While Marian sat in front of the mirror winding up her hair into a chignon before they departed for another day at the shore, she was aware that Harold had been rifling through his luggage for something – but it still surprised her to see him appear behind her in the mirror with two flat, brown boxes in his hands. He tossed one on the bed behind them and then held the other one out to her, an enigmatic smile on his handsome face.
"What's that?" Marian inquired, gazing up at him quizzically.
His grin widened further. "I have a gift for you."
Of course she'd suspected that was the case – and the fact that, a few days ago, they'd split up for a while when browsing the downtown boutiques had already made her consider the possibility that this would happen – but hearing him say it still made her feel a little guilty. "Oh, Harold, you shouldn't have," she exclaimed, taking the box from his hands. "This whole trip cost us enough money. I'm not expecting you to give me anything else!"
"I think you'll make an exception for this – at least, I hope you will."
The librarian raised her eyebrows, but she eagerly took the package from his hands.
From the size and shape of the box – as well as what she had come to expect from Harold over the years – she had figured that he must have been giving her lingerie, though why he would give her such a thing in the morning made little sense to her. But as soon as she lifted the lid, she found herself even more confused. Inside was a very short, sleeveless gray dress, if one could even call it that, along with a pair of matching bloomers that were barely longer than the dress itself. It was so revealing that it didn't seem like the sort of outfit that would ever be meant to wear in a public place, but the fabric was plain and opaque, and there was nothing sensual or erotic about the design, so it certainly was not the lingerie she'd been expecting.
Just before she was about to relent and ask him to explain, she realized what it was – recent experiences helping her significantly. "A bathing costume!" she exclaimed, and felt foolish that it had taken her so long to figure it out.
Harold nodded triumphantly. "Yes, and I got one for myself, too," he declared, grabbing the other box and pulling out what looked like it could have been a black-and-white-striped union suit. "It'd be a crime to come all this way to see the ocean and not ever go in the water, don't you think?"
Marian agreed wholeheartedly on that principle, but she still felt slightly nervous about the idea of wearing this relatively scanty getup in public where anybody could see her. What frightened her most was baring her knees – though the female ankle had become far less taboo in recent years, the knee was one boundary that she had always believed could never be crossed.
Understandably, she had no firsthand experience with the fashions of bathing attire – the tailors and seamstresses of Iowa had no reason to produce such garments, as there would be no profit to be had from it. She did vaguely remember hearing about that whole Annette Kellerman business twelve years ago – and the arrest of a woman over the indecency of her bathing suit was not exactly an encouraging story in this situation, to say the least.
It was silly to worry about that sort of thing, she chastised herself – Harold had bought this bathing costume at a local shop, not pieced it together himself out of makeshift parts, so surely it was well within the acceptable limits of seaside apparel! But she had never been very good at convincing herself not to worry... especially when it came to what others might be thinking of her in public. After all, she'd spent years knowing that everybody around her was thinking the worst of her every action, and that was not an easy habit to break.
Later, as they emerged onto the boardwalk and then the beach, Marian felt like she might as well have been naked. Well, no, that would have been far worse, she had to admit – but she still felt as though she might be facing a roughly equal level of censure.
Although it made her feel nosy, she found herself nervously assessing what kind of bathing costumes the other women at the beach were wearing, so she could prove to herself that she was not actually baring more skin than propriety allowed in this situation.
But Marian was not the only one thus attired, and nobody seemed particularly concerned about women's knees here. Some wore stockings and shoes and longer sleeves that covered their shoulders, but others did not, and neither of the zealous-looking lifeguards that the librarian had seen patrolling up and down the beach had stopped to condemn any one of them. There was a great mix of different styles on display, and she deemed that her suit must surely be on the more fashionable end of things with its sleeker cut and more revealing style – as the general fashion of women's clothes had moved toward shorter skirts in the past couple years and bare ankles were no longer such a sin, it made sense that bathing costumes would have been changing as well. She tried to calm her pounding heart – nothing was going to happen, she reminded herself. Harold would never have led her astray.
She was actually surprised that her husband was not taking this opportunity to tease or flirt with her at all while they reclined on their blanket – the librarian almost felt a little insulted that he was not staring at her bare legs, as inappropriate as that would have been, because it usually took far less than this to attract his appreciative gaze!
But then she realized that if he allowed himself to become aroused even slightly while he was wearing that thin and form-hugging suit, the results would be impossible to conceal.
Marian felt her cheeks flush bright red – could that really have been the reason for his reserved demeanor? Just thinking about the possibility was making the librarian feel a bit stirred up, herself, and certainly not for the first time, she was grateful that there could be no visible consequences to her thoughts turning a bit too amorous while they were in public…
"Something the matter, dear?"
Her mind was abruptly returned to her present state of dress, and she laughed nervously, fidgeting and pulling at her hem – though she was happy that he hadn't ascertained the true nature of her current thoughts. "I still feel like I'm doing something horribly wrong, with my legs bared like this," she told him truthfully. "I've never shown this much skin to anybody but you in my adult life!"
"Get in the water and you won't have to worry about that," Harold teased. "Not that you should worry, though!"
"You're right," she conceded, standing up and staunchly resisting the urge to shrink and cover herself. "We traveled two thousand miles to get here – I shouldn't let something as silly as my knees stop me now!"
Something else did stop them from simply leaping into the ocean, of course – even stepping into the water at its very shallowest point, at the place where the waves spread and dissipated across the sand before retreating back out to sea, was startlingly cold, especially as her feet had become accustomed to the hot sand.
Marian giggled and gasped and jumped at the shocking chill of the water – but then she realized all at once what a childish spectacle she was making of herself, and she covered her mouth in horror, looking around furtively to see if anybody was casting disapproving glares in her direction.
"I – I don't think I can do this without making an utter fool of myself," she confessed, taking a few steps back to warm her feet up on the softer ground.
Harold placed a reassuring hand on her arm. "Darling, nobody is expecting you to be the epitome of dignified grace here and now. We're not the only people on this beach who have any interest in playing in the water!"
Marian sighed, staring down at her toes and digging them into the sand. "Well, a man and woman six years married and the parents to three children might be expected to uphold a certain standard of behavior," she noted, though with no real enthusiasm.
"Yes, but on the other hand, we've been married for over six years, so I think we get to do as we damn well please by now – especially as we are in the presence of neither our children nor anybody we know," he countered.
She'd always loved how her husband could always talk her down from whatever self-defeating position she had adopted at the moment. She very badly wanted not to believe what she was saying, and deep down, she knew that she was being a tad overcautious, but she relied on Harold to be the one to convince her and relieve her of her worries. Still, she wasn't quite certain yet, so, once again, she took stock of the surrounding bathers, trying to prove to herself that she was not the only adult woman so dreadfully immodest as to be frolicking so enthusiastically in the water – and, ideally, that doing so wouldn't be considered immodest at all!
Many of the women nearby were teenagers or perhaps in their early twenties, while some of the folks closer to her own age seemed to be parents playing with children, and at first Marian feared that maybe she'd been right after all.
But then she looked a little ways down the beach and saw two women, decidedly older than herself and wearing outdated bathing costumes, linking arms and jumping over the waves as they splashed into the shore. Even from this far away, she could hear them laughing and even letting out little whoops of delight and excitement. Marian couldn't know for sure, but she imagined that in another situation, they probably would have been a pair of proud and stately matrons, yet even they were willing to abandon decorum and enjoy themselves without shame. If nobody looked upon them in disapproval, then certainly it couldn't have been wrong for her to loosen her grip on her too-rigid notions of propriety, either!
She had not come thousands of miles away from home to continue living in her own self-imposed box – what she wanted was to step out of it and never confine herself that way again.
Holding her chin up high, the librarian gave a firm nod and stepped back toward the water. "All right – I'm sorry for fretting like that." She shot her husband a blushing little smile. "Oh, I am so incurably Victorian, I suppose!"
Harold shook his head, squeezing her hand. "Hardly entirely Victorian – just here and there. I find it charming."
She giggled. "I see – just the same way that I find it charming that you're still an incorrigible scoundrel, just here and there."
Before he could respond, Marian kicked some water onto his legs, and he laughed, pursuing her further into the water so he could splash her in return.
Going slowly enough that they could become reasonably accustomed to the water temperature – and with the librarian clinging on to her husband's arm, still a little uncertain that she wouldn't lose her footing or be knocked over by a wave – they made their way out deep enough until she was submerged to her waist, Harold, of course, a little lower.
After a minute or so of shivering, they became accustomed to it enough to enjoy it, and the water felt more pleasantly cool than ice-cold. Holding tight to each other's arms, they jumped over the swell of each wave, floating gently up and then down as it passed them by. Between the thinness of their clothing and the fact that they were both soaked to the skin, Marian still wondered if it didn't look a little indecent for them to be clinging so close together – but there was really no other way of making sure that they both stayed safe.
Harold taught her the sort of game of kicking off with their feet and letting each wave sweep them up as it surged toward the shore. For a few moments, it felt almost like flying, the water doing all the work to carry them along – at least, until their feet or sometimes even their knees met the wet sand, and they were left laughing and needing to wade back out to meet the next wave. Before long, Marian wasn't thinking at all about the other beachgoers and whatever they might be thinking – she clung to his arm and let out gleeful little screams as they gave themselves over to the force of each wave, and he cheered and hollered in delight as well, the two of them playing as joyfully and unselfconsciously as children.
They lost track of time for easily over an hour in this way, and the librarian was certain that she'd hardly ever had such fun in her life. There had only been a couple interruptions to their enjoyment – the first occurred when Harold began inexplicably cursing and flailing his leg about as they waded back out into the water.
"Harold! What's the matter? Are you hurt?" Marian cried, running close to his side and taking his hand. She was furiously imagining all sorts of fearsome stinging things that might live in the water – jellyfish, sea urchins…
But he calmed down after a few moments, sighing and wiping his hand across his forehead. "It was nothing. It – it was seaweed. It, um, startled me."
She almost laughed in relief and incredulity, though she didn't want to make him feel embarrassed over it. "Seaweed? Is that really all? Why, I thought – "
As Marian took another step, something wrapped around her leg – and she no longer wondered why her husband had reacted so vehemently. It was somehow both slimy and rough, and her full awareness that it was only a plant did nothing to dispel the illusion that it was grabbing her. She wailed in disgust, jumping backward on one foot and doing her best to kick it away – and, when it was finally gone, she ground her foot down into the sand to stop the terrible sensation from sending shivers up her spine.
Blushing bright red, she glanced up at Harold, who was barely repressing a smirk at her plight. "Yes – seaweed," she muttered, duly chastened by her encounter.
The only other problem they'd had to deal with had been a couple surprisingly forceful waves that splashed over the backs of their heads, flung them to the ground and left them coughing and spitting out seawater. Thankfully, staying close together kept them completely safe, just as they'd hoped, but as the tide rose and the rougher waves became more and more frequent, they realized that it was probably a good time to get out of the water.
It felt strange to be back on land after spending so long in the water, however – and as they shivered and wrapped themselves in towels as their bodies attempted to readjust to the heat, they started to become aware of some of the less pleasant aftereffects of swimming in the ocean.
"Strange that they call this 'bathing' – I can think of few things that leave one feeling less clean," Marian quipped as she tried in vain to clean the sand from her feet and legs so she would feel comfortable putting on her shoes and stockings again, until she finally had to give up and put them on while she was still damp and sandy. On the walk back to the hotel, she felt both gritty and waterlogged.
As soon as they were back in their room, Harold suddenly examined her face with concern in his eyes. "We need to be more careful next time, dear. Your usual blush is burned right into your cheeks."
Marian tentatively touched the skin near her nose – which she had noticed was feeling strangely warm – and winced at the slight but irritating pain. Further investigations quickly revealed that the tops of her shoulders were burned as well, and she wished now that her bathing costume had just slightly longer sleeves. She walked over to the mirror to see just how her face looked, and winced again to see that the music professor's assessment of her appearance had been quite correct.
"Goodness, I haven't had a sunburn since I was just a little girl – I suppose I should have been wise enough to wear a hat today, though I don't see how it wouldn't have been swept away by the waves." She turned and searched Harold's face to see if he had suffered any similar effects, but he appeared completely fine. "You don't burn, do you?" she remarked, feeling envious of that inborn tolerance even though her ivory skin had always been a point of pride.
Harold shrugged, looking a little guilty that he had escaped unscathed while she had not. "Not easily, no."
"So you probably just become even more tan and handsome?" she teased.
"I don't know about handsome, " he said with a laugh, pulling the strap and collar of his bathing suit to the side a little so Marian could see the subtle line of separation that made it clear which skin had been exposed to the sun and which had not.
She crinkled her nose at him – though she quickly regretted it for the little sting of pain it sent through her reddened skin. "Perhaps it looks odd, but it doesn't hurt."
The librarian shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot as they spoke, the feeling of her wet clothing against her skin driving her slightly mad. Both of their gazes settled on the door of the washroom at the same time. They were both so desperate to get clean that they couldn't even consider the foolishness of a shared bath – such an arrangement was practically useless for much actual washing, and that was what they both needed before anything else could even enter their minds.
Though the day had been wonderfully fun, the physical toll it had taken was palpable, and Marian became more aware of it with every passing minute. As the seawater dried on her skin, she was becoming more and more irritated by the salty feeling that it left behind – not to mention the sand that still clung to her skin in many places – and, though her high chignon had prevented it from getting too saturated, her hair was drying to be rather stiff and straw-like. Her eyes felt a little strained, too, from such prolonged exposure to sunlight reflected off sand and water, and the beginnings of a headache pulsed in her temples.
"You first, darling," Harold offered magnanimously.
Marian was incredibly reluctant to refuse, but she felt it to be the right thing to do. "Oh, you should really go first. It will take me so much longer to wash my hair than it'll take you. I shouldn't leave you waiting that long."
Her husband strolled right into the washroom and turned on the bathwater, and, for a moment, the librarian thought that he was taking her up on her refusal – but very soon, he stepped out again with a grand sweep of his hand. "Really, Marian – I insist."
She still didn't feel quite right about it, but in this condition, she did not have the willpower to refuse a second time.
Getting back into the water seemed counterintuitive when all she really wanted was to feel clean and dry again, but the warm water of the bath on her now cold and clammy skin was heavenly. She wasn't sure of the last time a bath had affected her so – the soap and water were a blissful relief as they washed the grit from her body and hair and left her feeling extremely grateful for just how comfortable it was to be clean.
Enfolding herself in one of the enormous hotel towels as she let the bath drain and then turned the faucet on again for Harold, she could already feel herself growing pleasantly drowsy. She felt like a heavy sort of exhaustion had slowed down every muscle in her body, as though the effort of fighting against the power of the waves had finally caught up with her.
After returning to the bedroom so Harold could take her place in the washroom, she barely managed to slip into a nightgown, brush and plait her hair and then rub a little lotion onto her sunburn before succumbing to the urge to sprawl out on the bed.
She didn't actually fall asleep, as she was still aware of the sounds of water in the washroom as her husband took his bath and the faint call of seagulls outside, but her mind had fallen into a curious pattern that kept her from relaxing further, unable to let go of the rhythm of the afternoon just yet – when she closed her eyes, it was like she could see and feel the waves swelling, carrying her, dropping her again and again. It was not an altogether unpleasant feeling, but it distracted and frustrated her as the images replayed over and over without end, keeping her mind working even as she tried to drift off to sleep.
When Harold slipped into bed beside her, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to him. In response, Marian smiled and cuddled even closer – it was the wonderful, comforting rhythm of his breathing and heartbeat that she could fall asleep to, freeing her from the ceaseless torment of her monotonous ocean-thoughts. She took one of his hands from her waist and pressed a gentle kiss against it – and felt him react in surprise, the slight jump of his muscles evident.
"Oh, I didn't mean to wake you, dear," he exclaimed softly.
"I wasn't asleep," the librarian assured him with a yawn.
"You would have been soon, though, wouldn't you?"
"Now that you're here, I will be," she murmured. "It's so much easier to sleep with you here. You're – half of me."
Harold chuckled, lightly kissing the back of her head. "Well, I feel the exact same way about you – awfully convenient that it worked out that way, isn't it?"
She smiled and snuggled into his arms. "Very much so."
xxx
When they awoke from their nap a few hours later, after they'd overcome their confusion at waking up in the early evening to a room bathed in the light of sunset, Harold inquired if her body had fully recovered from their adventures in the ocean.
The question disoriented her again for a brief moment – had that really been only earlier today? She was happy that their few hours of sleep had been enough to banish the fatigue she'd felt earlier.
"Well, my sunburn hurts a little," she informed him. "And my legs are still a bit sore, though I don't know if that's from the ocean as much as from walking on the sand for so long."
"Poor thing," he murmured. "Maybe you'd like me to massage them?"
Through her fog of drowsiness, Marian could not exactly perceive if his intent was seductive or innocent – if it were innocent, she reasoned that it would not remain so for long, and she felt rested enough now that the very thought sent a flutter of excitement through her lower body. The more often they made love, the more powerfully she craved him, and when she was in that state, even the lightest brush of his fingers could bring all kinds of delicious thoughts to her mind...
She smiled – though the way they were spooning meant that he could not see it. "That sounds nice."
Although he made no attempt to touch her intimately at first, she still relaxed pleasantly under his comforting ministrations, slowly slipping back into a doze as he massaged her. Then she felt his hands tense and heard his quiet gasp as his fingers unexpectedly found her thighs bare, and for a moment, she thrilled with anticipation of his hands finding their way even higher – but to her disappointment, he slid them safely back down to her calves, returning to his soothing but decidedly not amorous attentions.
She wondered how easily she could seduce him into turning his attentions into something more – she knew enough about his carnal nature that she suspected that it would take very little! Without saying a word, she pulled her gauzy nightgown up just high enough so it would become plain to him that there was nothing at all underneath.
Marian heard the catch in his breathing, and she cast an impish glance over her shoulder to observe his reaction. He looked pleasantly stunned – but, evidently, he still wasn't certain what she was asking for. Perhaps she'd overestimated just how awake he was right now!
Suddenly made impatient by the quickening beat of her heart and the feel of his hands on her skin, the librarian decided to up the ante even further; sitting up a little, she slipped her nightgown up over her head, dropped it to the floor, and then sprawled back onto the pillow, looking coyly up at him. There – she dared him to misunderstand that!
She loved how Harold always gazed at her naked body with the same sort of dazed awe that he had on their wedding night, like he was amazed that she'd even grant him the privilege to see her, let alone touch. It was in those little moments that she could find her most powerful reassurance that years of marriage and motherhood had not turned her into some dowdy matron in his eyes – he was still utterly enraptured by her as she was now, just as she was by him.
Her sudden shedding of her clothing took him completely by surprise – charmingly, he still seemed to be fighting the urge to pounce on her immediately. She'd given him just about the most blatant invitation she could imagine short of grabbing him outright, yet he was still not allowing himself to be convinced that the obvious interpretation was the right one – even when they were alone in a hotel room where they'd already spent days making love! She almost laughed.
"I – I thought you just wanted me to rub your legs," he said, eyebrows raised.
"You know, I think I would rather that you just distract me from them. You're doing such a good job of it already, after all." She stretched her arms languidly above her head, knowing that she was showing off her body to its very best advantage – nothing made the usually modest librarian more confident in her figure than when Harold looked at her as if she were Venus herself!
Tugging down the collar of his nightshirt, Marian let her fingertips flutter teasingly against the tanned skin there. "And you know, I've been selfish. I never asked you if you still have any lingering aches or pains from jumping around in the waves all day."
His characteristic grin slowly spread across his face, as if he were finally starting to realize that this situation was not a dream. "Nothing that you can't distract me from, my dear." He was quick to shed his nightshirt as well, and the sight of his naked body made her grow pleasantly warm with passion and desire.
"Why don't you show me how you'd like me to distract you, then?" she teased as she allowed her hands to explore the muscular planes of his body before giving his backside a mischievous squeeze.
At that, Harold rolled her over onto her back with a sensual rumble in his throat, his hands desperate to caress every inch of her soft, feminine curves and his thigh nudging her legs apart. "I think you'll catch on quickly," he whispered in her ear as his hips moved against hers in a pantomime of the lovemaking that they both wanted so badly.
He was so hard and she was so wet that it was utter lunacy to pretend that anything was ambiguous about this situation, even under the guise of teasing! Laughing with joy, Marian wrapped her legs firmly around her husband's waist to draw him even closer. "I think I already have," she replied as she guided him to her entrance – and it wasn't long before they were both completely distracted from their sore legs.
