Page 61 of A Shore Thing

The coals of that wondrous idea began to glow. Her pulse pounded in her ears.

She shook her head, and when she spoke, her voice was frayed. “You brushed my hand away.”

“It was where you touched me, not that you did. I was afraid you might…It would be more awkward if you…” He swept off his cap and speared his fingers through his hair. “How to begin?” He cleared his throat. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

He looked at her broodingly. Brooding became him. His long lashes shaded his stormy eyes. The shape of his lips was temptation itself.

Her mouth went dry. “Go on.”

“You asked me before what awakened me to the woman question. If it was waking up beside a suffragist.”

She frowned. “If I recall, you dodged the question.”

He didn’t answer. The pause crackled with sudden tension.

“My God,” she gasped. “You’re married. You’re married to a suffragist!”

“Married?” He started. “I’m not married to a suffragist. Far from it. I have woken up beside them, but…”

“Them,” she echoed. “There have been suffragists plural. I thought I’d exaggerated your romantic profligacy?”

“Make it one. Only Rhoda is a member of the Central Committee.” His forehead creased. “I was going somewhere else with this. For as long as I can remember, I have been most intimately concerned with women—”

She snorted, and he raised his brows.

“Women’s rights,” he finished. “I felt their lack keenly.”

“Yes, you already said so. You informed me that women are disadvantaged as a class.” She bent her lips in a sarcastic little smile. “Thank you, by the way. I might never have worked it out for myself.”

“I was yammering, I know.” He scowled. “You already said so.”

“I felt annoyed at the time.” She sighed and studied him. Rake. Artist. Dandy. Purveyor of bicycles—the sort that women could and would ride, into a more equitable future.

“I’m not annoyed any longer,” she admitted. “I believe that your empathy is sincere.”

“It was never empathy that drove me, but rage.” He hesitated, rotating his cap in his hands.

“You see,” he said on a breath, “I once lived as a woman myself.”

She didn’t see. Her mind was smooth. The words made hardly a ripple. She had to force mental movement. “I don’t…You wore women’s clothing?”

His lips gave a wry twist. “Not by choice.”

“It had to be a choice.” Her face warmed with bewilderment. “You can’t wear clothing that doesn’t correspond to you by accident.”

He sat back on his haunches.

“Oh.” She licked her lips. Her eyes slid to the masculine points of his chiseled jaw. His tanned skin was smooth, no hint of stubble roughing its fine grain.

She watched his beautiful mouth tighten.

He knew what she was doing, revising her inventory of his features.

She didn’t let her gaze drop lower. She met his eyes. “You choose to dress as a man, then.”

She had a vertiginous feeling, a reversal reversing itself, the world rearranging.

“You live as a man, but…”