Page 70 of A Shore Thing

Air rushed in.

“Ready,” he said.

—

After a scrupulously polite round of introductions, the bugler played a call, and the Mutton Wheelers took a few running steps alongside their bicycles to mount. A moment later, they were tearing down the drive.

“Tallyho!” someone cried. Sir Reggie, by his voice. Muriel’s gaze flew to him but landed instead on Lady Chiswick, who stood on the edge of the drive with a coterie of society matrons. They were staring at her. Their expressions spoke volumes. Or at least quoted selectively from the King James Bible.

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

Face flaming, Muriel kicked up her leg. She straddled her metal broomstick. She was bedraggled from her awful night, which she’d spent mostly in the open air. She was far too tired to care what Lady Chiswick thought of her. Golden-haired Clarinda made one of a bunch of younger women, a little farther down the drive, all of them slim and fairylike in their pastel gowns. She caught Muriel’s eye and sent her a wistful little smile.

Before Muriel could process her surprise and smile back, gravel crunched. Griffith rolled up beside her, already in the saddle. He looked slightly haggard in the morning light, which lent a wolfish edge to his beauty, and caused him to seem like more of a stranger.

She tried to read his expression. Was he angry? Was he ready to resume where they’d left off?

“Here we go,” he murmured. With athletic ease, he went, pedaling past Lady Chiswick, past Clarinda, swooping down toward the bend in the road.

She swallowed, shuffled forward, and came to an abrupt halt, bracing herself as the bicycle tipped. She strained to pull it back to center. Her boot slid on the gravel, and a muscle twinged in her thigh.

Griffith had twisted to see if she followed. He applied the brake, skidding a half circle, and stopped.

She tried to telegraph confidence. She shuffled forward again, but the bicycle tipped, like an overloaded wheelbarrow. A few titters rose, and her panic rose with them.

This was going to end, right here, in front of Griffith and a laughing crowd. She’d let James push the bicycle most of the way from the Towans. She’d needed to walk, to wake up her legs, to ease the stiffness from her back.

Daft. She’d been absolutely daft.

“James,” she hissed. He was somewhere nearby, somewhere in that swirl of chattering, cup-and-saucer-clinking onlookers. Surely he was watching and understood her distress.

An eternity passed, and then she heard his voice, matter-of-fact and commanding.

“Step aside, please. Step aside.”

Finally, more commandingly still: “I’m a doctor!”

The crowd parted, and he emerged and loped to her. “I can’t tell if you’re on a bicycle or in a bear trap. Why aren’t you moving? Why does your face look like that?”

She emitted a bearlike growl of desperation.

“The panniers,” she explained. “Would you take this?” She reached into the left pannier and extracted her microscope. Then, after further consideration, her dissecting case, a wad of coarse toweling, blotting papers, and two pressing boards with leather straps and buckles.

“Golly.” James bobbled her offerings. “At least you left your jars.”

She frowned and began to yank jars from the right pannier, aware that people had begun to gawk. Griffith, she saw, had tilted his head.

“Well,” said James philosophically, “at least they’re half-empty. What’s in this one? Liquid rubber? Forget I asked. Did you bring a change of clothes? Or is it nets and chisels all the way down?”

“I feel fabric,” she confirmed. “But it might be oilcloth.” Damn. The last few hours had been a blur. Questionable decisions had been made.

She balanced the last jar atop the pile in his arms. She felt naked without her collecting supplies—and she’d likely feel more naked come evening, when she had to climb into a musty old bed wrapped in nothing but the oilcloth—but the bicycle was distinctly lighter and better balanced.

She might actually make it out of town on two wheels, and back again.

James cursed and stopped a jar from falling with a steeply angled elbow.

“What would I do without you?” she asked, and he gave her his filthiest smirk.