Waiting for you.
It was the most natural thing in the world, the way those words rose to her lips, but Lucy didn’t speak them. It wouldn’t do for him to think she’d been breathlessly awaiting him, her heart thudding with anticipation in her chest.
“And?” He ambled over and plopped down beside her in the sand.
Lucy eyed him. He looked like a dissipated wreck, and she wasn’t much better, clad only in her bathing costume with her cloak draped loosely over her shoulders. It was a bit late for maidenly shynessnow. So, she took a breath and told him the truth. “I was waiting for you. I was afraid I’d miss you entirely if I went in, and you see, I was right.”
Lucy peeked at him from the corner of her eye. He looked like the very picture of a wicked rake, with his hair standing on end and a shadow of dark stubble across his jaw. Between that and his rumpled clothes and heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes, he looked as if he’d been on an infamous debauch the night before, and hadn’t yet been to his bed.
No doubt that was precisely the case, but Lucy kept the thought to herself. This friendship—or whatever one chose to call it—was a strange and fragile thing, and she didn’t want to test it just yet. If she scolded him, she might frighten him away.
He’d been staring out at the water, but now his blue gaze met hers. “Would you have been disappointed if you’d missed me?”
Lucy hesitated. She’d offered him her friendship before only to be rebuffed, but he washere, wasn’t he? She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Of course, I would be. You’re the only friend I have in Brighton.”
NotjustBrighton, but all of England.
He raised one dark eyebrow. “If we’re truly friends, then why won’t you tell me your name?”
“Ididtell you my name. It’s Lucy, remember?”
A brief smile drifted across his lips. “Yourlastname, lass. You have one of those, don’t you?”
She had one, but she’d hardly made it out of Devon before she realized revealing it would do her more harm than good. Lucy bit her lip and jerked her gaze away from him before he could coax the truth out of her with that playful smile and those teasing blue eyes. He might look harmless, but she suspected he was dangerously charming under that mussed hair and careless attitude. Rakes generally were, weren’t they?
Lucy grabbed a handful of cool sand and sifted it through her fingers. “Why are you so determined to know?”
He stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back on his hands with a shrug. “Why are you so determined to hide it, unless you’re some sort of criminal who’s escaped from your gaolers?”
Shehadescaped from her gaolers, though not in the way he meant. “Nonsense. Do I look like a criminal to you?”
“Well, you’ve assaulted me twice, so there’s that.”
Lucy choked on a laugh. “It’s not a proper assault unless there’s a broken bone.”
“It’s not a proper friendship if we don’t know each other’s names,” he countered, blinking innocently at her.
“Proper? You’ve seen me in my bathing costume. I nearly broke your nose with a kick to the face, and now we’re here alone on a deserted beach. We’re long past any concerns about propriety, sir.”
“Ciaran.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He glanced at her, his dark hair fluttering around his face in the morning breeze. “My name. It’s Ciaran.”
“Ciaran.” Lucy rolled the name over her tongue, testing it. It was shorter in her mouth than in his, blunted. She preferred the way he said it, with his lilt exaggerating the vowels.
Still, she nodded in approval. “It suits you. Yes, I suppose it’ll do.”
* * * *
The following day
Four fifty-five in the morning.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter that you won’t tell me your full name, Lucy. It’s not as if we can truly be friends, in any case. Gentlemen and ladies never can be.”
They’d been lying quietly on the sand, but Ciaran’s sudden announcement startled Lucy out of her thoughts. She squirmed into a sitting position and pulled her cloak more securely around her shoulders. “What do you mean, they can’t be friends? Of course, they can.”
