He held out his hand to steady her as she stepped lightly from one boat to the other, and soon they were gliding smoothly upstream, the empty craft tailing along in their wake.
For a while Burke sculled in silence, and Jean leant back, idly watching the effortless, rhythmic swing of his body as he bent to his oars. His shirt was open at the throat, revealing the strong, broad-based neck, and she noticed in a detached fashion that small, fine hairs covered his bared arms with a golden down, even encroaching on to the backs of the brown, muscular hands.
She found herself femininely conscious that the most dominant quality about the man was his sheer virility. Nor was it just a matter of appearances. It lay in something more fundamental than merely externals. She had known men of great physical strength to be not infrequently gifted with an almost feminine gentleness of nature, yet she was sure this latter element played but a small part in the make-up of Geoffrey Burke.
The absolute ease with which he sent the boat shearing through the water seemed to her in some way typical. It conveyed a sense of mastery that was unquestionable, even a little overpowering.
She felt certain that he was, above and before all other things, primeval male, forceful and conquering, of the type who in a different age would have cheerfully bludgeoned his way through any and every obstacle that stood between him and the woman he had chosen as his mate—and, afterwards, if necessary, bludgeoned the lady herself into submission.
“Here’s where you tied up, then?”
Burke’s voice broke suddenly across her thoughts, and she looked round, recognising the place where she had moored her boat earlier in the afternoon.
“How did you divine that?” she asked.
“It didn’t require much divination! There are your sculls”—pointing—“stuck up against the trunk of a tree—and looking as though they might topple over at any moment. I fancy”—with a smile—“that my ‘small boy’ theory was correct. I believe I could even put a name to the particular limb of Satan responsible,” he went on. “You moored your boat on the Willow Perry side of the stream, and our lodge-keeper’s kids are a troop of young demons. They want a thorough good thrashing, and I’ll see that they get it before they are much older.”
He pulled in to the shore and rescuing the sculls from their precarious position, restored them to the empty boat.