Chapter 14

Griffith turned to stone. She couldn't feel his heartbeat through his coat. She couldn't feel the hard plane of his chest. The wool muffled all, surprisingly thick.

Time stopped.

He flicked her hand away, the action quick and somehow sharp. His brief, pincherlike grip didn't hurt, but pain bit into her regardless.

"Forgive me." She pulled back, sucking in her breath, mortified.

Oh, Lord. Excruciating error. This honeyed, heated feeling—it wasn't reciprocal. He didn't feel drugged by her scent, entranced by her lips. From the beginning, she'd misinterpreted his flirtation. She'd pegged too much to that one kiss, which he'd pressed upon her as a gallantry. He flirted as he breathed. Perhaps it wasn't even intentional, his flirting, but a side effect of making eye contact while dangerously beautiful.

He was making eye contact now. Her self-consciousness peaked. She wanted to bury her face in the prickly grass, but she'd feel more craven if she looked away.

"Penny." His voice was rough.

"Griff." She tried to smile. She was equal to the situation. She could navigate back toward teasing antagonism and preserve their nascent camaraderie.

Pressure kept building in her chest, threatening a new rush of tears. It would be hopelessly silly—to sob with thwarted desire. To sob because she'd forced this reckoning, and now, as a consequence, had to relinquish a gratifying daydream, in which she stirred desire too. Stirred his desire. Ha.

He was scrutinizing her, making some internal calculation, and she knew she would emit a sob if she had to hear him put it all into words. He'd already communicated his aversion with that flick of his wrist.

She'd spare them both.

"There was a caterpillar." She mustered the smile. "On your lapel, near the gardenia. I removed it."

He glanced down.

"It's gone," she said.

"There's no caterpillar on my lapel," he confirmed. He looked up. "There was, though?"

"There was." Her smile held. "You were helping me gather myself. I was returning the favor. Caterpillars chew through wool. You might have ended up with a hole in your coat."

"Nightmarish thought." His gaze roamed over her face. "You wouldn't be lying. About the caterpillar."

"Of course not." She blinked, too rapidly. "Why else would I have touched you?"

"I don't know." His gaze locked hers. "Perhaps for the same reason I touched you."

"Exactly. An exchange of services."

"I wasn't doing you a service." He edged closer, eyes bright. "I was succumbing to an irresistible temptation."

She swallowed hard. "Now who's lying. Me? Tempt you?"

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…"

"But," he murmured. "But what? A man can't have had a girlhood?" A corner of his mouth tilted up. "I live as a man, and…" He leaned toward her. "Can we start there?"

The moment stretched. His gaze heated the air between them. She detected his alluring scent mixed with the heather and gardenia. A small sound dragged from her. Something flared in his eyes, and he lowered his head, infinitesimally. She stared at his transfixing lips. They still wore the hint of a crooked smile.

God, she wanted to taste him.

A new wave of mortification crashed over her.

She scrambled back. Heat lingered in her limbs, but cold chased after. Oh, hell. She wasn't only surprised, she was humiliated. She'd imagined herself far worldlier than those sighing farm girls, when, in fact, she was hopelessly naive. A dupe in a game to which she hadn't received adequate instructions.

This was why she didn't play at love.

She felt a perfect fool.

She rose, unsteady, white spots blotting the corners of her vision.

Griffith was on his feet in an instant. He stilled her as she teetered, his strong hand closing on her elbow, as it had when they'd first met, when they'd stood together for the first time, in the field by the cliffs.

She drew a shuddering breath. He was staring down at her, with wary expectation.

She had to say something. Something adequate to the situation, to his revelation, to her bafflement. To this all-consuming desire.

Yes,she could answer him. Yes, let's start there.

"We should get back," she murmured, breaking his grasp. As she turned, she could feel his gaze between her shoulder blades.

Her hat was caught again in the heather. Her bicycle was a few paces off, on its side in the grass, looking like the skeleton of some alien creature. She retrieved both with clumsy haste.

She and Griffith cycled along the path, toward the cliffs, gulls floating overhead, seemingly motionless, suspended like her thoughts.

It was nearly the dinner hour when they reached St. Ives, turning on the road that curved up to the Towans. The moment the hotel came into view, Muriel dismounted her bicycle. A light thud told her that Griffith had done the same. She couldn't risk glancing over. She didn't know what she'd say, or what she'd do. Instead, she pushed the bicycle up the hill, focusing on the hotel's massive stone terrace. Guests milled about, or occupied the wicker chairs, waiting for the dining room to open.

She spied Lady Chiswick seated beside a slender young woman with a shining knot of golden hair. Her stomach flipped as Lady Chiswick's head turned. Other heads were swiveling. A portion of the bored assembly had noticed her, and Griffith, and seemed to be tracking their slow progress over the grass with considerable interest.

She kept walking, her too-short dress swinging about her calves. She didn't want to stop at the gazebo, to make a tableau there with Griffith, for the world to see. Neither did she want to roll up to the terrace itself, sweaty and disheveled, whatever words she uttered to Griffith audible to anyone who chose to listen. She felt trapped, exposed in the spacious English garden as though on a great green stage.

Then she saw James. He stood near a potted palm at the corner of the terrace, with Mr. Ponsonby. Thank the Lord. He waved in greeting and started toward her. Mr. Ponsonby fell into step beside him.

She slowed, awaiting their arrival with bated breath.

"Muriel." Griffith's voice sounded low by her ear.

"I adore cabbage palms," she said, eyes fixed on the potted palm's profusion of swordlike leaves. "Their flowers have the most wonderful scent. I adore all trees, really. The other time I was in Cornwall, I botanized on Bodmin Moor and saw the Darley Oak. It's ancient, with an enormous hollow. Someone could live in it."

She'd like to climb into a tree hollow now.

"There was a ginkgo tree, in a valley in China," she continued, pulse racing along with her words. "The biggest I've ever seen. It had a similarly marvelous hollow."

"Muriel," he repeated.

"What cheer!" called James, drawing up to them. He was dressed for dinner, in a black evening jacket. "I was afraid you two had ridden off a cliff! Everyone's abuzz tonight." He lifted his hands, making a frame for his words. "Battle of the bicycles." He dropped his arms. "Bets are being taken. I expect a throng tomorrow morning at Titcombe Hall, to see you off."

"I'll be there." Mr. Ponsonby rocked on his heels. "Although how I'll hold my head up, I don't know. We played a four today. Took on Deighton and Butterfield."

"The elder," cut in James. "Turns out there are two Butterfields."

"More's the pity. One's bad enough." Mr. Ponsonby shook his head. "To make a long story short, they put us to rout. I feel positively wilted. I let the match point go by."

"Nothing you could have done," said James gamely. "Deighton serves like a cannon."

"It didn't help that I tripped over my own feet."

James grinned. "You heckled well."

"I heckled gorgeously." Mr. Ponsonby twinkled. "I'll give myself that."

"Deighton was frothing."

"I'll reprise my best insults at the starting line."

Muriel was following this volley in tense silence.

James caught her eye, a line appearing between his brows. "And how did you fare on your adventures? Where did you ride?"

"Zennor." She and Griffith spoke at once.

The ensuing silence felt unbearably thick.

"Lovely," said James. "Zennor."

Muriel's blush came on suddenly.

"I have to change," she blurted. "For dinner. Won't you all excuse me?"

She pushed the bicycle forward, causing James and Mr. Ponsonby to step apart.

"I'll see you tomorrow morning, then," said Griffith. "Half past ten at Titcombe Hall." She heard the hint of a question in his voice, but she was already past him, and she kept going, her spine far too stiff to permit even a nod of acknowledgment.

She spent a long while lying on the bed in her hotel room and emerged late for dinner, in an old blue dress that did little for her figure or coloring but at least covered her to the ankles.

In the dining room, she found James seated at a central table with two couples from London. They were deep in the fish course, and deeper in conversation. Something related to the Godrevy Lighthouse, and then to lighthouses more generally. She attended both the meal and her companions with but half a mind, smiling vaguely when James's voice turned humorous, picking at the roll on her bread plate, draining her glass without tasting the wine.

As dinner concluded, and diners began to rise, Muriel felt speculative gazes turn again in her direction. Heat crept up her cheeks as a toothy, middle-aged man detached from one of the lingering parties and made a beeline for her table.

"Mrs. Pendrake," he said. "Peter Lyons. Mark me now. I tricycle with my wife. We have a sociable, so we can sit side-by-side. She picks the destination, and I steer the way." He nodded in approval of his own words and continued in a louder voice. "That's the only sort of cycling compatible with feminine modesty. The sociable allows a lady to remain upright on a proper seat, while a man guides the machine, relieving her of unsuitable intellectual labor."

Muriel's eyes skittered around the room. People were inching over, forming a tightening cordon around the table.

"What you propose," scoffed Mr. Lyons, "is a disgusting stunt."

His mustache twitched as he waited eagerly for a response.

She stared at the mustache, feeling witless.

"Don't listen to that windbag!" This burst from a younger fellow, in a natty suit, with slicked-back hair. He shouldered his way up to Muriel's chair. "I put down a colossal wager. It's dogged as does it, my dear. Mark me, and ride for the win."

"Oh, pish." Another man approached, waggling his fingers in the air. "We all know she won't make it through the first day."

"And why won't she?" The woman sitting across from Muriel pushed back her chair and stood. "Naysayers dislike the idea of women on bicycles, because it draws attention to the scandalous fact that we have legs." Her glare bounced to Mr. Lyons, then back to the finger-waggler. "Legs we can use to send the wheels in circles, just as men do."

The finger-waggler shrugged, blue eyes shiny with complacency. "Mrs. Pendrake can bicycle down the lane, I don't doubt. But she won't be able to sustain the effort. Rivalry between the sexes is farcical. Women have inferior capacities. Our very brains are different. The female brain is five ounces lighter than the male brain, which correlates to…"

"Stop there, please, until I make my escape." Now James was on his feet, interrupting. "I can't talk brains on holiday. I made a promise. Mrs. Pendrake." He offered Muriel his arm. "Would you care to take a turn in the garden?"

Five minutes later, they'd pushed from the room, descended the terrace, and struck out toward the hotel's east wing. Muriel listened to the rhythmic crunching of gravel beneath their feet. The sun had painted the clouds with deep pinks as it slipped down below the curve of the bay.

Relief opened her lungs. She sighed and leaned into James. The air retained its mellow warmth, but the breeze felt cool, and the nightjars were churring in the scattered clusters of trees.

James turned them down one of the little paths that crisscrossed the geometric portion of the garden.

"You've been unusually quiet," he observed.

"Admiring the sunset."

"Not just now. Back in the dining room."

She released his arm, veering between ornamental beds toward a stone bench. He lengthened his stride and kept pace.

"It has been a day of surprises." She hugged herself. "There was a dog, on the ride back to town. A dog very like…"

She didn't have to say more.

James nodded sympathetically. "What did you do?"

"What I always do, but it was worse, because of the bloody bicycle."

"You crashed." He gave her a once-over. "All in one piece?"

She shrugged a shoulder and dropped down onto the bench. A pretty trellis arched above, covered with climbing roses.

"You told Griffith." James stood, considering her. "About your mother."

"Griffith told me something." She bit her nail, a habit she'd broken years ago. The stone bench was cold, and the shadows thickened beneath the trellis, but she squirmed, suddenly itchy and hot. She couldn't repeat what Griffith had said.

"Ah." James sat beside her and stretched out his legs. "What's that?"

She shifted on the bench. "I'd better not."

"Perhaps I know, then."

She turned her head sharply. James's face was carefully composed. Her breath blew out.

Holy God. He knew.

"How? How do you know?"

"Griffith and I had a conversation."

"That night? When you got potted and slept with your boots on?"

He nodded.

"But that was almost a week ago. And you didn't…" She clawed back a lock of hair. "You let me go on thinking that…"

She fell silent, a vein ticking in her temple.

She heard Griffith's voice.

I live as a man, and…

She gave her head a shake. "It wasn't for you to say anything. But he could have told me sooner."

The humiliated confusion flooded back, this time carrying a little hook of anger.

"He could have," said James mildly.

"You agree." She pounced.

James shrugged. "I'm not implying he should have. You didn't tell him why you were so frightened of that dog."

"It wasn't the time."

James tilted his head. "You get to decide when to disclose something deeply personal. And he doesn't?"

"It's not the same." She tried to think why. "He wasn't being truthful."

"Hmm." James brushed a rose petal with his index finger. "Is it that he wasn't being truthful? Or that the truth is more complex than you'd assumed?"

"Oh, God." She slumped.

I live as a man, and…

"That. The latter. Obviously. But I feel…I don't know how I feel. Intimidated, maybe." She rubbed her temple. "As if my brain was too small and suddenly stretched, but still doesn't fit enough new thoughts." She frowned. "That fellow wasn't correct? About the five ounces?"

"That fellow wasn't correct about bollocks, which weigh about a half ounce each, in case you ever hear differently." James waved his hand. "He probably read some drivel in a science column. I've looked inside all sorts of heads. There aren't any consistent features that meaningfully distinguish male brains from female brains, or, for that matter, English brains from Irish brains from Zulu brains, not so far as I can see."

She bit her lip. Her brain wasn't literally stretching, but she could feel it working.

She'd resented her treatment as a woman on countless occasions. She'd imagined what she'd have done differently if she'd been born a man. She'd never imagined becoming a man.

How had Griffith imagined it? How had he dared? Why?

"James," she said, and paused. "Is Griffith one of many?"

"One of many handsome men?" He shot her an aggrieved look. "No, if I recall, he's singular in that respect."

"James," she sighed. "My very handsome friend. You know what I'm asking."

He relented. "It's hard to take a count. You do understand how risky it is, to speak of these things."

She swallowed. In speaking, Griffith had put the life he'd built for himself in her hands. She'd been so focused on her own discomfiture that she'd failed to appreciate the enormity of it.

She closed her hands tight in her lap.

James glanced up at the clouds, faded now, all shades of gray against midnight blue.

"You've heard of female husbands?" he asked.

She gave a slight shake of her head.

"People raised as girls who live and marry as men. They're caught out from time to time, and it makes a sensation in the papers. Usually, the wives had no idea, or so the story goes."

"The marital relations, though." She flushed. "Aren't they…definitive?"

"Now we're getting technical." James narrowed his eyes. "Let's discuss the bedchamber another day. In any case, it's all up for debate. We can't ever know from those accounts what either spouse really thought of themselves, or each other, or their marriage."

The breeze stirred, perfumed with rose.

She wasn't—she couldn't be—now, at this very moment…But she was.

She was fantasizing about marriage with Kit Griffith.

Not an older don determined to mold her into the perfect helpmeet, to make her his doormat and his mirror.

A shameless rake tempted to touch her, to stroke her hair, to kiss her lips and….

"There's a marquess of my acquaintance." James broke her reverie. "He hosts fancy dress balls for a very select society."

She looked at him. He was smiling a wicked smile.

"Not young misses, I'm guessing?"

"Men," said James relishingly. "Men with a taste for the nameless act. Some attend in silk gowns and chignons and dance the ladies' parts."

"You never mentioned this before." Had he thought her too puritanical? She sat up straighter and tried to modify her face into an expression of careless sophistication. It was only a temporary success. Her next thought rounded her eyes. "Do you wear a silk gown?"

"What do you think?" He leaned against the trellis, batting his lashes.

"Goodness," she murmured, struck by his elegant pose. No use pretending she wasn't amazed. When he held his head just so, she could picture his strong-boned leanness set off by a low-cut neckline, green silk brocade so that his eyes glowed emerald.

"I think you'd look stunning," she breathed.

"Oh." He seemed slightly taken aback. "I expected something more left-handed." He rolled his shoulders, a pleased, preening sort of motion. "I do look all right." He met her gaze and his turned thoughtful. "It feels like a costume, though. More than this does." He gestured to his evening jacket. "For a few of those gowned dancers, it might be the other way round."

"You and Griffith," she said slowly. "You share common ground, or at least an understanding. That's why he told you first."

"It was happenstance, really. A series of events led me to confide in him. He, in turn, confided in me. Fair play, you know. Trust."

Muriel's stomach dipped. Fair play. Trust. She hadn't shown Griffith either.

"Blast." She shot to her feet. "I've made a hash of things. I never even admitted there wasn't a caterpillar on his lapel!"

"Is that a euphemism?" James drew his brows together. "Or are you actually talking about an insect?"

"There wasn't an insect." She turned toward the hotel, a dark mass against the dimming sky. Lights twinkled in the windows. She'd propped her bicycle against the wall, behind that potted palm on the terrace.

She launched forward and almost tripped on the hem of her skirt. God, skirts were abominably long if they weren't indecently short. She yanked it up to midcalf.

"Where are you going?"

"To the engine house." She called over her shoulder, breaking into a run. "I have to tell him."

"About the caterpillar?"

"Forget the caterpillar," she called.

Griffith had asked a question. Can we start there?

She'd clammed up. She'd nattered about trees.

But it wasn't too late.

Within a quarter hour, she'd coasted out of town and was pedaling after the weak orange light cast by her lamp, flying through the fields.

There was no light shining from the engine house.

Perhaps because of the conversation at dinner, she'd anticipated a beacon, a blaze in the night, like Griffith lived in the bloody Pharos of Alexandria.

Instead, she arrived to a dark tower.

She swung off the bicycle, shaky from exertion, craning her neck. Was he up there? Asleep? Surely it was closer to ten than eleven.

She extinguished the flame in the lamp, lowered the bicycle onto its side. She went boldly to the door and knocked. Nothing. She stepped back.

"Griff," she tried, and then, louder but more hesitant: "Kit?"

Grasshoppers were shrilling.

She wouldn't go so far as to throw rocks at the windows?

Damn it all. She dropped, kneeling to rake her fingers through the cool grass. Where were the rocks? The lawn was mostly rock, or that's how it had felt when she kept landing on her arse. Now not a pebble.

She sat, drawing up her legs. She'd wait. Alone, in the dark, on the damp ground. That didn't seem desperate. Or pathetic.

She waited, sitting, and then she waited curled up on her side, and then she wasn't waiting but sleeping, which she only discovered when she started awake, cold and stiff in pitch-blackness. Sandy-eyed, she squinted at the engine house, at where she thought it was. Had he come home while she slept? What time was it now? Good Lord, was it already tomorrow?

Had she just made a worse hash of things?

She needed to pack. And sleep in a bed.

Could she do both?

Her knees chirped like crickets as she unbent her legs. She rode, not on the path between farms, but on the path to Tregerthen Farm. That is, she rode directly into a fence.