Chapter 15

The pale morning sun shone down on Titcombe Hall with appalling brightness. As Kit coasted up the drive, he saw, through slitted eyes, a vast sea of hats and parasols.

So much for his hope that the morning hour would depress attendance. St. Ives's visitors had turned out in droves. He dismounted and pushed his Rover through the crowd, getting briefly stuck in the narrows between clustered pieces of wicker furniture.

"We arrived six days ago, and I've never been so dull in all my life." This was uttered by a girl whose skirts frothed over the sides of her chair. "The social calendar is sand, more sand, and if you're lucky, a starfish."

"What about this lovely party?" protested the girl whose chair was pulled close to hers. "It's not sandy in the least!"

Kit freed himself and threaded his way to a more sparsely occupied swath of lawn. A violinist was playing in a bower. Nearer the house, festooned tables had been laid with a breakfast buffet. Deighton Senior stood by the main entrance, looking florid and furious, neck bulging from his collar. A blond woman in ice-blue silk stood at his side, surveying the scene with a cold, unblinking gaze.

Kit stopped surveying them and surveyed the scene as well. Unease hollowed his chest. He didn't see…

There.

A burst of elation filled the sick, empty pit inside him. There. That gleam of penny-colored tresses. He accelerated. But at that moment, the owner of the penny-colored tresses changed course, presenting her profile. Sweetly freckled, short nosed. Utterly unfamiliar.

Elation fled. He parked himself by a hedge, indulging the deluded notion that his green serge jacket would allow him to blend into the shrubbery.

"Godspeed, young man," said the first person to wander past, a bespectacled grandmotherly woman, kind and twinkly. The next passersby snickered.

Yes, he was most certainly visible.

Did his head look as though it were about to explode?

He wished he hadn't stayed out drinking with Ponsonby until dawn.

No, he wished he were still drunk.

His nerve endings felt knife-edged.

She wasn't here. Did she mean to come at all?

"Too low."

This time it was a portly gentleman in an excessively tall topper. He'd approached with a woman—his wife, to judge by her long-suffering expression.

"Undignified," he said. "A saddle yea high." He thwacked the Rover's leather seat with his cane. "You might as well ride a Newfoundland."

Kit grunted. "The Newfoundland might disagree."

The portly gentleman sniffed.

"Look there," he said. "Those saddles sit at sixteen hands."

Kit followed his gaze. The Mutton Wheelers had cycled into view, the spokes of their towering front wheels glaring in the light. They circled the fountain at the top of the drive, Deighton in front, his four wheelmen riding double file behind him.

"Is that a bugle?" asked the long-suffering wife, in a voice rich with horror.

One of the Mutton Wheelers was indeed holding a bugle. He sounded a piercing note. Kit and the wife winced.

Hell. This was hell. Kit made for the buffet. Maybe there was wine in one of those copper urns.

"Tea," said the footman, pointing to the urn on his left. He pointed to the urn on his right. "Coffee."

Kit glowered at both urns and then down at a chafing dish of sausages.

"Coffee, you said? Thank the Lord!" Ponsonby came barreling from nowhere, hopelessly rumpled and reeking like a distillery. "Coffee. A bucket, please." He turned to Kit. "I'm late. Am I late? You haven't gone yet. Bless you." He took a cup from the footman, gulped, and gave a yelp. "Bloody hot!"

Kit fought the urge to grab him by the shoulders. "Is she with you?"

"Who?" Ponsonby blew on his coffee.

Another bugle note sounded.

Kit's skin tightened. Last night, he'd refused to face this possibility. Hence the beer, the billiards, the whiskey, the cards, the imbecilic attempt to paddle a boat to the lighthouse, which might have been dangerous if remotely successful.

He checked his watch. Quarter past ten.

"I know what's to be done," said Ponsonby, knuckling his eye. He stood straighter, inflating his chest. "I won't cock it up. Have no fear."

Mother of God.

"Champagne?" Kit asked the footman. The footman shook his head.

"Ponsonby," said Kit, trying to keep his tone level. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The cock-up with Coover. I'll make it right. Not whatever's cocked up between the two of you, obviously. The bit I bungled, when I told her you were here."

Kit began to intuit his meaning, despite the thicket of cocks and bungs.

"I'm sure she'll insist on making the trip, no matter what excuse I wire. But I'll send her packing before next Thursday, I swear. Her and Burgess and Nelly, and whoever else. She'll bite my head off and chew. She's not one for half measures. And Nelly will give me that look." Ponsonby shuddered. "But I will persevere." He lifted his coffee cup high, striking a valiant pose, then spoiled the effect by bringing the cup slowly to his lips for a timid sip paired with a preemptive wince. "Or maybe Nelly won't give me that particular look," he added, sipping again, with more confidence. "Now that I'm not trying to court her."

"You're not?" Whether Ponsonby was or wasn't still mooning after Nelly should be the last thing on his mind, but Kit frowned, intrigued. "Since when?"

"A few days." Ponsonby flushed a painful shade of red. "I still think she's ripping. It's just…" He emptied his coffee cup and pivoted back to the footman. "A spot more?"

Kit rolled his shoulders. The knapsack grew heavier by the second. Wonderful that Ponsonby promised to ensure he arrived back to a Sisters-free St. Ives. It didn't change the fact that his planned departure was suddenly in jeopardy. His bicycle shop. Perhaps more than that.

Had his instincts been so wrong?

Fifteen minutes remained. Should he race to the Towans? Force Muriel to say something he didn't want to hear?

You're not who I thought you were.

He could spit a version back at her.

I didn't see you as the sort who welched on a deal.

"Where's Raleigh?" Ponsonby glanced about. "Did he come with Mrs. Pendrake? Where is Mrs. Pendrake?"

Kit ignored this. He had to focus on the more relevant question.

What in bloody hell was he going to do now? Inquire if the long-suffering wife cared to ride for ten days on his handlebars? Or that beneficent grandmother?

"Hallo!" Bernhard was legging it toward them. "We're over there." The painter gestured at the knoll that rose in the wilder precinct of the garden, even beyond the group of lacy young ladies selecting croquet mallets. Kit squinted. Two easels on the crest. Takada, sketching.

"Instead of waves, today we study life and character," explained Bernhard. He spread his arms. "Panorama."

"I'm bad at people," Ponsonby sighed.

"You're fine at people." Kit managed a smile. It felt difficult to summon, but sincere. "One of the greats."

"Bad at painting people." Ponsonby flushed again and clapped a hand to the back of his neck. "Bad enough that anything else I do with paint or people seems better by contrast."

"Here," said Bernhard, pulling a shiny coin from his pocket. "Glückspfennig. For luck."

He handed it to Kit.

Kit contemplated the bright bronze disc in his palm, the German word marching around the numeral one stamped in the center. A lucky penny. Christ.

"Thank you." His voice scratched as he dropped the coin into his pocket. He checked his watch.

Seven minutes.

Two more ticked away as Bernhard and Ponsonby swapped artistic gossip, Kit staring at nothing, until Deighton crossed his line of vision. No bicycle. He was striding toward the house.

"Excuse me," Kit muttered, and hurried after. He'd do this fast. He'd jump from the ledge before it crumbled beneath his feet.

When he caught up, Deighton was already locked in conversation with Deighton Senior, or rather, gnashing his teeth while Deighton Senior delivered a harangue with his nose almost touching his son's.

"This is the last embarrassment," Deighton Senior was saying. "I ignored your tomfoolery. I permitted you to fritter away your time. But you've taken it too far. You fritter away my reputation." Deighton Senior stepped abruptly back, in disgust, and his hot blue eyes twitched to Kit.

"Bicycling was bad enough," he continued, still glaring at Kit. "Even before you associated your little club with a ponce and a virago."

Deighton himself hadn't noticed Kit's presence. "I'll win the bet, sir."

This recaptured Deighton Senior's attention.

"Oh, you'll more than win the bet," he snarled. "Remember what we discussed."

"Yessir." Deighton slouched.

"Stand up straight." The snarl became a bark. "When you return, you will put away childish things. No more bicycles. No more badges." He flicked the Mutton Wheelers badge on Deighton's striped jacket. "I'm sending you to Glasgow. You'll run the Scottish office."

"Glasgow?" Deighton went pale. "Sir. I—"

"It's decided. Trust me, you'll like the alternative far less."

Kit cleared his throat. Both Deightons turned to him, shoulders touching so that they formed a solid wall of animosity.

Skewered by their identical glares, he realized he didn't know what to say.

He'd misjudged everything. Consequences he couldn't yet bring himself to imagine were taking shape all around him. He didn't want to say anything. He wanted to release the howl that had been building inside since Ponsonby wired Lucy, and if he were honest, since long before that.

It stuck in his windpipe, closing off his breath.

"Ready, then?" Deighton shoved past, tight-lipped, cheeks waxen. He walked stiffly, with a self-consciously military bearing, back to the fountain where the Mutton Wheelers waited, each standing now beside his bicycle. The bugler was holding up two bicycles, his own and Deighton's. To his right, almost hidden by Deighton's front wheel, another cyclist waited. She inched her own wheel forward, and Kit saw her fully. Penny-bright hair coiled over her shoulder. Her hat was circled with a pale purple ribbon.

His fingers went to the matching silk at his throat as her searching dark eyes met his.

Air rushed in.

"Ready," he said.

After a scrupulously polite round of introductions, the bugler played a call, and the Mutton Wheelers took a few running steps alongside their bicycles to mount. A moment later, they were tearing down the drive.

"Tallyho!" someone cried. Sir Reggie, by his voice. Muriel's gaze flew to him but landed instead on Lady Chiswick, who stood on the edge of the drive with a coterie of society matrons. They were staring at her. Their expressions spoke volumes. Or at least quoted selectively from the King James Bible.

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

Face flaming, Muriel kicked up her leg. She straddled her metal broomstick. She was bedraggled from her awful night, which she'd spent mostly in the open air. She was far too tired to care what Lady Chiswick thought of her. Golden-haired Clarinda made one of a bunch of younger women, a little farther down the drive, all of them slim and fairylike in their pastel gowns. She caught Muriel's eye and sent her a wistful little smile.

Before Muriel could process her surprise and smile back, gravel crunched. Griffith rolled up beside her, already in the saddle. He looked slightly haggard in the morning light, which lent a wolfish edge to his beauty, and caused him to seem like more of a stranger.

She tried to read his expression. Was he angry? Was he ready to resume where they'd left off?

"Here we go," he murmured. With athletic ease, he went, pedaling past Lady Chiswick, past Clarinda, swooping down toward the bend in the road.

She swallowed, shuffled forward, and came to an abrupt halt, bracing herself as the bicycle tipped. She strained to pull it back to center. Her boot slid on the gravel, and a muscle twinged in her thigh.

Griffith had twisted to see if she followed. He applied the brake, skidding a half circle, and stopped.

She tried to telegraph confidence. She shuffled forward again, but the bicycle tipped, like an overloaded wheelbarrow. A few titters rose, and her panic rose with them.

This was going to end, right here, in front of Griffith and a laughing crowd. She'd let James push the bicycle most of the way from the Towans. She'd needed to walk, to wake up her legs, to ease the stiffness from her back.

Daft. She'd been absolutely daft.

"James," she hissed. He was somewhere nearby, somewhere in that swirl of chattering, cup-and-saucer-clinking onlookers. Surely he was watching and understood her distress.

An eternity passed, and then she heard his voice, matter-of-fact and commanding.

"Step aside, please. Step aside."

Finally, more commandingly still: "I'm a doctor!"

The crowd parted, and he emerged and loped to her. "I can't tell if you're on a bicycle or in a bear trap. Why aren't you moving? Why does your face look like that?"

She emitted a bearlike growl of desperation.

"The panniers," she explained. "Would you take this?" She reached into the left pannier and extracted her microscope. Then, after further consideration, her dissecting case, a wad of coarse toweling, blotting papers, and two pressing boards with leather straps and buckles.

"Golly." James bobbled her offerings. "At least you left your jars."

She frowned and began to yank jars from the right pannier, aware that people had begun to gawk. Griffith, she saw, had tilted his head.

"Well," said James philosophically, "at least they're half-empty. What's in this one? Liquid rubber? Forget I asked. Did you bring a change of clothes? Or is it nets and chisels all the way down?"

"I feel fabric," she confirmed. "But it might be oilcloth." Damn. The last few hours had been a blur. Questionable decisions had been made.

She balanced the last jar atop the pile in his arms. She felt naked without her collecting supplies—and she'd likely feel more naked come evening, when she had to climb into a musty old bed wrapped in nothing but the oilcloth—but the bicycle was distinctly lighter and better balanced.

She might actually make it out of town on two wheels, and back again.

James cursed and stopped a jar from falling with a steeply angled elbow.

"What would I do without you?" she asked, and he gave her his filthiest smirk.

"I can't wait to find out. Make it good."

Her gaze slid back to Griffith, and she tightened her grip on the handlebars.

"Tallyho," she whispered, and pushed off.