“You’re right,” he said, his voice suddenly strained. “It is deuced heavy.”
From a cord tied about her neck, she produced a thick key. With a bit of trial and error, she managed to fit the key into a hole in the iron cuff. The two halves opened like a clamshell.
“This fits around your ankle, see?” she said. “Stand on your good leg, lift the bad, and I’ll secure the thing.”
“Now wait just a minute. Let me be certain I understand this. You have me out here in the freezing ocean, naked—”
“I didn’t ask you to be naked.”
“And now you propose to leg-shackle me.”
“Only in the literal sense.”
“Yes. It’s the literal sense that concerns me. Being literally leg-shackled is bad enough, no need of metaphors. So once you have me bound and chained, how am I to know you won’t just leave me here to freeze all night and be picked apart by gulls tomorrow morning?”
She unlooped the key from her own neck and transferred the necklace to him. “There. You may hold the key. Does that make you feel better?”
“Not really. I still don’t understand what your purpose is.”
“You’ll understand soon enough. Just lift your leg.”
He obeyed, tilting his head back to stare up at the night. There was nothing like a sky full of stars to make a man reckon with his own humility. How, precisely, had he arrived at this? He was taking orders from a spinster, willingly submitting himself to her medieval torture devices. And she wasn’t even naked.
“You can never tell a soul about this,” he said. “I mean it, Susanna. I’ll deny it to my grave. My reputation would never recover.”
“Your reputation? Do you think I’m eager to spread tales of this scene?” She fixed the cuff around his leg, and it snapped into place. “Now slowly lower your foot, and drop the ball into the water.”
Once again, he did as directed. The ball sank quickly to the pebbled bottom, dragging his foot down with it.
“There. Now you have resistance.”
“I didn’t realize I was short on resistance. I rather thought you’d been giving me ample supply.”
“Physical resistance.” She retreated soundlessly, slicing back through the calm water to put space between them. “Walk toward me, slowly. You’ll see.”
He stepped forward onto his good leg. When he tried to take a step with his injured leg, the ball and shackle dragged behind him. Heavy, but with the water’s help, not impossible to move.
“That’s good,” she said, backing up another pace. “Keep moving. Be certain to lift your leg, not drag it. As if you’re marching.”
He took several lunging paces more, chasing her through the chest-deep water. “Tell me why I’m doing this?” He backed her against a boulder, but she darted to the side, swimming away.
“Come this way now,” she directed, shaking her hair free of salty spray. “And I’ll explain.”
He moved forward again. “Explain.”
“It’s like this, Bram. You’re a large man.”
“I’m so glad you’ve noticed.”
“What I mean is, you’re heavy. You’re absolutely right that you need to use your leg in order to recover your full strength. Once your wound healed, staying abed was of no further benefit. But when you walk—or run, or march—on solid ground, you’re adding your entire body weight to every step. And you’re so big, it’s too much strain. Here in the sea, the buoyancy relieves the pressure on your knee. And the shackle gives you a weight to work against.”
He almost reached her, but again she swam out of his reach. He received only a splash of seawater for his pains.
“If you do this regularly,” she called out to him, surfacing some distance away, “you’ll be able to rebuild your strength without heaping more damage on your knee.”
He had to admit, the theory of it made some sense. “Who taught you all this?”
“No one. Two summers ago, we had a girl here recovering from a nasty fall from a horse. She’d broken her leg and hip. Even months later, she could barely hobble around. Her physician at home had told her she would be an invalid. The poor thing was devastated. Only sixteen, you know. She thought she would never have a season, never marry. Fortunately, her father decided to send her here.”
“For a cure?” Bram lunged in her direction. He was catching the rhythm of this exercise now, and this time she barely escaped him.
“I doubt he had any hope of a cure. He was probably hoping she would acclimate to life as an invalid spinster. But the sea bathing helped her tremendously. We did exercises like these several times a week. By the time she left at the end of the summer, she was walking unaided. Even dancing.” He could hear the pride in her voice. “I received a letter from her just a month ago. She’s engaged. Her new betrothed is the heir to a barony. He’s very handsome, I’m given to understand.”
“Good for her. But what about you?”
“What about me?”
“How is it you’ve never married?”
A soft splash. “It’s an easy enough thing. Every morning I wake up, go about my day, and return to bed at night without having recited marriage vows. After several years, I have the trick of it down.”
The tone of her remark was easy, light—but he could tell there was a deeper emotion beneath it. “You can’t tell me no one ever asked.”
She didn’t tell him that.
“I never had any reason to marry,” she said. “I am my father’s only child, and there is no entail. His fortune and Summerfield will come to me, eventually. Though hopefully no time soon.”
“But security isn’t the only reason you might wish to marry. Don’t you want a husband and children? Or are you too modern for that?”
She was silent for a while. When she finally spoke, she said, “Turn around. Walk to that boulder, and then double back to this spot.”
He didn’t move, just crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh no. You can’t pull that trick with me.”
“What trick?”
“Deflecting an uncomfortable question by giving an order. It won’t work, not with me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She tried to sound bored.
He wasn’t fooled. “Of course you do. Because you once accused me of doing the exact same thing.” He shook his head. “I’ve never met a woman like you. You’re so much like me. It’s as though we’re two examples of some rare, exotic breed. Only I’m the male specimen, and you’re the female. Clever as you are, you must know what that means.”