Chapter 29

Within minutes, they were lined up on the street, standing by their bicycles in formation, making final adjustments. The rain had stopped, and the air smelled earthy, with a cool nip.

Muriel glanced at Kit as he rolled his Rover even with hers. He'd tugged on his coat but hadn't buttoned it. He was still pale in the gray morning light and looked dazed.

He was making a mistake.

He caught her eye and summoned a grin. "Ready?"

This was it. The last push to the finish. She wasn't ready. She was unsettled, with a splinter in her chest like something had broken.

"Ready," she said. Over breakfast, she'd fought her way to honesty, rubbing herself raw, and now this one white lie burned like acid on her tongue.

She wasn't ready, but she'd ride.

A cart was clattering toward them, blocking their way, and Deighton delayed the all mount to let it pass. As the sound faded, a new one reached her ears. It seemed to come from right behind her.

A hoarse, sustained growl. That growl.

The street disappeared. The inn. The men and their bicycles. Her terror belled until it was bigger than she was. She was inside it, in the yard, and the old images surged. Her mother turning, her smile slow to fade. The dog's lurching gait. Its leap.

"Penny." Kit had heard the growl too. He leaned toward her. She saw him through a mist, through veil upon veil of grief and fear.

"You're here," he said quietly, and then, after the slightest hesitation: "We are here."

His eyes shone. Those eyes seemed far, far away, but they were made of starlight, and starlight could travel an impossible distance. It reached her. Here. Now. Those other images drained of color and scattered, wisps of the past, floating back to where they belonged.

"And there's a fossilized-looking collie a few yards away," he continued, a smile warming the silver of his gaze. "He's old as the hills, with very few teeth and enormous dignity of bearing. He can't hurt you. I promise."

She nodded, without looking away from his face. Her blood began to flow again. All her muscular aches gathered in her chest, where that cold splinter still lodged, its point aimed at the plumpest, softest region of her heart. Oh yes, she was going to yearn for this man, in the months and years and decades to come. She would yearn bitterly. For her, this wasn't distraction. This was life itself, at its sweetest. And she wouldn't regret a single moment.

If Kit rode with her now, would his regret haunt him?

"There is time," she blurted, and grabbed his arm.

"Penny." He gave a minuscule twitch, of confusion or dismissal.

"You and I resolved that neither of us would strike off, but we can make the choice together to split up." She gulped, aware she was speaking out of turn and that she couldn't live with herself if she didn't continue. "To win the wager, I must finish the run today, not you. Don't go to Lucy if you don't want to. But if you do, don't let anything stop you. Not this."

Not me.

He was staring, a kindling hope in his eyes.

"Are you certain?" he whispered. His pinkie hooked hers. She looked down at their linked little fingers, skin hidden by the dirty leather of their gloves.

She was certain. That wasn't a lie. And she was certain too that letting go of his pinkie would feel like tearing away a part of her own body.

"All mount!" Deighton bellowed it from the front of the column.

She let go. She swung up her leg and sat astride her bicycle.

Kit's eyes were blazing.

She wished her own eyes could inscribe a message on the back of his skull.

Good luck. I love you. Goodbye.

She pushed off. The wheelmen were already in motion, bumping over the cobbles.

"What's going on?" Deighton had twisted to look over his shoulder. "Griffith, where are you going? Have you lost your mind?"

She also allowed herself a backward glance.

Kit was riding too, but in the other direction, riding hard for the White Hart Inn.

He found them in the busy coffee room, Lucy, Gwen, and Nelly. They were absorbed in a discussion—Lucy scowling, jabbing a hairpin into her frizzy curls, Gwen sketching as she spoke, Nelly tapping her cup with her spoon. His knees almost buckled at the sight. To stand on the outside of their little circle, peering in—it felt ghastly and perverse, and for a split second, he felt ghastly and perverse, for separating himself from them, forcing a new reality that caused everyone discomfort. Betraying his best mates.

By being who you are?

He heard Muriel's indignant voice, and the split second passed. He strode to their table. "You wanted to see me?"

His words drew three pairs of startled eyes.

The hairpin slipped from Lucy's hand and splashed into her tea. Gwen was so reserved her emotions rarely reached her face, but she stared in open-mouthed surprise. Nelly yelped.

"How are you here? Are you here?" She stuck her fingers in Lucy's tea and yelped again. "It's hot."

"Hotness is tea's only defense against fingers." Kit's pulse was crashing, but his voice sounded dry. "You got what you deserved."

"I wanted to get the hairpin." Nelly leapt up. "To poke you, in case you're a mirage." She grabbed him in a rib-cracking hug. She worked in clay and marble and had the arms of a discus thrower.

"Ow!" She stepped back. "You pinched me."

"In case you're dreaming." Kit's lips twitched. So did Nelly's, and he saw over her shoulder that Lucy's did too—twitched and held in a tentative smile. Nelly tugged him, and he sat down beside her.

A good thing. His knees were buckling.

"Should we order more coffee?" Gwen's expression had smoothed, but her color was high, and her Fra Angelico blue eyes had a slight squint—her version of beaming. "The kitchen is flooded, so there's no food, but the coffee's rather good."

"Why are you dressed like a golfer?" Lucy laughed, but tears sparkled on her lashes.

"Cyclist." Kit glanced down at his jacket. "I'm on a cycling tour. Or I was. It's a long story."

Silence fell between them, filled with the hum of other conversations, and the roar of blood in his ears.

It was such a normal occurrence—the four of them gathered around a table—that the awkwardness seemed out of place and extraneous, an irritation they could brush away, like a buzzing insect. Only they couldn't. That wasn't how this worked.

He picked up a spoon, to have something to do with his hands.

"How was your exhibition?" he asked Lucy. "At the New Gallery?"

"Oh." She swiped at a stray curl, gaze skittering sideways. "I hardly know. Critics said some positive things." She hesitated, looking vacantly toward the corner of the room.

The pause lengthened, excruciating.

"I kept wondering what you would think." She inhaled, and slowly, she brought back her gaze, until it met his.

"Your show, last winter." She was going pale, which made her look more freckled, more like the scrawny orphan he'd first met. "I loved it. I didn't say so."

He swallowed. No. She'd said other things. He wasn't sure he could endure their repetition.

As he stared, Lucy's chin formed its characteristic point, and her gaze turned narrow. She was girding herself for a headlong charge, right here and now.

"I couldn't believe you'd kept it secret." She seemed to grow taller, hair bristling. "I couldn't believe that you hadn't shown me the pictures first. That you wouldn't take the credit, for yourself, and for us, and for…"

"Women?" Kit set down the spoon with an acid smile. His ribs felt sharp. If he breathed too hard, they'd slice his lungs.

"I asked myself if you thought the pictures were too daring, and the idea made me furious." She clasped her hands so tightly her knuckles turned white. "We dare. That's what we do. It's why we formed the Sisterhood. To dare together." Her fury had built anew as she spoke, but it had a beseeching quality, as though she were afraid he'd contradict her.

He didn't. He didn't say anything. His palms were damp.

She slumped, fury fading, until her face held only entreaty and wonderment.

"I went back to the gallery," she said, the heat gone from her voice. "I went back again and again. There was one picture in the Arthurian series—Half Sick of Shadows, you called it. The Lady of Shalott in her tower, and out the window, Sir Lancelot, riding through the barley sheaves on his warhorse. You used the same model for both. The lady and the knight had the same face." She bit her lip, studying his face. "I kept thinking about the picture. I tried to buy it, but an American collector beat me to the lot. You're the rage in New York."

At that last, her eyes lit up with fierce elation. They'd always reveled in each other's accomplishments. A good review. A good commission. A good sale. Good placement on the wall at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition.

And yet—impressing a fusty, famous, well-connected Academician never satisfied him as deeply as impressing her. Lucy would give his canvas a certain sharp-eyed look and begin to bounce on the soles of her feet, like excitement was lifting her off the floor, and his heart would lift too. The Sisterhood amplified their efforts as artists, and helped them gain external validation, but in a certain sense, it made external validation unnecessary. Made it clear what audience mattered most. Why they painted, and for whom. He'd muddied all that.

Nothing was clear.

Perhaps Lucy had forgotten for a moment the circumstances of his American debut.

"Kit Griffith is the rage in New York." He pronounced each syllable with slow deliberateness, and he braced himself. Her eyes were honey-colored, but they could sting.

"That's what I said." No sting. Just a glowing gaze. She smiled, a wider, surer smile than before. "You are the rage in New York."

Suddenly, his heart was in his throat, stopping his words. He felt pressure at the back of his eyes.

"You did dare." She whispered it. "I didn't. I was the disloyal coward. I jumped to the most superficial, self-serving conclusions. I preferred to think you'd fabricated Kit Griffith out of thin air, to join the enemy, for your own profit, or as a prank you didn't let me in on. But that wasn't it."

He shook his head. "It wasn't the intent. The effect, maybe." His heart was sinking fast, and he uttered his prediction hoarsely: "You think that just as inexcusable."

"I don't think anything you've done is inexcusable." She regarded him, expression as serious as he'd ever seen it. "Blaming you for betraying us was easier than transforming my idea of…well, us. Who you are, and who we are. I let everyone down, including myself. Kit." Her tongue tripped a little, and she flushed. "Kit—I'm sorry." She grabbed her tea, took a nervous gulp, and sputtered.

"Hairpin," murmured Kit, with sympathy.

Gwen handed her a napkin.

"I should have written," she gasped as she recovered, making a face and dropping the hairpin on the table. "But you weren't responding to letters, and—"

"What do you mean?" he interrupted. "Whose letters didn't I respond to?" He looked at Gwen and Nelly. "You wrote?"

"Often." Nelly glanced at Gwen, who nodded.

"Until you wrote to Lucy and quit the Sisterhood." Gwen rolled her pencil between her fingers. "We realized you might not want to hear from us."

He had wanted to hear from them. More than he'd been willing to admit.

He frowned. "I collected my mail in Camborne every week. I received none of your letters."

"Camborne?" Now Nelly was frowning. "Not Camelford? Thomas swore it was Camelford."

Thomas Everett Ponsonby. The bloody bungler.

"Why in God's name did you ask him?" Kit groaned. "I'd written you both with the address."

"Yes, well, we lost the address." Nelly cut him a defensive look. "I can't find any of my correspondence. I kept it in a box that I needed for a new set of chisels, and I thought I'd transferred it to my writing desk, but it's not there. And you know how absent-minded Gwen is." She gestured at Gwen, bent over her sketch again.

"Thomas sounded absolutely certain." Nelly scowled, and the exasperation in her black eyes was all for Ponsonby. "I should have remembered how he is."

Kit winced, feeling a pang of compunction. "Go easy on the chap. He meant well."

"Oh, he always means well." Nelly gave a shrug. "I'm always easy on him, considering. I should go harder."

"To crush his hopes," agreed Gwen, still sketching. "It would be a kindness."

Nelly sighed and began to pleat her napkin with precise but agitated movements. "We kissed once, under mistletoe. Mistletoe! I'd kiss a warthog under mistletoe. I told him that. I have abundant holiday spirit. He acted as though we were betrothed. Even after he snapped the toe off my Persephone, and I chased him out of my studio with a hammer."

"That was an accident, with Persephone," interjected Kit. He'd been there in Nelly's studio when Ponsonby fell over her cat's water bowl and landed on the base of the plaster cast model. The night lived on in infamy.

"My point is that I couldn't say anything worse to Thomas than I've said already." Nelly sipped her coffee. "He's uncrushable."

Lucy snorted, and Kit caught her eye, and they shared the look he'd thought they might never share again, as though they were of one mind. He brought the spoon to his lips, to catch the grin spilling off his face.

"We do have to thank Thomas for his wires," conceded Nelly. "Otherwise, we wouldn't have made this trip."

Kit removed the spoon, and now his grin was going everywhere. "We have to thank Muriel as well."

"Muriel?" Lucy's brows went up.

"Muriel?" Nelly wore an arch smile.

Gwen lifted her head from her sketch.

"She sat with you at the Travellers Rest. That's how I knew to come here, to find you before you turned back."

"Turned back?" Lucy looked blank.

"To London."

"Muriel told you that we were turning back…to London?" Her tone was incredulous.

"That is what you said." Nelly struck a diplomatic note.

"True," said Lucy. "In a moment of despair. I can see how Muriel might have believed it. But Kit, how could you believe it? Have you ever met me?"

It was a fair point.

"You weren't turning back, then." He scratched his nose.

"Obviously." Lucy scoffed.

He folded his arms, looking from her to Nelly to Gwen. "We could have had this conversation in St. Ives."

He could have continued cycling. Accompanied Muriel. Seemed like less of a weakling for failing to complete the run. He tried to frown, but the corners of his mouth kept turning up.

Anyone who thought him weak could stuff it. He'd see Muriel in St. Ives, when he introduced her to his three best mates.

Happiness bobbed like a buoy inside him.

"We'll have other conversations in St. Ives," Lucy declared. "We need to rewrite our manifesto. And you haven't heard our idea."

"First, I want to hear about Muriel." Nelly leaned forward.

Gwen waved an arm. "Where did everybody go?"

The formerly bustling coffee room was notably emptier.

Nelly furrowed her brow.

Kit blinked.

"Bugger!" Lucy jumped up. "The train!"