Chapter 6

"I can't believe it." James began chortling before Mr. Bamfylde had closed his front door.

"Shhhhhh." Muriel gave him a surreptitious shove. "He'll think we're laughing at him." Mr. Bamfylde had the kind of fragile self-importance that reacted furiously to slights even when none were intended. Five minutes in his company had made it perfectly clear why his sister, Eva Bamfylde, avoided it.

"I'm laughing at you."

"I know that. But he doesn't. He's a buffoon."

"Shhhh," said James, and chortled louder.

She accelerated away from the cottage, clambering over the stile into a long green field dotted with brown cows.

"I can't believe it," said James, catching up.

"You've already expressed your disbelief."

"It was nothing easy, prying the name from him. My God, he made you work for it! Interrogating you about his sister's activities, like he thinks collecting moss is a form of devil worship."

"I remember. James, this just happened. It's a bit soon to reminisce."

"I'm not reminiscing. I'm relishing. There's a difference. Oh, he's beastly. An obvious skinflint to boot. And he claimed he bought the watercolor at auction as a charity! Hard to credit. Why do you think he gave it to the sister? My guess is she asked for money."

"Why did I take you with me today? That's the question on my mind."

"Moral support." He shook his head, beaming. "I can't believe it. Never have I been so richly repaid for an unpleasant errand involving tea with a tyrannical nitwit."

"Stop. Now."

But he hadn't even gotten started.

"The rake. A genius. Your genius. Kit Griffith—the very artist you sought!"

She didn't respond.

"Can you believe it? Did you suspect? Your eyes were glued to him, but I thought his cheekbones had caught your fancy. Was it his prodigious talent?"

"I am as surprised as you are."

"But are you as delighted as I am?"

"I sincerely doubt it. You're about to turn somersaults."

"I haven't turned a somersault in thirty years. But you know, I'd consider it, if this suit weren't white flannel." James spread his arms. "I could caper instead. What constitutes a caper? I think it's a kind of skipping. Skipping in a circle, perhaps?"

He dropped his arms and bumped her with his shoulder. "Muriel. Are you in shock? It often manifests first as stupor. If I had my sphygmograph, I'd check for hypotension."

Muriel gazed past him, across the fields and rolling hills toward the sea. Perhaps it was a clinical syndrome, this bizarre sensation—a sizzle cased in ice.

Would that make it easier to treat?

James took her wrist.

"Are you counting my pulse?" She jerked her arm away. "I'm not in shock. I suppose I might have guessed he was an artist. It's artists who move to St. Ives. But he didn't seem like an artist."

"Because he wasn't sitting at an easel? What are artists like?"

She thought of the artists she'd known. Chen Wei, who cultivated dwarf trees in his gardens—some bent ingeniously into the shapes of animals—and contributed satirical cartoons to the newspapers. Pamela Richard, the watercolorist with whom she'd traveled along the Min River, never married, and never long in any one part of the world. Nrityalal Dutta, the woodcut printmaker with the press in Calcutta. A handful of botanical illustrators, most of them botanists themselves, their pictures scrupulous, their personal lives, varied. And then there were the plein air painters she'd observed in St. Ives. Some looked like gentlemen, and others looked like bohemians, and two of the women wore tam-o'-shanters.

"Never mind," she muttered. "I have no generalization to offer about artists. He's not what I was expecting, that's all. Don't ask what I expected. I'm not sure."

"Someone less rakish." James started whistling. A cow stood nearby and swung her neck to look at him.

"Hello, darling," he said, then narrowed his eyes at Muriel. "You should offer him a night in your bed in exchange for the paintings."

She tripped and took a short hopping step, her scowl aimed unfairly at the cow. "That's absurd. I will offer him financial compensation for his paintings, as is generally done."

"Then what's the point of his being a rake?"

"There is no point," she muttered. "Not as far as I'm concerned. It's an extraneous fact."

Nonetheless, her heart began to pound. Over the past day and a half, she'd thought of the rake far too often—not the rake. Griffith. It would help if she didn't think of him as a rake at all, and certainly not as a good rake. A fugitive from every stifling convention, luxuriating in voluptuous freedom, daring her to join him with the glint in his eye, with the curl of his lips.

Not her in particular. That much was clear.

"He's had at least three lovers named Muriel already." She spoke with too much heat. "He's always in and out of women's beds. The exchange you propose doesn't even make sense. It's backward. I should offer something for a night with him."

"Blimey." James stopped short and faced her. "You should."

She cleared her throat. "I didn't mean I should should. I was critiquing your logic. I meant a night with me isn't a sufficient incentive for a man like him."

"Muriel." James put his hand on his heart. "We've known each other a very long time. But believe me when I say you're a raving beauty."

She wrinkled her nose. "I might believe you. If you hadn't once said I resemble a trout."

"I never said any such thing." He sounded indignant. "But now that you mention it, you do sometimes give me a troutlike look, a sort of open-mouthed frown. Like right now."

"James."

"Trout are beautiful creatures. Those big, bulging eyes."

"James."

"Oh, hell." He slouched. "In any case, you've a brilliant mind. And a winning personality."

"I can't bear another of your compliments. They're lacerating."

"Perhaps we tease each other too much." He tipped his head and spoke in a sober voice. "I adore everything about you. You are outlandishly lovable."

She met his eyes. They were hazel in the city, but in the countryside, they reverted to emerald green. His gaze felt warm as the summer day.

James loved her. Her mother had loved her. Esmé had taken her for granted. It was thanks to him, though, that she'd escaped her cousin's shop, the dreariness of stocking onions, years spent sweeping the same length of floor. Their marriage had opened so many doors. Enlarged her world by powers of ten.

"I am outlandishly lucky," she said, and she meant it. If she felt at times that something was missing—well, so did everyone.

She started walking again, and James matched her pace. She bumped him with her shoulder.

"We've got each other," she said. "We've no need of rakes."

"Speak for yourself." His flat tone took her aback.

"Oh." She slowed. "Well. Maybe there's a rake for you too." Her cheeks flamed. She'd spoken as though she had a rake. But she'd worry about that slip later.

James was gazing up at the clouds. "It's not quite as easy, is it?"

She bit her lip. Comparisons were so fraught. James was a man, a doctor, the son of a baron. No one ever simply looked at him and doubted his intelligence or closed him out of their conversations, clubs, societies, seminar rooms, or offices. He enjoyed legal rights denied her—the right to vote, for example.

But his love affairs carried specific risks.

"Few worthwhile things come to us easily," she said, and he cut her a sardonic glance. She dropped her eyes, feeling foolish. She didn't like platitudes either. But she'd nothing else to offer if they didn't address the subject directly.

"James," she began. "I can tell something has been troubling you. Is it about—"

"Does it look like rain?" James was gazing at the sky again.

"Um." Muriel cast a critical eye at the puffy white clouds. "Eventually."

"That's what I thought," said James. "Eventually, rain."

She sighed. They walked on, turning down a hedged path, and the strain left James's face as they summited the hill. There was a farmhouse below, and barns, and a well-grazed pasture.

A cheering crowd pressed against the fencing.

And in the pasture…those weren't cows.

Muriel did a double take.

Two men on bicycles were pedaling toward each other at top speed. The spokes of their enormous front wheels glittered in the sun.

James let out a hoot. "A rake, a genius, and a most proper knight!"

He turned to Muriel, grinning, then bounded a few steps down the hill. His gleeful narration carried back to her.

"The combat has begun, and our Griffith rides forth most gallantly. No, he is not faint of heart but spurs faster and faster, and lo! His golden shield doth shine in the sun!"

James stopped and whirled round. "They don't seem to have shields, actually. Hope Deighton didn't sharpen those lances."

And he was off, bounding the rest of the way down the slope.

Muriel hitched up her skirts and followed. There was no overtaking James on this occasion. He disappeared into the throng as she reached level ground.

She'd bet the beaches were empty. Every holidaymaker in St. Ives seemed to have turned up for the joust, as well as several of the artists—at least she assumed the tweedy men in deerstalker hats were artists. As she squeezed between them, she could smell the turpentine.

A roar erupted.

She went up on her tiptoes, peering between shoulders.

Griffith and Deighton were pedaling a collision course. Each leaned low over the handlebars, reducing his opponent's target. Deighton's face was contorted in a snarl. Griffith wore a faint smile.

They whooshed past each other, Griffith swerving at the last minute, Deighton's lance glancing off his shoulder.

"Are those billiard cues?" James materialized at her elbow.

"Every chalk mark is a point," explained an excited, half-grown boy. He was no doubt imagining staging his own joust at the earliest convenience.

A man had climbed the fence. "Go, go, go!" he was yelling, pumping his fist in the air. He called down to a younger man in a matching striped jacket. "Deighton'll chalk him good this time."

Muriel caught a glimpse of his thin face, dominated by a mustache of surpassing lustrousness. A wheel-shaped badge glinted on his lapel.

She asked James, "Is he in Deighton's cycling club?"

"That's Butterfield." He nodded. "We're among Mutton Wheelers."

Muriel noticed two other men in striped jackets, then her eyes strayed back to the pasture. Griffith and Deighton were riding toward each other again.

James touched her elbow. "Shall we move along?"

Before she could answer, a collective gasp rose from the crowd.

"No, no, no!" shouted Butterfield.

She pushed forward and got her foot on the lower slat of the fence, climbing up then leaning out to see between the waving arms.

Griffith and Deighton were moving now in the same direction, Griffith hurtling forward on his bicycle, Deighton propelled backward off his, the tip of Griffith's billiard cue pressed to his throat.

The thud was swallowed by the cheers and the groans.

"Let me through!" That was James, swinging his leg over the fence. "I'm a doctor!"