Chapter 5

"Thomas Everett Ponsonby!" He launched forward to clap Ponsonby hard on the back. Ponsonby wrapped him in a bear hug, then dragged him out of the doorway. They wrestled for a giddy moment, both hooting like schoolboys. Ponsonby was several years younger—Kit had already gained admission into the Upper School of Painting when Ponsonby'd entered the Royal Academy as a probationer—and their friendship remained incorrigibly laddish.

"I say." Ponsonby stepped away, panting and laughing. "Quite the formidable tower you've got yourself."

"It's an engine house." Kit grinned up at the tall, narrow building. "Part of a tin mine originally."

He'd bought the granite shell for next to nothing, then drained down his trust fund to hire the carpenters and masons who'd installed floors and pierced the walls with windows.

"Perfect studio." Ponsonby nodded approval. "Wonderful light."

Kit's smile slipped.

Ponsonby was craning his neck and didn't notice. "By God, will you look at that sunset?"

The sun itself had disappeared behind the headland. Cirrus streaks layered the sky with orange and rose, shading into gray.

Kit gave a grunt. "Picturesque." His fingers were closing again, his hands fists at his sides. "So." He cleared his throat. "When did you arrive?"

"Yesterday." Ponsonby lowered his chin with a happy sigh. "I plan to stay a month at least. I'm a guest of the Oatridges."

The wealthy London family summered in an elegant white villa perched high above the harbor. Kit hadn't known they were acquainted with Ponsonby, or vice versa.

"I still can't believe you're here." He shook his head. "Of all the days to forget to check the paper."

The St. Ives Weekly Summary and Visitors List came out every Saturday. It reported on the local artistic community, the artists' achievements and Show Days, their comings and goings, and their guests. The Visitors List was how Kit knew when to avoid parties and public houses, when to ramble off to Penzance for a week, whatever it took to avoid awkward—or worse than awkward—encounters with people who still called him by another name.

Today he'd been distracted, by another visitor to St. Ives.

Muriel's face formed again, and he had to blink the image away.

"Well, I checked the paper," said Ponsonby. "Imagine my surprise when I saw your advertisement. I hollered so loudly Mrs. Oatridge came running with bandages. Apparently, the garden chairs sometimes unsheathe rapier-sharp sprigs of wicker. A previous guest was horribly gored." He rubbed his flank absently. "I confirmed I wasn't pouring out my life's blood, and she confirmed that Kit Griffith the bicycle retailer was also Kit Griffith the painter."

A little pause drew out.

"I didn't think you'd mind if I turned up." Ponsonby was watching him, his exceedingly agreeable face—all freckled mirth—suddenly serious. "You know I'd never…I did call you Holroyd just now. That was a bungle." He flushed to the roots of his red hair, hesitating.

"Hell's bells," he said at last. "I'm a bungler. People say that, and they're not wrong. But I'd rather die by wicker then let down a friend. I don't—"

"They are wrong," Kit interrupted. "You're not a bungler."

A clown in his youth, Ponsonby might not have matured into the pragmatic, responsible paragon his eldest brother Cecil, the paterfamilias, wanted him to be. He'd learned to listen, though, and to keep his mouth shut when necessary. He was the sort of drinking companion to whom it was seldom a bad idea to confess your secrets.

Over the Christmas holiday, the winter before last, Kit had meant to tell Lucy about his other life as Mr. Kit Griffith and ended up telling Ponsonby instead, on a night of carousing that had taken them from theater box to tavern bench to gambling table. By the time they'd stumbled to a feeding place to sober up, Ponsonby was slapping Kit's back and slurring to the lamppost that Griff was his best mate.

"You're my best mate." Kit said it experimentally, and Ponsonby made a face.

"Bosh. That's Coover. By my count, I'm your fourth-best mate. It's all right." He batted the air, fending off any potential objections. "You're my second-best mate, really. What matters is that we're mates." His lips twitched now. "I'm not a bungler?"

"No." Kit tipped his head. "You're a trump. I trust you with my life. And may a sprig of wicker pierce my heart if it isn't so."

"You're a trump too." Ponsonby grinned. "But you're bollocks at hosting. I've been standing here for long minutes, coated with the dust of the road, my throat cracking."

Kit couldn't help but laugh. "Let's see if I have a chair that won't gore you."

Inside, Kit beelined for the bottle of whiskey on the worktable. There was one glass, clean enough. Kit filled it. When he raised his head, he saw that his friend hadn't followed.

Ponsonby had stilled just over the threshold, staring at the rack of Rovers.

"I don't understand." Ponsonby's perplexity intensified as he surveyed the room.

Kit looked too, trying to see it the way his friend would. Tires hung from pegs in the wall. Tables and shelves held pedal shafts, oil cans, and wrenches. Cyclometers and lamps. Jars of ball bearings.

He'd purchased extravagantly, investing his earnings from the Grosvenor show in the business.

"This is the shop," he said. "Living quarters are upstairs."

"I expected bicycles, but…" Ponsonby raked a hand through his disheveled red hair. In his overlarge tweed suit, he looked achingly familiar. Kit could anticipate his next words.

"Your drink," he said, delaying the inevitable. When Ponsonby approached and claimed the glass, he clinked it hard with the bottle.

"Cheers."

"Where are the pictures?" Ponsonby glanced at the glass, then at Kit, then again around the room. "Where's your easel?"

"Burned it." Kit swigged from the bottle, the sear of the liquor spreading through his body in tandem with the memory.

"You're not serious."

"Grave as a mustard pot." Kit swigged again. "Art bores me."

"That's a lie." Ponsonby blinked. "Some art bores you. Maybe most art bores you. But you've always been fiendishly impressed with your own. Not that I blame you. If I could paint half so well, I'd be twice as insufferable."

Kit was beginning to regret opening the door. "I'm still insufferable, don't worry."

Ponsonby gulped his whiskey. "What does Coover say about this? And the rest of your Sisterhood? Didn't you all pledge to transform the art world?"

"We did." Kit reached out with the bottle and refilled the glass. "As women artists."

"And you're…You don't…Right." This time the whiskey went down the wrong pipe. Ponsonby coughed until his eyes watered. "I hadn't thought it through. Too heady. Sorry, Griff."

Kit shrugged.

"I wish Lucy had told me you were in St. Ives." Ponsonby fiddled absently with the iron vise at the end of the table. "We talked about my trip, at Burgess's salon, but she didn't let on."

Kit said nothing. Ponsonby assumed Lucy knew where he was living. And shouldn't she? Only miserable gits lied to their best mates. Kit had lied to everyone about his time in the West Country, claiming for himself a merry, Turneresque itinerancy designed to stave off visits.

He cycled to different towns to mail his correspondence and supplied, for a return address, the post office in Camborne, where he paid a clerk to hold letters and parcels.

Lately, they'd been few and far between.

"I understand why." Ponsonby sounded only slightly grudging. "She didn't know I knew. That you go by Griff."

"I don't." Kit rolled his eyes. "No one calls me that but you."

"Hmm." Ponsonby looked pleased.

Kit wondered how he'd react to the truth.

You knew before Lucy.

He'd probably feel more confused than flattered.

"I sent her a telegram." Ponsonby missed Kit's violent start. He was wandering toward the New Rapid.

"You…what?" Kit's heart hammered.

"I sent a telegram to Coover. Turns out I found you without her help. I had to rub it in a bit." Ponsonby ran a finger along the rim of the New Rapid's front wheel. "Shiny." He turned and caught Kit's eye. "Is something wrong?"

Kit tipped the bottle, whiskey rushing down his throat, taking with it the ugly stream of curses.

Thomas Everett Ponsonby, trump and bungler of the first water.

He'd wired Lucy.

"Did I do something wrong?" Ponsonby's face was falling.

Kit had to massage his neck to coax out an approximation of human speech. He wanted to roar. Instead, he croaked, like a rook.

"Not your fault." He set the bottle carefully on the table.

"But what—"

He cut the question off with a wave. "In any event, it's not of any consequence."

Lucy hadn't responded to his letter. So what if she learned his location? His guilt made for a disproportionate reaction. She wasn't going to leave her husband, her children, and storm to Cornwall to dress him down in public for abandoning the Sisterhood, even if he deserved it.

But did he? Had he betrayed her? Or had she betrayed him?

God, it was heady. Too heady for tonight.

"The New Rapid." He joined Ponsonby at the bicycle. "I'm riding it in a joust."

"Joust." Ponsonby regarded him warily, searching for signs of anger. Presumably, he found none. The tension in his shoulders eased. "Joust joust? With lances?"

"Sticks is my guess."

"If they're wicker, you're doomed."

"I'll forfeit at the first sight of wicker." Kit smiled. "How would you like to be my squire?"

"I'd like it almost as much as I'd like dinner." Ponsonby's jollity was entirely restored. "Mrs. Oatridge extended you an invitation." He drew out his watch. "We can't walk, though. It will take far too long. We'll miss the soup."

As Kit fitted Ponsonby for a Rover, he related the story of his accident: beautiful Muriel Pendrake in the enormous boots; her friend, the flippant physician; and Deighton the lunkhead, captain of the undercooked Mutton Wheelers. They were both half-drunk and wheezing with laughter by the time they set off, cycling for town, their lamps lighting the way across the dark fields.

It felt like old times.

Except Kit wasn't thinking about the past, about the Sisters he'd lost. The night air was scented with roses, and herbs, and the faint brine of the sea, teasing his senses, electric with possibility.

He was thinking about that kiss.