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her to step back.
    “Sure,” he agreed. “Amusement as well. But then I try to find amusement in just about everything.”
    Hannah did not doubt him. She already knew his humor was as much a part of his personality as his penchant for flirtation. She lifted her hands to push back strands of her hair that had fallen from her coiffure to drip on her face. As she did so, she watched his gaze fall to her breasts.
    She glanced down at herself. Now that he wasn’t holding her against him, the front of her body was quite exposed. The thin muslin of her chemise was soaked and had become entirely transparent.
    Too late, she recalled that the British tended to be rather uncomfortable with openly displaying the natural state of the human body. To Hannah, who was familiar with having to bathe in public rivers and other watering holes when necessary, such forced sensibilities seemed a bit unnecessary. Not to mention contradictory when some ladies of the beau monde were known to dampen their skirts to display their charms more clearly, or rouged their nipples to make them more obvious.
    Lowering her arms, but refusing to cover herself despite the bold admiration in his gaze, she tipped her head to say sardonically, “I know how people look at me.” Her words brought his gaze back to meet her eyes. “They think me strange and find it enjoyable to make subtle little digs against my background or my respectability or what have you.”
    She sighed, and although his gaze flickered, she admired that he kept it on her face.
    “Frankly. I do not care what most people think.”
    He smiled then. A low and widening grin that lit his whole face. “Bravo. You shouldn’t. And neither do I. Unless their opinions make me laugh, which they often do. Then I might be guilty of encouraging them.”
    Hannah laughed. She couldn’t help it.
    “Oh ho,” he exclaimed in mock surprise. “She laughs! Perhaps Miss Walpole is capable of having fun after all.”
    Hannah threw him a spirited glare but couldn’t keep her lips from curling upward.
    “Can I help it if I find this country repressive and dull?”
    He snorted. “Darling, we all find it repressive and dull. That is why I claim my joy wherever I can.”
    Without warning, he dove under the water. Hannah had only a second to step back and gasp a breath before he wrapped his hands around her ankles and pulled her under. He released her once her head submerged and she used her momentum to twist around him as he rose back to the surface. By the time she came up for air, she was directly behind him, and without thought of the decorum, she reared up and grasped his shoulders as she threw her weight to the side. Effectively dunking the much larger man.
    She did not need to think about the propriety of her behavior because she knew quite well it was not done for young ladies to engage in any kind of horseplay, let alone with a man while in the water and barely clothed. But she didn’t give a damn. Somewhere in the last few minutes, she had decided to take his advice and seize the unexpected respite she had been gifted with that morning.
    Though she’d managed that one bit of surprise, he had amazingly quick reflexes and was exceptionally agile in the water, nearly as agile as she was herself. In the end, his strength won out over her quickness and they both came up for air with his arms once again secured around her body. Only this time, he held her aloft against his chest. One of his arms wrapped around her back and the other beneath her legs.
    She had nowhere to go.
    Laughing, she pushed her sodden hair out of her face, the full length having long since fallen from the elaborate style her cousin’s maid had created that morning.
    “All right, Lord Whitely, I accede this skirmish to you. You have earned your victory.”
    He shook his head like a dog, his thick black locks sending water flying everywhere.
    Hannah laughed again and wrapped her arms around his neck as she closed her eyes to await the