Page 128 of A Shore Thing

“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.

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.”