Page 85 of A Shore Thing

“I dismounted!” she gasped, dragging her leg over the frame. The bicycle was perpendicular to the road. Her vision wobbled, and her neck seemed simultaneously too stiff and too loose.

She heard Griffith cursing as he circled back to her.

“That wasn’t a dismount,” he said. “That was a narrowly averted disaster.”

“I hit a bit more mud than I expected.” After the fact, she was trembling with nerves, gruesome versions of the spill she’d just avoided flashing through her mind. She fetched up a wobbly smile. “Now what? We walk to the Lizard?”

“We’re going to walk to the inn in the nearest village.” Griffith swung off his bicycle and came right up to her. “And leave tomorrow at first light.”

“Won’t it hurt your pride?”

“The hot meal and the dry clothes?”

“The giving up.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t care if Deighton celebrates a premature victory.”

“I care, though.”

“Picture the look on his face tomorrow, when we coast into Falmouth.”

She shook her head. “Given that this is all my fault, I should get—”

“Penny,” he interrupted. “If we’re going to stand here in the rain, I’d rather not argue.”

“That’s a ridiculous statement. Arguing is why we’re standing here in the rain. If we weren’t arguing, we wouldn’t be standing here in the rain.”

“We could do something else.”

“While standing here in the rain?” She scoffed. “And what’s that? Play cat’s cradle with a bootlace? Look for frogs?”

He pushed his bicycle away, took her face in his hands, and kissed her. She tasted rain, cool and clean, and then the heat of his mouth obliterated every other perception. For a heartbeat, she forgot everything. Forgot that they were ankle-deep in mud on a country lane, soaked to the skin. Forgot the bicycle race, and her lecture, Cornwall and New York. There was only this conflagration. Two mouths in the dark. His tongue slid between her lips, and she gasped. She let her bicycle fall as he pulled her against him. His gloved hands stroked the sides of her face, and then he was tipping her head, angling her chin, so he could kiss her ever more deeply. She drew a shuddering breath. Rain kept slipping down between them, rolling over their cheeks, into their mouths. She was going to drown, drown in rain and kisses.

Griffith broke away first, acknowledging the sounds she’d noticed only dimly. The clop of hooves and the creak of a wagon.

“Are ye spirits?” The old man hunched on the seat behind his horse was all but hidden by his greatcoat.

“Wayfarers.” Griffith stepped forward. “Searching for a place to lay our heads. Is there an inn nearby?”

“Iss,” said the man. “I’ll take ye there.”

“Terribly kind,” said Griffith.

“It were never time wasted to do good,” said the old man philosophically, and with just a touch of reluctance. “Get in, then. Weather’s too dirty for a rat. Not that yer rats, nor spirits.”

“No,” affirmed Griffith. “Neither.”

They loaded into the wagon, the bicycles causing their guide no small degree of consternation. Griffith crouched near to him, proselytizing about the wonders of the machine, or so Muriel thought. She couldn’t be sure, pinned as she was near the back of the wagon, half under the bicycles’ dripping rear tires. Eventually, she saw twinkling lights, which, as they drew closer, resolved into the small windows of a squat two-story building that seemed to swim toward them through a sea of total blackness.

The old man climbed down to assist Griffith with the bicycles.

“Do ye stable them?” he asked, sounding honestly confused, and Muriel hurried over to pluck necessary items out of her panniers. While the two men walked the bicycles around the side of the inn to the mews, she sheltered under the eaves, running her tongue absently along the inside of her bottom lip. When Griffith rounded the corner, his gaze arrowed to her mouth. She froze midlick, his knowing expression summoning a fiery blush. Her face was still red as they entered the inn. The old man led the way down a short corridor and into a large room dominated by an inglenook fireplace. A middle-aged woman and two half-grown boys occupied the benches set on opposite sides of the cheerful blaze.

“Mr. Hendy!” The woman rose. “What brings you by on such a night?”

Muriel found his mumblings unintelligible. She lingered just inside the door, eyes wandering to the bottle-crowded bar, where a few patrons had swiveled on their stools to inspect the newcomers. Battered drinking vessels hung from the low beams, and nautical memorabilia filled the niches in the stone walls. The stained shades on the gas wall brackets glowed with a grubby light. She started to shiver, the warmth of the room revealing by contrast the chill in her bones.

“I’m Mrs. Glanvil.” The woman approached Griffith, and included Muriel in her sympathetic smile. “Stranded on the road, were you? Poor ducks. Our Mr. Hendy’s a good soul. He’s taken you to the right place. This is my family’s inn, and the finest in Cornwall. You’ll be wanting dinner, and a bath. My Jenny will see to it. She’ll collect your wet things too, and wash and dry them. Just set the basket outside the door.”