Lucy jumped to her feet to fetch one of the towels Eloisa had left on the rocks, then hurried back to him. “Here, take this. How did you…”
Oh, no. Lucy wished she could sink into the sand beneath her feet. In the water, when she’d been struggling to get away, her foot had connected with something hard.
She’d kicked him in the face. Hard. If the blood seeping through the towel was any indication…
“I’ve broken your nose, haven’t I?”
He shrugged. “It’s not broken. Just bent.”
She bit her lip. “But there’s so much blood.”
“Noses bleed.”
Lucy couldn’t see his face because it was hidden by the towel, but his big shoulders moved in another shrug. He didn’t sound angry. Despite her mortification, a grin tugged at the corner of Lucy’s mouth. “A dousing, a kick to the face and a broken nose? My, you’re taking all this quite well.”
A muffled laugh came from behind the towel. “Better a broken nose than a drowning.”
Lucy winced. “Um, yes. Well, about that. You see—”
“In any case, my nose isn’t broken.” He lowered the towel from his face, then rose to his feet until he was towering over her, his hands braced on his hips. “It’s hardly bleeding at all anymore.”
Lucy stared at him, eyes wide.
Goodness.He was quite…that is, he was rather…well, it wasn’t as if she could ignore it, since he was soaked to the skin, but even if he’d been dry, there could be no denying he was unusually…
Robust.
She was no expert on a gentleman’s anatomy, having scarcely set eyes on any gentleman but her father, but she doubted many of them could wear a wet shirt quite as well as this one did. His torso was…well, she’d never seen so many lovely angles and grooves in her life. The thin, transparent fabric of his shirt clung to his hard chest and taut belly as if it were proud to be there, and his dark blue breeches were plastered like a second skin to a pair of long, muscular thighs.
Thank goodnesstheyweren’t transparent, or she might have fallen into a swoon.
Lucy’s face flamed with sudden heat as it dawned on her she was standing in front of him in nothing but her bathing costume. He seemed to notice it at the same time. His eyebrows rose as his gaze swept over her body. He had straight, dark eyebrows, and lovely eyes—a bright, ocean blue—but they narrowed as he stared at her, realization flickering in their depths.
“Tell me, lass. How did you end up in the ocean? Did you fall in?”
Lucy chewed on her lip as ten different responses flew through her head, each a more elaborate falsehood than the last. Really, what use was the truth in this instance? She couldn’t tell this poor gentleman he’d taken a blow to the nose and nearly drowned them both to save a lady who didn’t need saving.
It would be dreadfully rude.
Very well, then. A lie it was. “Yes, I’m afraid I’m quite clumsy. I fell in, and the next thing I knew I was fighting for my life in the pounding surf.”
A bit dramatic, but it would do.
“Were you, now? How terrifying. Did you fall from the wall?” He pointed to the ring of rocks lining the tiny cove.
The wall? Yes, that seemed plausible. “I did, indeed. Tumbled right over the edge of it.”
The blue eyes twinkled down at her. “Ah, I see. How did you happen to land in the water instead of in the sand?”
Blast it. “Well, you see, I didn’t so much fall as I…what I meant to say was I was walking on the wall, but then I came down to the beach and—it was foolish of me, I know—I thought I’d put just a toe into the water, but the current overcame me, and the next thing I knew, I was fighting for my life in the pounding surf.”
His lips twitched. “The pounding surf again? It must be powerful this morning to drag you out by a single toe. But there’s one thing I can’t quite make out about your story.”
“Is there, indeed?” Lucy widened her eyes and tried to look innocent, but she was as guilty as a thief with a pocketful of guineas, and she had the racing heart to prove it. “What’s that?”
“I just wonder how, between dipping your toe into the water and being swept out to sea by the pounding surf, you had time to change into a bathing costume?”
Lucy opened her mouth, then snapped it closed again without a word. Try as she might, there was simply no reasonable explanation for the bathing costume.
