, how could any man resist?—and was faced with the delightful sight of her legs bare to above the knee and her derriere shifting and flexing beneath the shin sheet as she wrestled with the boot until it grudgingly began to move.

All too soon she had it free and dropped it with a thunk to the floor.

Plimpton closed his eyes when she began to twist around.

There was a heavy silence, and then she moved to the other leg. He opened his eyes and enjoyed the second half of the too brief show, shutting them again when the second boot hit the floor.

She moved away, taking the warm pleasure of her body with her. “You can open them now.” Her voice came from the doorway, where she hesitated on the threshold, cheeks a furious pink.

“Thank you, Winifred.” Plimpton only allowed himself to smile after she had darted away, swallowed up by the shadows in the hallway.