“I’m looking forward to bathing in the sea first,” she confessed. “I have never done it.”
“Never?” He seemed surprised although she had difficulty picturing him stripping off in a bathing machine and splashing about while being held by a dipper. It seemed undignified for a man, and yet everyone knew King George had enjoyed it as did his son and other members of the royal family.So why not Hargrove?
“I found it too cold off the coast near my home, although Swansea Bay is usually calm and the beach is soft and sandy,” she explained to him her lack of experience. No point in disclosing how she’d never been invited by any of the London quality folk when they took excursions to the seaside or even to the Serpentine for that matter.
“Then I hope you will find it enjoyable,” he said, trying to lead her away from the picnic area.
But she held back, scouring the base of all the trees.
“My parasol has gone missing.”
He joined her in the hunt. The other guests had left as she and Hargrove circled the trees and even looked under the tables, before he asked one of the remaining staff who was cleaning up.
The man shrugged and said he would look into it.
Glynnis couldn’t believe she’d lost two pieces of her personal property within two days. So far, this seaside trip had not gained her anything, certainly not a husband. She was out a reticule and now the only parasol she had with her.Drat it all!
“If we see it in the pilfering hands of some lady,” Hargrove began as he offered his arm and they proceeded to follow the prince’s party down the Steyne to the bathing area at its end, “I shall wrestle her to the ground in your honor.”
That made Glynnis laugh. “I’m sure I shall be able to handle her myself, but I thank you. It seems you have become my protector.”
And more than that if his kiss was any indication. She felt warm every time she looked at him. Her body had become molten liquid when his mouth crushed hers and his tongue had fenced with her own. Yet after that, he’d hardly looked at her, giving his attention to some fair-haired lady while she listened to the Prince Regent’s tall tales.
If she knew anything at all about attraction, she would say Hargrove felt the intense pull between them and was fighting it tooth and nail.
And then there it was, Brighton’s splendid beach if one didn’t mind the rocks and flinty pebbles from the chalk formations upon which the town was built. From humble beginnings as a fishermen’s village, the idea that bathing in the sea was good for one’s health had been the beginning of its development into a humming town that bustled with the gentry and commoners alike.
The prince was already in his royal bathing machine, a sturdy horse having pulled it into the sea. Dippers awaited his exit out the back while someone inside the little hut on wheels helped him to undress. At the picnic, he’d said he wished old Martha Gunn were still alive as she’d been helping him to bathe in the Brighton sea since his first visit in 1783 when he was only twenty-one years old. Sadly, she’d passed away in May, and he would have to make do with another keeping him from sinking like a stone.
Glynnis faltered at the shore’s edge, seeing ladies from their party climbing into the bathing machines, mostly by twos. Their maids had waited during the picnic for the sole purpose of helping them undress in the small confines of the wooden bathing machine.Would she be brave enough to go alone?
“Well, Miss Talbot, here is your chance to renew your constitution with the vitality and health of the sea. Did you bring your own bathing dress?”
Oh!She looked around the beach to see what people were wearing, but of course, on the sand, everyone was in their regular clothing.
“I was told the people who own the bathing machines provide something suitable for bathing.”
“Undoubtedly they do. However, at the table where I was seated, the ladies were all discussing a certain Mrs. Bell, who has posted advertisements in a London fashionable magazine,” Hargrove informed her. “She has created some novel garment called a bathing preserver, although whether it is designed to preserve modesty or your life in the sea, I cannot say.”
Glynnis looked around again to see those waiting to enter the little huts on wheels. Most if not all of them had some small bag.
“Surely they don’t have bathing dresses in their reticules.”
“Naturally, I am no expert,” Hargrove continued, “but during the picnic, I was forced to listen to talk of these bathing preservers made of such delicate, light materials a lady may carry the garment in her purse. And apparently it comes with an oil skin cap to keep one’s hair dry.”
“I didn’t know any such thing existed,” she confessed. Besides, she wouldn’t have had the money for such an extravagant item as a dress made to wear merely in the sea. “I shall be fine with whatever the dipper gives me to change into.”
“The ladies expressed distaste at wearing something others had worn a hundred times.”
Glynnis hadn’t thought about that.
At her distraught expression, he added, “But if seawater is a restorative for the body, surely it can also clean a bathing dress.”
“Yes, of course,” she agreed. Those other ladies were being overly fastidious because they could afford to be. Undeterred, she would take a dip. No one would see her, nor what she was wearing. After all the women were mostly at one end of the beach while the men were taking their dips in the other. Or so she’d understood. Now, while she took another look, she noticed those in the Prince Regent’s party were scandalously mixing company.
“Are you coming?” she asked.
Hargrove had halted his progress a few yards from those awaiting their turn in the bathing machines.
