Chapter 3

These [actions] were told to his honour.

—editor H. Mackenzie et al., The Mirror, No.23(1779)

Whatever they had been expecting, this was not it, and Clayton found himself facing three amazed faces, eyes and mouths round. Miss Ellsworth had taken up some sewing, but now she sat frozen, needle in midair.

"But—but—we were going to wrap Beatrice in cotton wool," Aggie reminded him, as if she had not just said so a minute earlier.

"Yes," her husband seconded after a moment. "We thank you for the suggestion, however. Quite…original. But I will point out—teaching Bea to swim hardly qualifies as a favor for yourself, Clayton."

"Of course it would be," he answered, striving for lightness. "Because I'm a busy man. I cannot be hauling your womenfolk out of the Channel every morning." Polite smiles met this joke, but he could tell they were still recovering.

The young lady in question found her tongue at last, though she gripped her needle so tightly it pressed a groove in her skin. "Wait a moment," she said, with a flash at her brother and sister-in-law. "All of you. I beg you wouldn't talk about me or make decisions for me as if I weren't in the room."

Though surprised by this show of spirit, they began to beg her pardon, but she had already turned on the originator of the idea. "And sir, I think…the decision of whether or not I learn to swim lies solely with me."

Even on so short an acquaintance, Clayton suspected her sternness was not characteristic. There was her family's dismay, to begin with, but also the telltale tremble of her voice and chin. She was not in the habit of open defiance, then. Which meant she felt herself driven to it.

In response, his color rose. It probably had been an indecorous suggestion and none of his business, however he himself had his habits, chief among them being finding efficient solutions to difficulties. On the other hand, he reminded himself, this was a drawing room, for pity's sake, not the side of a leaky ditch!

"Of course," he said quietly. Still, conviction prodded him, and he could not suppress a restless movement.

"Perhaps you mean, Clayton, that you would like to learn to swim yourself?" Tyrone asked in an effort to smooth over the awkwardness.

Confound it, thought Clayton impatiently. She might resent me for it, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

"Yes," he said aloud. "That is, though I too would love to learn to swim one day, I think the need more pressing for you, Miss Ellsworth, and I urge you to consider it." She had resumed her stitching, but he could see how quick and jerking her movements were. "You see, Miss Ellsworth," he continued, "while your brother and sister might deem wrapping you in cotton wool for the remainder of your stay a comfortable solution, I have always thought it advisable to face a fear, if one hopes to overcome it."

"True," agreed Aggie, in spite of herself. She cast Beatrice her own uncertain look. "Why, I would absolutely agree with you, Mr. Clayton, if it came to me. I love sea-bathing so much, I would hate to be deprived of it, but…"

"But Aggie and I have fears of our own," rejoined Tyrone swiftly. "Fears of our family's wrath, in particular, if we were to return to Winchester without my dear little sister, or even with an injured one. Therefore the cotton-wool proposal. Isn't that right, Bea? Besides—" he gave a droll wink "—I hope she will not mind me mentioning it—and I truly wish she were not actually in the room, that I might say this with impunity—but Beatrice is sadly the most lily-livered of my sisters."

At this Beatrice straightened again, abandoning any pretense of sewing. In fact, she secured her needle carefully in the fabric, lest she give in to the urge to jab her brother with it. "Mr. Clayton," she began, "I pray you will ignore a little family squabbling, but, actually, Tyrone, I do mind you mentioning it. I may not have, say, Minta's reputation for bravery—though it might be more accurate to call it recklessness—nor Lily's, whose boldness stems more from indifference than lion-heartedness—but I think I'm at least as brave as Florence."

While neither Tyrone nor Aggie contradicted her, nor did they hasten to agree, and when Beatrice saw them exchange a quick glance, that sealed it. For that little shared look contained years of memories: little Beatrice who cried too much; little Beatrice who didn't want to go to school even as a day pupil because she wanted to follow her oldest sister and stepmother around; and even the grown Beatrice who had tried to prevent Mr. Wolfe from wooing her mama, out of dread for the changes which would follow.

Digging her fingernails into her palms she declared, "It so happens, Tyrone, I have decided I would like to learn to swim, thank you very much. And as you have already promised Mr. Clayton you would grant his favor, whatever it might be, that means you have bound yourself to teach me."

In response her brother spluttered, half amazed and half amused, but Aggie laughed outright. "Hoist with your own petard, Tyrone! Oh, my. Now you know how Herod felt when Salome made her request. I suspect, though, if you drown Bea, it will be your own head on the platter." With a playful nudge she added, "Come, come. You had better teach me at the same time, then. That way, if disaster strikes, perhaps between the two of us we can fish her out."

"But who will fish me out while the both of you are hanging like millstones about my neck? I saw how Bea nearly strangled Clayton this morning." He turned, still chuckling, to shake his head at their guest. "Good gracious—look what you've got me into. The least you could do is join us tomorrow."

Much as he would have liked to leap at the offer, and pleased as he was with Miss Ellsworth's decision, Clayton was obligated to remind himself of his earlier resolves. Clearly the family meant to befriend him, but encouraging such an intimacy without revealing his station in life would be disingenuous. In honor he must make a clean breast, that they might then beat a decorous retreat.

"I'm afraid that will be impossible," he said therefore. "Because my work keeps me very busy. Too busy."

"Oh," breathed Mrs. Ellsworth, disappointed. "Then you haven't time for us?"

"What? I—no—that isn't it," he hemmed, though it was true enough. If he were suddenly to play the Seaside Man of Leisure, a great deal would be left undone. "That is—I do have many things I am responsible for, but that is not what I meant, Mrs. Ellsworth."

"What is it, then?" demanded Tyrone. "For I confess I have already thought of several more things to invite you to."

"Beware, Mr. Clayton, or my husband will drag you to poetry readings and such," teased Aggie. "Though, if you enjoy such activities, or if you ever want poetry composed for you or read to you or the latest novel described, there is no better man for the job."

Clayton's smile was stiff. "Certainly I would call upon those talents of yours, Ellsworth, if I were able to indulge my love of reading more. But I'm afraid, in my line of work, it has been impossible."

"Indulge it here, then!" cried Aggie, thoroughly missing the point. "The library below the subscription room is capital, is it not, Tyrone? When my mother visited Bognor some years ago, she found its collection lacking, but I wrote to her that it is much improved since then."

"Absolutely," agreed her husband. "A very respectable, more than adequate selection of material. What do you say we go tomorrow, Clayton? After the morning bathe, that is. A little holiday for you, and then we will try to leave you in peace."

Clayton sighed inwardly at their persistence. "Ellsworth, you would likely find me an unsatisfactory companion in that regard. Because—because as I said this morning, I am an engineer."

"That's right!" Tyrone snapped his fingers. "And we have been wanting to ask you more about that, for where we live we rarely meet with any. Do you improve the roads? Build bridges?"

"Neither. My work is on the canals, which I have been involved in building these ten years. You see, while you have been reading and writing poetry, I have lived the life of a comparatively unlettered mechanic." This was an exaggeration, but he felt he must exaggerate, if they were not going to listen to him.

"That's a peculiar choice of words," murmured Miss Ellsworth with a tiny smile. She was sewing again, eyes on her work, but they flicked up to him briefly. "Considering how you have, in the course of a fortnight, acquired the reputation among the servants of a man chained to his desk, writing letter after letter. But perhaps those countless epistles are all of them ill-spelt and ungrammatical?"

"I said ‘comparatively unlettered,'" he amended, unable to prevent a chuckle. He had the passing thought that she wanted to repay him tit for tat for the discomfiture he had caused her. "I suppose my business letters will do, to say what I want said. But what I mean is, I have neither a public school nor university education."

"And that must be dreadfully inconvenient!" was her reply. "Especially when your correspondents beg you to express yourself in rhymed couplets or to translate a contract into Latin."

Another look passed between Tyrone Ellsworth and his wife, this one unseen by Beatrice. Tyrone lifted one brow a fraction, which in married-couple language clearly indicated, Is this truly our Beatrice speaking this way? And Aggie responded with widened eyes: In anyone else, I would call it flirting!

For his part, Clayton found himself pleasantly riled. "Are you mocking me, Miss Ellsworth?"

Sadly for both witnesses and participants, Beatrice's response was forestalled by the entrance of Pidgeley, the servant choosing this moment to shuffle in and summon them to supper, and the interchange must be put aside while the gentlemen escorted the ladies to the dining room.

Pidgeley then creaked about, serving a succession of dishes, several of which Clayton recognized from the nearby inn (having himself sampled their offerings over the past fortnight). But while the servant's shoes and knee joints played a symphony of squeaks and pops throughout the meal, the man himself of course said nothing, leaving the conversation to begin again.

Clayton was mulling over how to reintroduce the subject of his profession, when Tyrone spared him the trouble.

"You say you've been an engineer on the canals for ten years?" he asked. "I plead ignorance about what that entails, Clayton, and hope you will explain all."

"If you like. Though I admit I am more used to answering questions than delivering monologues on my work."

The Ellsworths took him at his word, and myriad questions followed, all of which he patiently answered. But far from seeming disdainful of his manual labors or bored by his responses, the more they learned, the more curious they became. Even Miss Ellsworth, who left the questioning to her relations, attended with unfeigned interest. (At least he thought it was unfeigned. All he could be certain of was that, unlike his betrothed Miss Brand, Miss Ellsworth neither patted back yawns nor complained that, this was all very well, but it was "like listening to Papa prose on and on, all over again.") Tyrone Ellsworth went so far as to solicit his advice on a drainage problem at Hollowgate, which he answered as best he could, conjecturing how puddling techniques could be applied to farmland.

Privately, each thought how well Mr. Clayton expressed himself, despite his earlier modesty. The truth was, from the age of fourteen he had spent most of his time in company with those either directly or indirectly involved with canal-building: the engineers and the workmen, the investors and landowners, and the politicians—always the politicians. While the landowners and politicians generally hailed from the more exalted social classes, Clayton had rarely been cowed because, when he was among them, it was only the project—the work—which was discussed. And of the work he was fully master.

"I don't mind," he assured them again, when Aggie begged his pardon at last for their interrogation. "Few people in the south of England have ever seen a canal, therefore it would be extraordinary if you did know anything about them. And we are all of us too young to remember the mania which gripped the kingdom in the nineties, when my late mentor tells me one only had to whisper the word ‘canal' to be at once besieged with would-be investors."

"Is it not so now?" asked Tyrone. "Aggie, think of my cousin Benjamin. He is always on the lookout for new ventures."

"Benjamin's new wife Maria might not thank you for encouraging him in another money-making scheme," Aggie chuckled.

"On the contrary," he returned. "Maria has me to thank for her present happiness."

"We had better explain to Mr. Clayton," put in Beatrice. "Because he so kindly explained his own mysteries to our satisfaction." She smiled at their guest around the candelabra and flower bowl in the center of the table. "You see, our dear cousins Benjamin and Austin once published a book of Tyrone's letters—"

"With my full permission and cooperation," interjected her brother.

"With his full permission and cooperation," she agreed, "and made a pretty sum upon it. Enough so that he—Benjamin—was able to marry, and Austin now has hopes of doing so. But Tyrone himself did not make a penny."

"Only because Tyrone did not need a penny," Aggie dismissed this. "Whereas poor Benjamin and Austin needed as many as they could find."

"Precisely," concurred her husband. "Which brings us back to my earlier question: Clayton, would you recommend investment in your latest project? How much are the shares?"

John put a hand to his chest and made a half-bow of acknowledgement. "Frankly, new investors are always welcome, and shares may be had at present for perhaps ten pounds apiece. But construction will take at least two years, in which time I daresay you might buoy your cousin's financial situation more easily and with less risk by writing him another book of letters."

But Tyrone laughed at this. "You say that because you are only considering one kind of risk. If I were to author another set of letters for my cousins, my father-in-law might gladly see me ride in a cart about Winchester, and he would be the first to hurl something at my head."

"My father was upset about the letters," Aggie explained with a nostalgic smile.

"No, Mr. Weeks was upset about our elopement," corrected her husband.

"No—well, yes, of course he was—but there would have been no need for an elopement, had you not needed to jilt the girl you were previously engaged to."

"And there would have been no need to jilt any girl, had she not mistakenly manufactured the engagement in the first place," he retorted, but Clayton could see there was no heat in the argument. Rather, they trod well-worn paths which offered more amusement than controversy.

It was Miss Ellsworth who observed, "It's quite discourteous of you two to go on and on with your private jokes and scandals, while Mr. Clayton must sit there nodding politely. Besides, suppose he were to shun us in consequence of your misconduct?"

"We can't have that!" declared Tyrone, thumping the board. (Pidgeley understood it as a demand for more wine and creaked forward to refill his glass.) "We're really quite dull and respectable, Clayton, I promise. And to show you bear us no ill will, you must tear yourself away from your precious canals and join us for tomorrow's swim lesson. Suppose Aggie and Beatrice were to pin me to the sea floor in their flapping and kicking? That would be upon your conscience."

And Clayton heard himself say, though he had not had any intention of saying it, "Very well. Why not? I might as well hang about your neck, too, Ellsworth, that we might all go down together."

When the young man bid them farewell for the evening, the Ellsworths did not at first speak of him, each perhaps waiting for another to begin the subject. Tyrone read them some more Waverley, but despite his excellent delivery and her usual interest in Flora Mac-Ivor, Beatrice's mind wandered, returning again and again to her rescuer.

She had never met anyone like him. It was not his looks—though she liked his looks very much. Nor did he have wealth or rank or connection to boast of, it seemed. What was it, then? Of course there was the fact that he had saved her from injury, if not from death itself. Her heart sped to recall the terror of the moment, her bathing dress pinned beneath the wheel, her lungs filled and choking, the dim and cold deep. And then, suddenly, the powerful arms grasping her, the only solid things in a murky world—

With a shudder, Beatrice pushed the memory away again. No, it was not his rescue of her which rendered him fascinating. If anything, the episode—marked by her vulnerability and loss of control and heedless clinging to him—mortified her. No, no. It was something else altogether.

Perhaps that he hailed from a completely separate world? He had no ties to anything she knew or had known. They had no acquaintance in common; he had never even been to Winchester. On the contrary, he had lived and traveled throughout England and won the regard (he did not say so, but Beatrice gathered as much from the responsibilities he touched upon) of a wide swath of people, from ditch-diggers to members of Parliament! The fact that he worked with both his mind and his hands did not repulse her, she having one brother-in-law who practiced law and another in medicine, but neither of those professions carried the same hint of otherness. Mr. Clayton's work was…new. It hinted at progress and change and an unfamiliar landscape, both literally and figuratively, and Beatrice did not know how she felt about it.

Why, Mr. Clayton's profession was so new that he himself joked it was changing faster than he could predict. "Mark my words," he had said at one point. "Those steam engines which cause me so many headaches when they break down between sections of the work have already improved in the last ten years. I would not be at all surprised if one day we dispensed with canals altogether and merely carried everything we wished along tram-rails."

"Wouldn't you fear being put out of work, then?" Aggie had asked, but he had shaken his head.

"Not in the least. Canals are a means to an end, and if the investors decided it was all to be rails and steam engines tomorrow, I would be ready with a long list of improvements to help them."

That's it, Beatrice thought to herself as she remembered the exchange. He isn't afraid of change. In fact, he welcomesit.

Unknown to her, her ruminations were accompanied by changes in color which were not lost upon Aggie. Springing from her own chair, she joined Beatrice on the sofa. "You're shivering, goosy," she chided, putting an arm about her. "I hope you haven't caught a chill. What a day it has been for you! Are you still thinking about this morning?"

"Not if I can help it."

"How fortunate Mr. Clayton was at hand," Aggie said for the thousandth time, to which her husband nodded heartfelt agreement, also for the thousandth time. "But now that he is gone…" Aggie continued after a pause, "I did want to ask you, Bea—doyou truly wantto learn to swim? Or did we leave you with no choice in the matter? If you don't want to, I will make some excuse for you."

"No—I want to," answered Beatrice, although she wasn't positive it was the whole truth. "Because I do want to enjoy the sea and love the sea and not fear it. And I wasn't thinking about this morning just now. That is—I was, but I stopped." She clasped her hands together, her chin lifting. "I was—thinking about Mr. Clayton. What an—unusual person he is."

"Yes!" and "Exactly!" cried her family, though she was too preoccupied to be suspicious at their eagerness.

"I like him very much," declared Aggie. "And not just for saving you, Bea. He is well-mannered and knowledgeable and—and—"

"And well-spoken," Tyrone supplied. "He will greatly enliven our stay here. What fresh perspectives he will have to offer!"

"You mustn't frighten him away, however, Tyrone," warned Aggie.

"Frighten him away? What on earth are you talking about? I am the least frightening person in all England."

"Because I see it in your eye. You plan to urge him to spend afternoons in the coffee house or the library—after he has already been with us in the mornings to swim—and we must not weary him with our company before the first assembly, or he might not ask Bea—and me, of course—to dance."

"Unless I make a positive nuisance of myself, of course he will ask the both of you to dance!" protested her husband. "If he's the assembly-going sort, that is, which I would not lay bets on." But Tyrone knew his wife well enough not to miss the infinitesimal press of her lips, which said as clearly as if she had spoken, We had better hush now, or we will give the game away! I have already said too much. Indeed, every Ellsworth knew how easily Beatrice found reasons to resist matchmaking efforts. For her even to mention this John Clayton of her own free will was too miraculous and delicate a sign to handle roughly.

Therefore, though for once Beatrice might have been glad to have the subject prolonged, her relations abruptly dropped it.

"We had probably better go to bed," Aggie declared. "Especially if we are to have our first swim lesson tomorrow."