Page 92 of A Shore Thing

“I don’t know. I haven’t had a letter since it happened.” She stopped walking and slipped her arm from his. “They’re members of his botanical society—the Heywood Botanical Society. It’s the most important botanical society in the whole United States. They depend on his connections for their fundraising. They’ve been equipping a lab, modeled on the Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women at Cambridge. It’s an expensive project. Whatever they think, they’re probably best advised to keep it to themselves.”

Griffith’s forehead creased as though he meant to object.

She turned to the bay. “They look like chicken coops.”

He turned as well and tracked her gaze. “Bathing machines?”

A lone bathing machine stood a few yards away, a wooden hut on wheels, the waves washing nearly as high as the hubs.

He shook his head, a smile flitting across his lips.

“What?” She crossed her arms. “I know that look.” Her cheeks scalded. “Good Lord. In a bathing machine? Really?”

“Penny.” He widened his eyes. “Your mind goes to such places.”

“I’m wrong?”

He sighed.

“What was her name?”

He turned his gaze up to the clouds. “Becky.”

She snorted, and he dropped his gaze to her face, amused.

“I was thirteen,” he said. “My family was on holiday in Ramsgate. She and I went into the bathing machine together.”

Muriel’s eyes wandered back to the bathing machine in front of them. Anything could go on inside those dark, hot little changing rooms, even in the middle of a crowded beach, with no one the wiser.

She gripped her elbows. “Pray continue.”

“We’d only met the day before, but we were already in love. Well, puppy love.” He laughed. “We changed into our bathing costumes in a white heat, to make the most of the time, the three jostling minutes it took for the horse to tow us past the breakers. No opportunity had ever been so perfect. Maybe it was too perfect. For some reason, I couldn’t kiss her. I froze completely. She waited for as long as possible. Our driver began to shout, so she opened the door and jumped into the sea, without a backward glance. That was it. From then on, she avoided me like the plague.”

She looked at him, trying to gauge his seriousness. “Did you mind dreadfully?”

“My suffering lasted about as long as our love. It was a bad day and a half.” He shrugged. “I was a bit callow back then. Anyway, we weren’t meant to be.”

“Too perfect,” she mused, eyes back on the bathing machine. Her heart began to race. “What would you say to another chance at perfection?”

—

Kit didn’t take her meaning. It wasn’t until she marched into the surf, casting a teasing glance over her shoulder, that the penny dropped.

He pursued her, then, with all deliberate speed, waves pushing against his shins.

Inside the bathing machine, he turned to pull the shore-facing door closed, and to pull off his leather gloves, which he rolled tightly together, one inside the other, and tucked beneath the waistband of his knickerbockers, into the pocket sewn into the front of his drawers.

When he turned to Muriel, he could hear his blood rushing through his veins. The space was small, and hot, and dim, and smelled of old sun-warmed wood. She was standing with her back to the other door, her hat in her hands, stray wisps of hair framing her face. She looked equal parts eager and nervous. The hat went around and around, the brim rotating through her fingers. The tip of her tongue swept the inner rim of her lower lip, leaving it damp.

“Becky could have kissed you,” she said, voice sounding oddly hushed in the little room.

He stretched up his arms and put his palms on the rough wood boards of the ceiling. “Neither of us thought of that.”

“Why not?”

He dropped his arms. “We were thirteen.”

She nodded as her dark gaze assessed him.