The Courtship - Catherine Coulter [54]
“I have never been to Devon. Where is Paledowns, exactly?”
“Between Combe Martin Bay and Woody Bay, by the village of Bassett. The sea cliffs there about are covered with shags and cormorants. There are days I remember as a child when there were so many fulmars diving and whirling about overhead that you couldn’t see the sky. Just fulmars gliding and swooping about, and even when one flew away you couldn’t see the sky because another moved in to take its place.”
She was looking at him as though he was a stranger to her. She said slowly, looking at his mouth—she didn’t know why, but his mouth pleased her—“I hadn’t imagined that you would be so familiar with birds and such.” She shrugged. “One thinks of a gentleman and one pictures a stack of playing cards, a bottle of brandy, and an unbuttoned waistcoat.”
“And a red nose? Perhaps a woman bending over him, her breasts nearly falling out of her gown?”
“It is the likeliest image.”
He supposed that was fair enough. A man of his proclaimed habits wasn’t necessarily given much credit for having expanded horizons. “Helen, a man who is a noted lover can appreciate other things as well. Life is not all drink and playing cards and women’s soft flesh.”
He had silenced her for the moment, he saw that, and it pleased him. He stared toward a small group of pink-footed geese who couldn’t seem to decide where to stay on the wet sand or soar up to the cliff top. Even geese had to have a leader, and so he said, “A woman, even a strong woman like you, Helen, needs a man to assist her over the cracks in the roads of life.”
She stared at him, her head cocked to one side.
He pointed upward. “See the geese, now soaring upward in a nearly perfect formation? Well, they need a leader to get anywhere at all. So does a woman. She needs a man. That’s what I meant.”
“If I could fly,” she said, shading her eyes with her hand and staring after the geese, “I wouldn’t need anything at all. Even without a leader, I would be free.”
He looked again at her soft mouth and said, “Perhaps. To be truthful, a man prefers to be in bed with a woman rather than philosophizing about geese needing leaders or studying the eating habits of the leach’s petrel. However, when the man—such as myself—is very intelligent, then he can do many things at once, all of them well. Freedom for a woman, Helen, is being led by a man like me.”
Helen bent down, pulled up a yellow-horned poppy, and threw it at him.
He caught the small flower, shook off the dirt, and brought it to his nose. “Not much smell. Time for more truth—I would rather be breathing in your scent while I’m kissing your white belly.”
She turned away from him, and he imagined quite correctly that she wanted to smash him but good, but she controlled herself, saying as she pointed, “Pay attention, Lord Beecham. The land flattens out south of us. There are salt marshes that are covered with waders at low tide, estuaries that snake in and out of the low-lying land, very bad-smelling stretches where the water is trapped for long periods of time. I doubt you would appreciate that particular scent. But along here we have a more interesting coastline.” She opened her arms wide. “I own a lot of this land.”
It wasn’t worth much, he thought, but he wouldn’t mind owning it either, just for its incredible beauty. He said, “This land is like the biblical lily of the valley, Helen, it provides neither food nor a way to grow it. There is no arable farmland, no place to build homes, not even decent grazing for sheep or cattle, just the vast stretches of marram grass, pink sea bindweed, and dunes covered with yellow evening primroses.”
“I bought it because I know the lamp is here, somewhere.”
He nodded. Perhaps he would have done the same thing. The only thing was, anyone could come on this