Chapter 17

When they set out the next morning, the fog had settled thick and wet in the valley, veiling the beaches and the bay. One bugle call became two, then three, then four, the shrill notes slicing at Kit's ears. He and Muriel were bringing up the rear of the column, and he wanted to fall back further, to separate from the wheelmen and spend another day in relative quiet, and with her alone.

She'd braided her hair, one thick, gleaming plait that hung over her shoulder. Right at that moment, it possessed more vivid color than anything else in existence. He couldn't stop looking at it as they cycled out of the village onto a narrow road that seemed to tunnel through gauze.

It was a good time to remind himself that she was bound for New York.

Whatever transpired between them, an ocean would soon intervene.

He'd learned to begin liaisons with the end in view, with finality as the main, mutually established fact. No muzzy-headed, naked whispering that projected forever togetherness. He kept the boundaries crystal clear, for everyone's sake.

The burnished tip of Muriel's braid seemed to smear his eyes with rich pigments. Cadmium red. Burnt sienna.

He hadn't done this in months—matched the world to his palette.

He looked away, overwhelmed by a predicament too complex to contemplate in its totality.

Last night, when Muriel had fixed him with that searching, dark gaze and asked about his painting, he'd slammed shut. He'd retreated from their newfound candor. He couldn't bring himself to tell her that his first artistic efforts had yielded nothing but crumpled paper and a painful sense of vertigo.

Because the truth would make her fear for her commission. That was one explanation for his dodginess. He was protecting her from anxiety—pointless anxiety. If he failed, he'd beg Takada to step in. She wouldn't go away empty-handed.

But no, it was more complicated. He was protecting himself. He didn't want to see his own fear of failure reflected in her eyes or to face what that failure might mean.

Something inside him was permanently broken.

He balked at the thought. Horrible to give it credence, but hell, quailing before that bladderwrack had been a bloody bad sign. Or perhaps only a bad start. Perhaps he'd redeem himself at the next rock pool. Hope remained. And yet—he wasn't in any hurry to put it to the test. He'd thanked his lucky stars for the morning fog, which had kept her—and him—from the shore. But if they did fall behind the others, if the fog lifted, she'd insist on stopping. This blasted ride was nothing but shore.

He flexed his hands. He might not redeem himself. She'd ask him to sketch the sea lettuce, and he'd fumble as she studied him, concern etching her brow.

Sea lettuce.That a marine vegetable could fill him with terror. He'd laugh, but sweat was gathering beneath his collar, despite the clammy air.

He looked again at Muriel. She was squirming as she pedaled, straightening then stretching forward, trying to ease the tension in her lower back. Cycling was the devil when it came to the spine, and to the delicate skin of the inner thighs. More than a rock pool, she needed a hot bath, steaming water scattered with rose petals and calendula, sprigs of lavender, or maybe heather. Hell, she was the botanist, not he.

She felt him looking and glanced up through mist-thickened lashes. Her skin was dewy, and her lips seemed plumper, the pink of damp shells. If he thought there was a chance that some hidden chamber of the Treryn Dinas Inn contained a copper bathtub and a tester bed, he'd have suggested they ride back posthaste.

"Penny," he said, and nearly jumped out of his saddle at a blast of sound.

She jumped too, and grimaced at the culprit, the younger Butterfield. He was a few yards ahead, bugle pointed at the sky.

"They're a bicycle club," she muttered. "But they think they're the cavalry."

"Young Butterfield thinks he's a trumpeter at the apocalypse," said Kit, but the bugle call drowned him out.

Somewhere in the distance, Deighton released an indistinct roar. Kit peered around and between the other cyclists and finally caught a glimpse of Deighton's blue-and-white striped jacket. His back was so broad his brown knapsack looked like a coin purse.

The elder Butterfield and Richard Kemble, the club treasurer, were riding behind Deighton. They both turned their heads.

"Did you hear that?" yelled Butterfield. He seemed to be yelling at Phineas Prescott, the club secretary, who rode directly behind him.

"What?" asked Prescott.

"Captain said stuff it!" yelled Butterfield.

"Me?" asked Prescott. "Why's he after me again?"

"Not you!" yelled Butterfield. "The bugle! Stuff the bloody bugle!"

The bugle call cut off.

"You keep quiet now, Egg!" yelled Kemble. "Or tonight you're spit shining our shoes."

Even in three-quarter profile, Kemble looked fully disagreeable. He'd worn the same jeering expression at breakfast, when Kit tried to settle the bill for the rooms.

You're onour club run, he'd said. The club pays. Not for too many nights, by the looks of you.

Young Butterfield—or Egg, God help him—lowered the bugle. "Our shoes are canvas!"

"I don't bloody care!" yelled Kemble. "And I don't want to hear your voice either."

"I was playing the walk," whined Egg. "When I play the walk, we slacken the pace. It says so in the handbook. But the pace hasn't slackened."

Kemble and Butterfield weren't paying him any more mind. They'd accelerated, closing the distance with Deighton.

Egg looked at Prescott. "I was playing the walk."

"You were," agreed Prescott.

"There's fog," said Egg. "You don't ride at eight miles per hour in fog."

"We do." Prescott shrugged. "Until the captain decides we don't. Next time wait for him to tell you to play the walk."

"He can't tell me anything," protested Egg. "He's a mile away."

"You're supposed to ride with him!" Prescott shouted as the wind gusted, flinging a few cold droplets. "Bugler rides by the captain. It says so in the handbook."

"Captain's supposed to be courteous." Egg sounded sulky. "Also in the handbook."

"You can ride back here for now," conceded Prescott. "There are so few of us. But remember, formation matters. This wouldn't stand with the full membership."

Muriel gave a yelp. "Dear God. More Mutton Wheelers?"

Prescott and Egg twisted around and cut her identical looks of surprise.

"Sorry." She sat straighter. "Did I say that aloud? I could hear your conversation, and it's just—I hadn't realized you were so numerous."

Prescott gave a brief nod. "There are forty-eight members in total."

"We're the officers," added Egg. "This is an officers' excursion."

They faced front again.

Kit recognized Muriel's expression. She had more questions.

"And why Mutton Wheelers?" she asked. "Is it the association with toughness? I've found mutton very tender, in curries."

"Wouldn't know." Egg craned his neck to frown in her direction. "Not allowed to eat mutton. Training diet."

"We used to meet at the Shoulder of Mutton Pub," said Prescott, turning. "Now we have a clubhouse, but…"

A sudden flurry of shouts snapped both their heads back around.

"I don't see—" began Prescott.

"Cow!" Egg broke hard to the right. An instant later, Muriel did the same. Prescott and Kit broke left. The cow herself didn't move. She stood in the middle of the road with laudable calmness, her creamy brown flanks nearly invisible in the fog. They all missed her by inches.

Kit held his breath until he saw Muriel control her wild swerve. She careened back onto the road and steadied her wheel, face pale.

Anger stirred in his guts. With less than a week of training, she lacked experience handling her machine under duress. She might have gone flying into a furze bush, or worse, a boulder.

"Dismount and rest?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "We've barely gotten underway."

Yes, and what a start they'd made.

"Passing on the left," he announced. He swung around Prescott, and then overtook Butterfield as well, standing on the pedals, both for the added power, and because he did feel a bit too low to the ground in comparison.

He had to exert himself even more to pull even with Deighton.

"Foul weather," he remarked, when it became obvious that Deighton wasn't about to speak first.

"Didn't see you down there." Deighton grinned. "How's the mud?"

"Dunno." Kit grinned too. "Shall we try to knock each other into it? Get it out of the way?"

Deighton hunched over his handlebars. "No one's knocking anyone into anything."

"Your father suggested otherwise."

"My father—" Deighton reared. His front wheel skipped, and he jerked his handlebars, thinning his lips. "My father is not the captain of a bicycle club. Wheelmen follow the rules of the road. You'll end up in the mud—not because of me. Because you're halfway there already."

"Two of your officers nearly ended up under a cow. Due to your poor judgment." For a moment, Kit anticipated a kick to the head. Tension rolled off Deighton in waves.

"Reduce the rate of speed," said Kit evenly. "You have nothing to prove."

Deighton laughed, neck rigid. "This isn't the rate of speed I'd adopt if I had something to prove. I consider this a moderate pace. But fine." His posture relaxed. "I'll reduce the rate of speed. So long as you ride with me. No straggling."

"Fine." Kit sucked in a mouthful of salty air. It had the taste of a mixed blessing.

"Fine," repeated Deighton, and slacked the pace.

The next hours passed as predicted. Long intervals of hostile silence on the wheel punctuated by short periods of respite. The fog lifted at midday, and whenever they dismounted, he joined Muriel to admire the coastal scenery or ask her the names of the flowers threading the hedges. She didn't seem remotely bothered that he'd abandoned his place beside her, or that it meant they'd no time to explore the coves. She waved away his explanation as easily as she waved away his regrets. He shouldn't have felt surprised, let alone dismayed. He'd known she was self-sufficient. He admired her independent spirit. But he found himself wishing for some slight indication that she was bothered, just a little bothered, or at least pining for his return. At lunch, in Penzance, she was trapped between Egg and Prescott, and he watched her covertly, as she laughed and drank and brushed bright tendrils of hair from her face. He was trapped between Butterfield and Kemble, who were swapping facts about recent race results while Deighton paged through a copy of the Cyclists' Touring Club's Monthly Gazette and Official Record.

She bore her fate with better cheer than he did. Or was she actually enjoying herself? Egg, who couldn't be more than eighteen, had terrible manners. He shoveled his food with his elbows on the table and talked eagerly with his mouth full, encouraged by her smile. His eyes had begun to shine with devotion. Prescott had better comportment. He was likely in his twenties and far more restrained. He'd just said something that elicited Muriel's appreciation. Kit could tell from the way she angled her body and the lilt of her voice. She was asking him questions. They kept talking as they exited the pub, Kit skulking in their shadow, feeling vaguely villainous. The subject was birds. Prescott held his hand out, describing how the gulls in the St. Ives harbor took crusts without fear, and once, his whole pasty.

"I counted four different species," she said, and he said he'd counted five, and then it was comparing plumage to discover if their observations corresponded.

As they rode southeast toward the Lizard, following the curve of Mount's Bay, passing fishermen's huts and Coastguard cottages, Kit scowled at the birds he couldn't identify. He'd ride with her tomorrow, Deighton be damned. He'd sketch what seaweed had to be sketched. He'd throw in a portrait of a herring gull. End of story.

They cut inland to Helston and dismounted by the Loe. The gleaming waters of the lake were fringed with rushes and dark pines, and Muriel was instantly absorbed, wandering the bank in a reverie he didn't dare disturb. South of Gunwalloe, they dismounted again, and Kit turned to see that she wasn't among them.

"Where's Mrs. Pendrake?" He addressed Prescott, who rubbed his chin, where his black beard had sprouted densely since the morning.

"She'll be along shortly." He turned as though she might have already arrived. The road was empty. He turned back to Kit with less certainty. "She said she was going down to the shore. I offered to accompany her, of course."

"I offered as well," piped up Egg. "I'd have been the bigger help. My mother keeps a seaweed album."

"She told us to ride on." Prescott frowned. "It wasn't so far back. We can wait for her here."

"We're not waiting." Deighton pulled on the brim of his cap. "My guess? She hired a conveyance back to Penzance, where they have proper amenities."

Prescott and Egg exchanged a look.

"She didn't mention Penzance," said Egg. "She mentioned seaweed."

"You know women and their whims." Kemble shrugged and folded his thick arms.

"All mount!" called Deighton.

Kit was already on his bicycle, pointed in the opposite direction.

Deighton sneered. "Go after her if you're worried."

"I'm not worried," said Kit. "But she and I are a club. We ride together."

"You're a club?" Kemble chortled. "Just the two of you?"

"There's four at present." Kit added Raleigh and Ponsonby on the spot. Honorary members.

"And your name?" demanded Deighton.

Kit's brows pulled together. What the hell?

"The Flower Pedals," he said. "See you at dinner."

With that, he shoved off.

He wasn't worried. He should have known that Muriel would stop to hunt for seaweed without him, even if it meant cycling the last leg down to the Lizard on her own. Her decision grated, ever so slightly, or rather, the fact that she'd taken matters into her own hands, without asking his permission. It wasn't chauvinism, to consider himself the captain of their informally constituted club. He was the seasoned cyclist, responsible for her welfare, on the road, if nowhere else. Perhaps they needed a handbook, spelling some things out. He'd changed position in the column, true, without consulting her, but again—captain. And it wasn't the same as leaving the column altogether.

At least he could count on her common sense, and scrupulous attention to the Earth's rotation. She wouldn't tarry overlong. She'd learned firsthand that cycling in the dark was a perilous proposition. At any moment, she'd appear, spinning toward him, looking sheepish, or perhaps, not sheepish at all—happy. Collecting bag stuffed with kelp. He rode at a walk, to give her time, so he wouldn't inadvertently pass her turnoff before she'd reemerged. To his left, water rippled, a vast expanse, pale green by the serpentine cliffs, deepest blue at the horizon. To his right, walled fields made a series of rectangles that stretched across the low hills. It was early evening, hazy and warm. Wrens twittered in the hedges. Well, he thought they were wrens.

Annoyed, yes. But worried, no. That's why he rounded the bend and felt his blood turn all at once to ice.

Muriel's bicycle lay on the ground, at the base of a tree.