Page 4 of A Shore Thing

She’d make a home in Manhattan, a real home, at last.

And live happily ever after.

Laughable, and yet she stepped toward the columbine, stepped into the path, and a bell began to ring.

For an instant, the chimes confused her, merging with the giddy music singing in her blood. By the time she realized a bicycle was bearing down upon her, it was too late. She stood rooted to the spot. Luckily, the rider’s reflexes were quicker. He turned his handlebars sharply, and crashed, not into her, but into the wall. The bicycle stopped, but he continued on, his body an arc against the sky, before he dropped out of view.

2

Muriel clambered over the wall and crouched beside the crumpled rider. He lay hatless, face down in the grass, and she put a tentative hand to his shoulder.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “My friend is a doctor. Lie still, and I’ll fetch him. It will only be a moment.”

The man rolled over, his palm and fingers pressed to his eyes.

“Lucy?” he groaned.

“No.” Muriel sat back on her heels. “Is that your wife? I’ll fetch her if you like.”

The man made a low, negatory sound of distress. After a decade of travels through harsh and varied terrains, Muriel had learned the rudiments of first aid. If necessary, she could clean and dress a wound, no matter how gruesome, trusting that her nerve wouldn’t fail. In this instance, there was nothing gruesome to confront. The man’s skull was intact. He’d given it a good knock, though—how good a knock she couldn’t say.

James could say. But where was he?

She looked behind her. Stone wall. Blue sky. Two white gulls hanging in the air. James wasn’t vaulting toward them, and those three artists weren’t either. Were they so absorbed in their painting they’d missed the bells, the crash?

“Sophia,” murmured the man.

“Erm.” She looked back at him. “No.”

“Clara?”

“No.”

“Margaret?”

She narrowed her eyes and swept him with a glance. He wasn’t particularly large, but he was well-muscled, his body encased in gray trousers, white waistcoat, gray jacket, and mauve cravat. It was emphatically fashionable attire, better suited to promenading in Hyde Park than cycling through Cornwall. It suited him very well. His hand covered the middle of his face, but the angles of his jaw and the full lines of his mouth made it easy to anticipate the rest.

He was attractive as sin.

“Phoebe,” he sighed.

“You’re delirious,” she told him, and paused. Delirious, and in his delirium calling out for…

Well, Lucy wasn’t his wife, and she doubted Phoebe was his mother.

She was flushing slightly as she continued. “I am Muriel Pendrake.”

“Muriel.” He rolled his head from side to side, demonstrating an encouraging lack of neck fracture. “Muriel. With the little garret in Chelsea? You can see the river from the bed, through the French lace curtains…”

He had a husky voice and it trailed off as his lips tipped up in a faint smile.

She frowned. “Not that Muriel. You’ve never been in my bedchamber, I guarantee it. And not least because I don’t have a residence in London.”

She tried to speak briskly and without judgment. The man was quite possibly concussed. And if he’d been in the bedchamber of every woman who did have a residence in London, as seemed increasingly likely, it wasn’t her concern.

“Can you move your arms and legs?” she asked. “Is anything broken? Wiggle your toes.”

“Muriel.” He didn’t move, his stillness more pronounced and thoughtful. “Muriel. I paid the ransom for your pug. Princess. That was her name.”