Chapter 28

It was still raining at breakfast. The bar was even more crowded than it had been the previous evening, and a mood of agitation prevailed. The storm had disturbed everyone's rest and continued to disrupt travel. Muriel squeezed between tables at which the talk was nothing but complaints about the beds, the weather, the train, the tea, and the toast. Her only concern was getting tea and toast. Cold, burnt—it made no difference. She was groggy, sore, hungry as a bear, and she required sustenance for the grueling ride ahead. She'd have eaten grubs.

There were no grubs in evidence, and no free tables. She had no party to join. The wheelmen were in the tack room, attending to their machines. She'd peeked in on the way to the bar and seen Kit crouching by a Rover with his shirtsleeves rolled up. He had a smudge of grease on his cheek, and hair in his eyes, and the muscles in his forearms were doing interesting things as he changed the angles of his wrists. She'd realized she was giving him that mortifyingly lobsterish look, so she'd hurried on, before anyone could remark it.

Now she clutched at her rumpled skirt, wondering if she could make herself very small and perch on the edge of a bench at a table of strangers, or if she'd better return to her room and gnaw a seaweed specimen.

A woman noticed her distress and scooted down her bench voluntarily, opening a space.

"You can sit here." She was around Muriel's age, with a tired face and energetic hair, curls escaping her bun and corkscrewing in all directions.

"We're terrible company," warned the woman sitting across from her. She seemed as though she'd be very good company, on less trying occasions. She had a sprightly air. Her smocked silk dress was a conspicuous shade of pink.

"And anyway, we're about to leave." The woman to the right of the woman in pink set down her teacup. Her eyes were a fathomless blue.

"We're not even guests here," confided the woman in pink.

"My thanks." Muriel sat, a little confused and wholly charmed.

"We're at the White Hart," the woman in pink continued. "But the kitchen flooded, so there was nothing to eat."

"Oh dear." Muriel surreptitiously surveyed the adjacent tables, trying to pick plausible husbands from among the diners. None passed muster. These women were elegantly eccentric and seemed incongruous with the general run of stranded families.

They traveled in their own society. Perhaps they were sapphists. She smiled. Her imagination had improved. Since meeting Kit, her sense of possibility was ever expanding.

"Were you on the train to Truro?" she asked. Sapphists or no, she'd wager they were bound for a resort. "Is Penzance your destination? Or St. Ives?"

The curly-haired woman's face clouded.

"St. Ives," responded the blue-eyed woman, with a peculiar emphasis.

"No." The curly-haired woman crossed her arms. "We're returning to London."

Muriel's smile slipped. Clearly she'd interrupted an argument.

"St. Ives is lovely," she murmured.

The women seemed to have forgotten she was there.

"I can feel it in my heart." The curly-haired woman pressed a hand to her chest. "We were stopped by fate."

"For heaven's sake." The woman in pink frowned. "We were stopped by rain."

"There's no fixing this." The curly-haired woman whispered it to herself. She looked wan, lines bracketing her mouth.

Muriel cleared her throat, preparing to excuse herself, but the woman gave a shake and addressed her friends in a brisk tone.

"You two go. The only thing you did wrong was follow my lead."

"You're not our leader," said the blue-eyed woman mildly.

"You have cold feet," the woman in pink suggested. "There's no reason to turn back now."

"I don't think…" The words wrenched in bursts from the curly-haired woman's throat. "I don't think that…he…will forgive me."

The blue-eyed woman took her hand across the table.

"Lucy," she soothed. "It was a long night. Finish your tea. You'll feel better."

Muriel sucked in an audible breath.

The woman in pink heard and shot her a friendly wince. "Terrible company, as I said. Apologies."

"Not at all." Muriel hardly moved her lips. She was rooted to the bench. She didn't blink.

Not Sapphists. Sisters. Kit's Sisters. Kit's Lucy.

She was certain. Everything fit. She understood their conversation. She understood everything.

Lucy might have broken Kit's heart, but she'd broken her own heart in the process. She'd come to Cornwall to make things right, and maybe still could.

"Wait!" Muriel bolted up as the women rose. All three looked at her with amazement. As well they might. She was wringing her hands.

"Is something the matter?" Lucy was all solicitude. In an instant, she'd put aside her own turmoil, giving Muriel her complete attention. She had a frank gaze, inquisitive and kind. She was a duchess, for the love of God, but without an ounce of pretension. Every bit as interesting and attractive as Muriel's jealousy had painted her.

"You're leaving." Muriel's mind blurred. Should she detain them? Should she tell them Kit was in the next room?

"Back to the White Hart." Lucy tipped her head. "To pack our bags in the hopes we're not stuck here forever."

Muriel's veins felt like wires.

This way, she could say, and lead them right to him. He'd look up from his bicycle, sweaty, surprised, and heart-stoppingly handsome, and he'd drop his wrench, and Lucy would pale, and perhaps they'd start forward at the same moment. They'd fall into each other's arms. Kit deserved that. He deserved a magnificent reconciliation. And he deserved also to choose when and how and if it happened. Lucy had hurt him, badly. They all had.

Muriel couldn't spring them upon him, not without fair warning.

"Of course." She nodded. "Good luck, with everything."

As soon as the three women had walked away, she collapsed on the bench and stared at the remains of their meal, the teacups and plates. The woman in pink had folded her napkin into a rabbit.

She would tell Kit as soon as her legs were in working order. He would do with the information what he wished.

Her hands balled into fists in her lap. A sneaky, slippery, treacherous thought began to writhe in her brain like an eel.

What if she didn't tell Kit? She could keep the encounter secret. She could keep him for herself for one more week.

Her heart hammered.

All she had to do was nothing. Lucy and the others would board a train to London. She and Kit would spend seven golden days together in St. Ives, six silver nights. She wanted that time, all of it, so intensely the prospect of losing an hour robbed her of breath. There was precious little time, in the scheme of things. To share under such constraints meant unreasonable sacrifice. She'd been fuzzy-headed last night, overestimating her own selflessness. But love wasn't stingy, or dishonest. And she loved him. She loved Kit Griffith. His eyes, his hands, his voice, his swagger, his soul. Lucy loved him too, perhaps in the same way she did. And when the world went dark for Kit, hers was the name that called him back. Lucy was his light.

What was Muriel's love if it interfered with that light?

She sat perfectly still, sick with desire and guilt, hollowed out by poisonous temptation. Even her appetite had deserted her.

She ordered breakfast regardless. She needed strength to decide her next move.

Kit had done what he had to do in the tack room. He'd taken off his pedals, and Muriel's, cleaned and rethreaded them, replaced a spoke and adjusted the rest, checked the brakes, and generally assured himself that the day's problems wouldn't be mechanical in nature. Now his head was swimming from the fumes of the cement Butterfield had used to re-adhere his front tire to its rim, and he was more than ready for a second breakfast.

Kemble had the same idea. "I'm bloody starving."

He beat Kit to the door and jogged into the hall, as though the two of them were competing for the very last kipper. Which maybe they were. An ungodly number of people had been coming and going since dawn, their voices and footsteps a constant din. Probably they'd descended on the bar like a plague of locusts.

"I need a blacksmith." Egg spoke in a small voice, slumped against a wall, cracked leather halters and frayed ropes dangling all around him.

"Abandon the thought." Deighton was using a rag to polish his badges. "We ride on the hour."

"On the hour?" Prescott checked his watch and exchanged a look with Butterfield, whose stomach growled audibly. An instant later, they were gone.

"But I can't ride with a broken handlebar. I thought it had come loose yesterday, but look, it's actually broken." Egg turned to his bicycle, propped against the wall beside him. "Just look."

Deighton did not look. "Don't pout. You're a Mutton Wheeler. You can ride."

"But—" Egg's expression turned plaintive.

With a muffled curse, Kit forsook all hope of second breakfast and stalked to Egg's machine. A proper fix would require a blacksmith, but he could rig up a temporary solution, quick and ugly. He'd unscrew the handlebar from its socket and jam in a broom handle. There was a broom in the tack room, but not a saw. He'd have to break it. Very ugly. Maybe he could sand the edge.

"This is doable," he told Egg.

"Doable? And you'll do it? Oh, ripping! I'll run for a bite, then?" Egg's eager question was hardly out before he shot from the room.

Kit worked for several minutes to remove the broken handlebar before he realized that Deighton hadn't departed. He was standing with his legs spread and his arms crossed, watching him.

"Yes?"

"That machine belongs to my wheelman. You don't have to fix it."

Kit exhaled. "You're welcome."

Deighton grunted.

Kit stuck out his lower lip to blow hair from his eyes and cleaned grit from the socket. The room was quiet. Deighton hadn't moved.

Kit sighed. "I don't have to fix it. Like you didn't have to turn back for us yesterday. Or attempt to save my life." He paused. "We'll leave to the side the fact that you almost killed me."

This time Deighton's grunt sounded almost humorous.

"You're welcome," he said.

The silence wasn't companionable, but neither was it murderous.

The crack of the broomstick beneath Kit's shoe sounded like a gunshot. The diameter was close, but not an exact match, slightly too small, which was preferable to the alternative. A bit of cement would do the trick.

Kit had just completed the cementing when he felt something brush his leg. He glanced up, but Deighton was in the same position.

"Cat," said Deighton, and there was, in fact, a cat in the tack room. It went slinking around the bicycles and then rubbed itself against Deighton's calf.

Kit squared his stance.

"Do you expect me to fall to and start torturing?" Deighton looked affronted. "What in God's name do you think I'd do to it?"

Kit shrugged without lowering his guard. "I don't want to find out."

Deighton was glaring at the cat now, a glare that seemed powerful enough to crisp its fur. The cat wove between Deighton's legs, oblivious. It was little more than a kitten, gray and fluffy, with big eyes in a round face. He bent and scooped it up.

"Easy," said Kit warningly.

But Deighton was cradling the cat in his arms, much as he'd cradled the half-drowned boy. His glare had dulled, and he studied the cat with a wholly new expression, flummoxed and a little bit sweet.

"I slapped cats at school." He said it grudgingly. "Is that what you want to hear? Fine. I confess. I slapped cats. Only toms, though. I slapped them to make them fight. To make them stronger." A knot formed on his brow, and he muttered the rest: "It was for their own good."

Kit looked at Deighton for a long moment. He was still studying the cat, his short, colorless lashes trembling.

"I see." Kit focused again on the repair. "Was it good for you?"

"To slap them?"

"To get slapped." Kit spoke quietly. "Or thrashed, or whatever it was." He guessed slapped wasn't the half of it.

Deighton's glare was hot again. "I'm strong, aren't I?"

Kit nodded blandly. "Indeed. You could toss me overhand into a dunghill."

"Exactly."

"Your father wants you to." Kit raised a brow. "But you haven't."

"Yet."

"You won't." Kit would put money on that. "You're an obnoxious blowhard, but you're a sportsman. As you once told me, you follow the rules of the road. You'd rather face your father's wrath than compromise your integrity. That is strong. Standing up to a bully, instead of bullying in turn. Strength and violence aren't the same thing. But I think you already know that."

Strength and violence and manhood aren't the same thing, he could have added, but didn't because Deighton's eyelid was already twitching.

"Ha," said Deighton, without conviction.

Kit wiped the grease and cement from his hands with a rag. Deighton had set the cat on the saddle of his bicycle. The cat remained in place, gazing tranquilly at Deighton over the handlebars.

"Another thing I think you know," said Kit. "You can tell your father to hell with Scotland."

Deighton was too thunderstruck for fury. "And he'd say to hell with me. He'd disown me. I'd lose everything."

"You'd lose a lot." Kit knew a thing or two about the price of defiance. "Not everything. And there's much to gain. The life you want to live."

"What's this about?" Deighton narrowed his eyes. "Your life is that bicycle shop. Which is about to be my bicycle shop. Worry about yourself."

"I'm not worried about losing the bicycle shop."

"You can't wheedle it back from me. I have plans for it."

"I won't wheedle, because I won't lose." Kit cocked a brow, curious despite himself. "What plans?"

"Second clubhouse." Deighton looked at the cat, who looked back at him. "Ferocious little fellow, isn't he? I wish I could bring him with us. We need a mascot. I'd call him—" A sudden noise turned his head.

"Mrs. Pendrake," he finished.

"Mr. Deighton." Muriel was breathless, as though she'd run from the bar, when in fact, she'd walked at a deliberate pace, each measured step reinforcing her determination. "I must speak with Mr. Griffith before we go."

"We are going now." Deighton fixed his eyes on her. "And I must first urge you again to spare yourself the physical strain and the probable injury." His eyes dipped, and he took in the sordid state of her gown, which yesterday's misadventures had torn, stained, and misshapen. "The impropriety," he added, with a hint of a blush.

"I know you must." She gave him an impatient smile.

He kept looking at her, slow to realize this was her only answer. When he did, he snorted.

She stepped aside to let him stomp from the room.

"Butterfield!" She heard him bellowing in the hallway. Someone else was shouting too.

"Train's running! Train to Truro!"

She ignored the commotion. The room was cluttered, redolent of rubber and old horse, with one small, cobwebbed window sieving the dismally thin light. Kit and a cat on a bicycle were regarding her with glowing eyes.

"Lucy is here," she breathed. "Here in Bodmin."

Kit didn't blink. She tried and failed to decipher his expression.

"They're at the White Hart." She approached him, pulse thudding. "Lucy and two other women."

He gave his head a slight shake. "No, they're not. They can't be. They'd have come and gone by now."

She stared at him, and the longer she did so, the more his face resembled a mask. "You knew." She struggled to comprehend it. "You knew they were on their way to see you."

"Weeks ago. Ponsonby told me."

"And so…" She remembered her intuition that Kit had goaded Deighton into their wager, not the other way round. Here it was. His ulterior motive. She stepped even closer, peering up at him. "You got yourself embroiled in this contest, to evade them."

How perfect. How painful. She'd wheeled away with him, wheeled all around Cornwall, but fortune's wheel had brought him to Lucy, regardless.

She had the power to relieve his pain, at least.

"I was right." Shoots of real happiness pushed through the choking overgrowth of envy. "Lucy doesn't think you're Judas."

His lips parted, but seconds passed before words followed. "You discussed me?"

"I only sat beside them. She was speaking to her companions."

"You were eavesdropping." He crossed his arms, thumb tapping at his bicep, a line of doubt between his brows. "What did this Lucy look like?"

"Sad," she said. "This Lucy looked sad. She looked like a person deeply sorry that she'd harmed someone she loved." She cleared the rasp from her throat. "Deeply sorry that she'd harmed you."

"She said my name?" His gaze was dark. "What name did she say?"

Muriel hesitated. "She didn't say any name."

"Ah." He held his mouth in a hard shape she'd never seen. "I wonder which she'd have used."

"I don't know." She glanced away from him as the cat jumped down from the bicycle, landing lightly. Part of her wanted to stop here, but it wasn't the better part. She'd made her decision, and she would represent what she'd gleaned as fully as possible.

"I do know her intentions." She looked back at Kit, holding his gaze. "She wants to mend things."

He was still. "Perhaps she can't."

"She can't, and you can't, if you don't try." Slowly, she reached out and touched his wrist.

"I have tried." He caught her fingers and squeezed. "I've tried all sorts of things. I've tried to forget. I've tried to distract myself." His thumb swept back and forth across her knuckles, absently, but there was no mistaking his meaning. "Nothing has worked."

A sick shiver raced over Muriel's skin. Her mouth tasted like sand.

He'd tried to distract himself.

She was a distraction.

The idea cut like a rusty blade, leaving a nasty residue behind. It was one thing to share a man's life briefly, and intensely. It was another thing to let that man use you to hide from his life.

For the first time, she felt lonely in his presence. She was in a tiny, dirty, unfamiliar room, in a town where she knew no one, and where she didn't plan to stay. Her life was made of such rooms and such places, adding up to nothing and nowhere. All at once, she missed James, desperately. She missed the home she might never have. She missed Kit, even as he stroked her skin.

She pulled her hand away. The cat streaked by.

"They're returning to London," she said. "Or Lucy is. She lost her nerve. To see her, you'd have to go to the White Hart, right now."

He paled. He was far paler than Lucy had been in her vision. He looked like a ghost.

"No time," he whispered, and there was triumph in his voice, and defeat. The room filled with wheelmen, pushing between them, pushing them apart, in their eagerness to claim their bikes.