“No, I want to feel the cool water,” she insisted, “and I have my list to complete.”
“If our marriage does not end, then what need do you have for a list?” he asked, his mouth muffled by her flesh.
“I want it.”
“I want you.”
“I want to swim.”
Keaton's hand fell lower, going beneath the level of her navel, stroking her skirts. She stepped away from him with a giggle.
“Direct me to this mere,” she ordered.
“How can I? I am a blind man,” he replied.
“Then use your vaunted other senses!” she laughed.
Keaton sighed. He was quiet for a minute.
“I distinctly heard the sound of a duck. That way,” he pointed to what seemed to be an impenetrable cluster of alder.
“And that sound was?”
“…Aquack,” he answered after a moment of utter bewilderment.
Georgia laughed at his serious imitation, then picked her way through whip-fine branches and undergrowth to her waist. Suddenly, it opened out and the water lay before her. A grassy sward ran to the water's edge, where rushes grew. It was mirror still and bright as the blue day.
“I smell the water,” Keaton said.
Georgia beamed, dropping her linen bundle onto the mossy grass.
“And I, for one, cannot wait to get into it!”
She kicked off her shoes and rolled down her stockings, then began unbuttoning her gown. As she was wriggling out of the dress, her bare foot stepped on something hard and cold. She looked down and saw a ring staring back at her. Keaton had dropped his own bundle, discarded his coat and waistcoat, and was hauling his shirt over his head. For once, the sight of his muscled torso did not draw Georgia's eye. She was gaping at the ring, dumbstruck.
It bore a large, red jewel in a gold band. The metal around the jewel had been worked into an intricate line, splitting and whirling apparently at random.
But she knew the pattern was anything but.
It was the last path her father had taken, on his last journey to Africa. It had been marked on a map in his study, over the mantle for years. Elias had asked a goldsmith to work it into a ring that had belonged to their father, to represent their father's explorations.
She picked it up, hands trembling.
Where could it possibly have come from? It could not have just been lying here!
Then she spotted the unfolded corner of the linen bundle and realized that the ring had been contained within. As she had dropped it, the material had unfurled, and the ring had rolled out.
It would have been discovered by a servant had I not wished to come swimming. They would have found it when refreshing my linen. I have not seen it in years. Who put it there? Did Amelia somehow come across it at Silverton and bring it with her?
CHAPTER 28
Georgia dropped the ring and let out a shriek of surprise as Keaton swept her from her feet.
“I am not undressed yet!” she protested, laughing and forgetting the ring in her sudden proximity to Keaton's magnificent nakedness.
“You are undressed enough,” Keaton laughed, walking down the grassy sward to the water.
Georgia slipped the straps of her shift from her shoulders, letting the fabric fall away to her breasts. Squirming in his embrace, she let her naked bosoms press against his chest, making him aware of her new stage of nakedness. She saw the response in his smile, felt his hands shift against her back, fingers splaying to take in the feel of her bare skin.
