Laura settled the strap of her waterproof mackintosh bag more firmly over her shoulder as she crossed the beach with Henrietta. It was—along with the woolen bathing costume within—yet another item she’d borrowed from her friend. Though Henrietta could be pettish, she was really quite generous most of the time. Generous, kindhearted, and worthy of every happiness.

Or so Laura had been telling herself since last evening.

She was determined to be happy for her friend. There would be no more pining after Alex Archer. Instead, Laura was going to refocus her attention back where it belonged.

“Don’t do anything foolish,” Henrietta said. “The sea is too dangerous for ladies to be mucking about in it.”

“It isn’t dangerous. Only look.” Laura nodded at the water. The morning sun was shining brightly, reflecting down upon a sea that was as smooth as a sheet of glass. “There’s not a wave in sight.”

“It is rather calm this morning,” Henrietta conceded. “Though why you should want to swim in it, I don’t know. I’d never expose myself to those old biddies with their telescopes. And they weren’t the only ones ogling bathers yesterday. I saw a fellow or two with a telescope as well. Horrible creatures. I’ll not call them gentlemen.”

“I don’t know what they imagine they can see,” Laura said. In truth, she didn’t really care. Her borrowed bathing costume covered her from shoulders to knees in acres of dark blue wool. It was modest enough by anyone’s standards. Besides, she hadn’t come this close to fulfilling her dream only to forgo it because of a few beach-faring busybodies with spyglasses.

“It’s a shame we can’t stay another day,” Henrietta said. “How divine it would be to go dancing again this evening! But Papa is anxious to get home. He can’t be away more than three days without fretting about the estate. If it were up to him, we’d have already left this morning.”

Laura was glad they were taking a later train. It gave her one last chance to go into the water. And this time, she was determined not to abide by the silly rules.

“Perhaps I’ll have a dance at Edgington Park when we return?” Henrietta suggested. “Or a ball?” Her eyes brightened. “I know! I shall plan a betrothal ball. Something grand. An event the villagers will talk about for years to come.”

Laura gave her a sharp look. “He didn’t propose last night, did he?”

“Gracious, no. There wasn’t any privacy. But when he danced with me, and when he gazed into my eyes… Oh, Laura. I pray that one day you shall know what it is to be admired by such a man.”

“We are speaking of Mr. Archer, aren’t we?”

“Who else?”

“You danced with George, as well.”

“Oh, George is a dear. I won’t argue that. But if I were to marry him, I’d spend my entire life managing his little weaknesses. Monitoring his drink, and seeing that he didn’t wager too much at cards.”

Laura smiled. “If anyone could manage him, you could.”

“There’s no question of that. But I’d far rather have a tall, dark-haired stranger sweep me off my feet. Someone with a little bit of mystery about him.” She glanced at Laura. “What about you? You’ve always admired George.”

“I haven’t. Not for a long while.”

“What? But I thought—”

“And he’s never cared for me,” Laura said. “Not like that. It’s you George has been holding a candle for, ever since we were children. We asked him once, do you remember? Whether he favored guinea gold or raven black?”

Henrietta gave a sudden tinkling laugh. “Oh, I’d quite forgotten. He said guinea gold, didn’t he? George has never had any tact.”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“But it didn’t hurt you, did it, Laura? Being second to me?”

“It might have once, when we were children. Not anymore.”

Two open bathing machines stood ahead, their large wooden wheels parked in the wet sand. One was already hitched to a horse, waiting to be hauled out into the sea.

“What luck,” Henrietta said. “We’ll be right beside each other.”

“Good,” Laura said. “We can—”

“Laura!” Teddy’s voice called out to her.

She looked back over her shoulder to see her brother waving in her direction. He was seated on the beach in his wheeled chair, nearer to the jetty than the water.

Alex was with him. He raised a hand in greeting.

She lifted her hand in return, even as her stomach performed a disconcerting somersault.

“You are not mine,” she’d told him last night.

And he never would be.

The sooner she accustomed herself to that fact, the better it would be for all of them.

“Really, Laura,” Henrietta scolded as the pair of them walked on. “You should say something to your brother.”

“About what?”

“About shouting your name out across the beach as if you were a common doxy.” Her lips pursed. “And what are the pair of them doing so close to the women’s bathing machines? They should be farther away from us.”

“They’re not that close. No more so than anyone else this morning. It’s the machines that move from day to day. Can’t you tell? Yesterday they were closer to the cliffs.”

“Going in the water today, ma’am?” one of the gentlemen driving the horses asked. He was a weathered fellow of indeterminate age, sitting sideways on the horse’s back, with a straw hat pulled down over his brow.

“We are,” Laura said. “You go ahead, Hen. I’ll use the other machine.”

A heavy-set woman assisted Laura up the steps, closing the door behind her. The bathing machine was windowless, equipped with benches on either side, and wooden pegs on the walls. Laura quickly removed her skirts, petticoats, and bodice, and unhooked her corset. She was in the process of opening her bag to retrieve her bathing costume when the machine lurched forward.

Yesterday, she hadn’t expected the jolting motion, and had been tossed from side to side, nearly losing her balance. Today, however, she was ready for it. As the horse pulled the machine out into the water, she braced her body against the wall, and slipped into her bathing costume.

Composed of a knee-length tunic, Turkish trousers, and a belt, the cumbersome ensemble wasn’t ideal for swimming. Nor were the canvas slippers she was obliged to wear, secured with ribbons that laced up her legs.

How much easier it would be to wear only her chemise and drawers! Or to leap into the water in a primitive state as the male swimmers were rumored to do.

But this wasn’t Talbot’s Pond. And she was no man.

She tugged an oilskin cap over her plaited hair and tied it beneath her chin. When the attendant opened the exit door, Laura was ready. “You needn’t dunk me. I know how to swim.”

“As you please, ma’am.” The woman assisted her down, squeezing tight to her arm until Laura was submerged in the water. “Off you go, now.”

Laura waded out from beneath the canvas awning that shielded the steps of her bathing machine from public view. Henrietta was already there, along with several other ladies, paddling in the surf.

“Fine weather today!” an older lady bellowed in Laura’s ear.

“Your first time at Margate?” a younger lady enquired. “Did you arrive on the steamer?”

Laura made polite replies, conversing in what she supposed was the way many genteel strangers conversed when on holiday at one of England’s watering places. “I’m going a little farther out,” she said at length.

“Be careful, Laura,” Henrietta warned.

Another of the older ladies watched Laura with concern. “Are you a strong swimmer, my dear?”

“I am,” Laura said. “My mother taught me.”

And she was a strong swimmer. Though the sleeves of her tunic impeded her arms, and though her Turkish trousers weighted down her legs, she managed to cut through the water with a sure stroke.

Several yards from the other ladies, she dived beneath the surface. All those hours spent strengthening her lungs in Talbot’s Pond hadn’t been for nothing. She was able to dive deep, before turning in the water and kicking her way back to the surface.

“Are you nearly finished?” Henrietta asked after a quarter of an hour had passed. “I’m ready to get out.”

“Go ahead,” Laura said. “I’m going to swim awhile longer.”

“Laura—”

“It’s all right. I’ll meet you on the beach.”

Henrietta pursed her lips, but she didn’t argue.

Laura wouldn’t have heard her if she had. She dived again and kicked away from the bathing machines. She swam until she was no longer surrounded by curious travelers. Until the noise of the beach was drowned out by the sound of the surf. Until she had no thought for romance, or money, or London solicitors.

It was freedom. Glorious freedom. Everything she could have imagined, and more.

It was also exhausting.

The sea was still smooth as glass, but beneath the surface, there was an unmistakable undertow. She hadn’t noticed it at first. It was subtle closer to the shore. Only when she’d swum out far past the bathing machines, did she begin to feel the relentless power of it.

It caught her in its grasp before she recognized the danger. When she did, she tried to swim against it, kicking as hard as she could—so hard that one of her canvas slippers came loose.

How had she managed to drift so far from the shore? Had the current been pulling her out the entire time?

She stroked her arms through the water with renewed effort. They were beginning to feel heavy. So were her legs. Had she pushed herself too far? The shore seemed a very long way away now. And her lungs were burning.

A flare of panic set in.

Perhaps she wasn’t as strong as she’d thought she was.

Alex stepped back to view Teddy’s painting from a different angle. It was the seashore—that much he recognized. As for the rest…

“There’s something compelling about it,” he said. “A feeling of movement. Of emotion, rather than accuracy. But I’m no expert.”

“It’s an experimentation with light. The way it hits the water.” Teddy cocked his head, squinting as he laid down another swipe of color with his brush. “If it comes out well, I’ll give it to Laura for her birthday next week.”

Alex went still. “I’d no idea it was her birthday.”

“She doesn’t like anyone making a fuss over it. Especially not this year.”

“What’s so special about this year?”

“She’ll be five and twenty.” Teddy raised his head, looking out past Alex’s shoulder. “There’s Henrietta. I wonder where Laura is?”

Sure enough, Henrietta Talbot walked toward them from across the sand. Her dress was a little wrinkled, and her golden hair somewhat flattened—from a bathing cap, Alex suspected.

“Good morning,” she said brightly. “Have you seen Laura?”

A frisson of tension tightened Alex’s muscles. “What do you mean?”

“She’s not been by, has she?”

“Wasn’t she with you?”

“Yes, but…she wanted to swim away from the others. She said she’d meet me on the beach. It didn’t occur to either of us to specify the place. Do you suppose she’s gone back to the hotel?”

“We’d have seen her walk by,” Teddy said.

“Perhaps you didn’t notice?”

Teddy gave Henrietta a vaguely contemptuous look. “Don’t be ridiculous. Even if we didn’t see her, she would have seen us. It makes no sense for her to have passed by without saying anything.”

Alex stared out at the sea, past the women’s bathing machines. It was too far away to make anything out. He flashed a look at Henrietta. “Stay with Teddy.”

“But where are you going?” Henrietta demanded.

“Just wait a moment!” Teddy objected at the same time.

Alex scarcely heard them. He was already striding down the sand to the women’s bathing machines. It was early in the morning. The beach wasn’t yet as crowded as it had been the previous day. There were a few fashionable couples having their morning promenade on the jetty. And the cadre of elderly ladies with their telescopes were seated near the bathing machines.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said to one of them as he plucked her telescope from her fingers. “If I may?”

“I say, young man!” she cried out. “Look here! That isn’t a plaything!”

“Heavens,” a second elderly lady gasped. “Is he looking at the bathers?”

Alex ignored them. The telescope wasn’t very powerful, but it was strong enough to permit him to see out past the machines. Unfortunately, the sun was shining too brightly for him to get a clear view. There was a glare on the water.

“May I borrow this?” He didn’t wait for permission. As he set off, he heard the ladies’ voices behind him rise to a crescendo.

“Get back here, sir! Get back here, I say!”

“He’s stolen it, Mildred! Summon a policeman!”

He didn’t stop until he reached the shore. The water was calm, lapping up onto the sand in a gentle froth of sea foam. It wet his shoes and the hem of his trousers as he took another step forward and raised the telescope to his eye.

Some of the female bathers were visible, wading just beyond the canvas awning of their bathing machines. It was difficult to tell one from the other. Their hair was covered in matching oilskin caps, their torsos nearly indistinguishable in drooping wet wool.

“Alex!” Henrietta ran toward him across the sand. “What in the world are you doing?”

He looked back at her sharply. “I told you to wait with Teddy.”

“That manservant of his…Yardley, or whatever his name is, is with him now. Papa and Mrs. Bainbridge are up on the promenade as well.”

“What color was Laura’s bathing dress?” he asked.

“It’s my bathing costume, actually. She borrowed it from me—” She stopped short at the look on his face. “It’s dark blue, with a white trim.”

Alex looked through the telescope. Laura wasn’t with the other bathers. He couldn’t see her anywhere.

A visceral fear rose within him, squeezing at his heart and lungs. He was vividly reminded of that day on the cliffs at Abbot’s Holcombe so long ago. The sea hadn’t been smooth then. It had been wild. A roiling stew.

He’d been climbing down the cliff face with Justin, Tom, and Neville, just as they’d done dozens of times. Clinging to the familiar outcroppings. No one had noticed the rocks skittering beneath Neville until it was too late.

Neville had tried to move away from the crumbling stones, and in the process, had lost his foothold. He’d slipped sharply to the right, his hands scrabbling on the rocks. And then he’d fallen. He’d struck his head and gone down into the sea, where he disappeared. As if he’d never been there in the first place.

Justin hadn’t hesitated. He’d dived in after him, straight from the cliff face, heedless of the danger.

Alex and Tom had descended the rest of the way to the beach. And they’d waited, and waited, Alex pacing the water’s edge like a caged lion. But when Justin, at last, came out of the sea, Neville wasn’t with him.

“I couldn’t find him,” he’d said as he struggled for breath. “He’s gone.”

“No.” Alex had shaken his head. “No.”

And then, amid Justin and Tom’s shouts of protest, he’d gone into the sea himself.

Fear hadn’t mattered. Reason hadn’t mattered. He’d been too desperate. Too unwilling to accept that Neville had been taken from them.

Margate wasn’t Devon. And Laura Hayes wasn’t Neville Cross. But as Alex stood on the beach, he felt that same stifling sense of desperation.

“You’re making a spectacle of yourself,” Henrietta said. “Laura can swim, you know.”

“Not in the sea, she can’t.” He scanned the water. There was a glint across a low swell of waves in the distance. A shadow of dark blue on the surface. It was probably nothing. But—

Dear God, it looked remarkably like a person.

“I don’t see how you would know that. It isn’t as if—” Henrietta broke off with a cry. “What are you doing? Come back here!”

Alex scarcely heard her as he ran out into the surf. The part of his brain still functioning registered the fact that there were no small boats about—no sailors who could be applied to for assistance. There were only bathers with indeterminate swimming skills, paddling in the shallows.

There was no one else to help her. No one else who could possibly get to her in time.

It was the last rational thought he had before he kicked off his shoes, tore off his coat, and dived into the sea.

The cold water swallowed him whole, seeping straight through his trousers and shirt to chill him to the bone. It surged all around him, a living, breathing thing with a power and a will of its own.

He’d always been a strong swimmer. A burst of adrenaline made him even more so. He struck out for where he’d seen her. Where he’d thought he had seen her. Far past the women’s bathing machines, and out to where the sea began to churn and pull, a dangerous, primitive force that could easily kill a man.

Or a woman.

But Laura wasn’t there. The silhouette Alex had seen on the water was gone.

Which meant that he’d been mistaken. Or…

That her lungs had filled with water. That she’d sunk beneath the waves and drowned.

He dived deep, the water closing over his head. A flash of memory—Neville’s body sinking into icy darkness—nearly caused him to recoil. But he pressed on, down, down into the murky depths.

It was silent as death under the water, the only sound the rapid pounding of his heart. He swam until his pulse roared in his ears. Until his chest burned for want of air. He needed to breathe. But if he needed air, then so did she. And she must be here somewhere. She must be here.

He felt about with his hands, moving blindly in the water. This is what it had been like to go into the sea after Neville. This feeling of burgeoning panic. Of lungs struggling for breath, and a sob building in his throat, as again and again he dived into watery darkness.

Laura had called him a coward. A spectator standing alongside the road of life. Never risking anything. Never feeling anything.

But he felt something now. It gave him a strength he didn’t have. He prayed it was enough.

He dived deep one last time.

As he reached out, a drooping swathe of wool connected with his hand. And miraculously…there she was. Laura. Suspended in the depths of the water.

For a fraction of a second, he thought he must be hallucinating.

And then he gathered her in his arms and kicked with all of his might toward the sunlight.

They broke the surface together, Alex gasping for air. But unlike the day he’d pulled her from Talbot’s Pond, there was no indignant sputtering from Laura. No calling him a lummox and telling him he was trespassing.

She was lifeless, her face as white as bleached bone.

Cold fear surged through his veins. He made for the shore, swimming halfway on his back, pulling her along with him.

A small crowd of onlookers had gathered to watch. As Alex dragged Laura up onto the sand, he vaguely registered the presence of Henrietta and George. Teddy was there as well. Yardley must have helped him down from the jetty.

“Laura!” Teddy cried.

“Is she dead?” Henrietta asked.

“She’s not breathing,” George said.

A stranger shouted for an attendant to fetch someone from the coast-guard station at the summit of the cliffs.

“It’s too late,” a woman exclaimed. “She’s been drowned.”

The sound of Teddy’s voice cut through the roar of chatter: “Do something!”

Do something.

The same words Alex had uttered on the beach so many years before.

But there was no Justin Thornhill to save the day this time. No Tom Finchley to assist him. It was up to Alex alone. And this time, this time, he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

He rose up on his knees. “Get back!”

Some in the crowd obeyed him. Others remained where they were.

Alex leaned down over Laura. He put his hands on her wool-clad midsection and pushed upward to force the water out of her lungs. Once, twice, and then again, to little effect.

Desperation made him reckless—heedless of the crowd. He might even have cursed a time or two, commanding Laura to wake up. All the while, his mind raced over his limited options for reviving her.

In Marseilles, he’d once seen a sailor resuscitate a man with a pair of bellows. But Alex didn’t have any bellows, nor was there time to have someone fetch a pair. In place of them, he did the only thing he could think of. He bent his head and covered Laura’s half-open mouth with his own.

The gasps from the crowd reached a fever pitch.

Laura’s lips were cold as ice. He exhaled into her mouth, giving her as much breath as she might have received from one pump of the bellows.

“This is outrageous!” a woman said shrilly.

“Unhand her, sir!” an elderly man joined in.

“Leave him be!” Teddy shouted. “That’s my sister.”

Alex breathed into her mouth again. It was surely nothing like he’d seen done in France. And it was probably too late anyway. She’d been too long in the water. He hadn’t been fast enough. Strong enough.

He drew back from her face, setting his hands on her midriff once more, and pressing with all of his might—so forcefully he feared he might crack her ribs.

Laura gave a choking cough.

Relief tore through him. He swiftly turned her over, holding her in his arms above the sand as she expelled the water from her lungs in great heaving retches.

The crowd closed in.

He had only moments before they took her away from him. Any second, she’d be wrapped in towels and conveyed back to the hotel.

He leaned down to her one last time. Her lashes fluttered, black as soot against her pale cheeks, as he whispered in her ear.

When he drew back, her smoke-blue eyes met his.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

She gave a weak nod.

And then the coast-guardsman was there, along with Mrs. Bainbridge and the squire. Alex sank back onto the sand, exhausted, as they bundled Laura up and carried her away.