Page 97 of A Shore Thing

“A symposium was a drinking party.” Griffith’s voice turned dry. “Chaps got soused and said all sorts of things.”

“You’ve read it?” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “But you don’t care for the Greeks?”

“Eros shook my mind,” he murmured, “like a mountain wind falling on oak trees.”

His tone brought gooseflesh to her arms, as though a mountain wind really were blowing over them.

“That’s Plato?” she breathed.

“That’s Sappho, the greatest female poet of antiquity. Her poetry tells us more than Plato’s philosophy about the creative life and the bittersweetness of desire. The Hesperus Ladies Club takes their name from one of her fragments. Sappho called Hesperus of all stars the fairest.”

“The evening star.” Muriel stopped completely, head tipping further back. “I don’t see it. There’s the Plough. There’s the North Star.” She pointed. “That’s your star, I think.”

“The steadfast star?” He sounded amused. “My sweet, I’m far from constant.”

It was a warning, gently put and worth heeding. He wouldn’t be constant with her. But she’d meant something else, something deeper.

“I disagree.” She started them walking forward again. “You’ve been committed to the same three things your entire life.”

“Arrogance. Overconfidence. What was the third?”

“Art, love, and justice,” she said softly. “Those are the three.”

Silence stretched.

“That’s rather grand, isn’t it?” He shook his head, but his voice had a gratified gruffness. “Which star is yours?”

She studied the heavens, all the tiny white fires, impossibly distant.

“I’ve spent a lot of time like this, on ships at night, looking up. You feel doubly small, between the sky and the sea.” For a moment, the turf seemed to rock beneath her, everything solid melting away. She leaned into him, anchoring herself with his warmth and strength. “When you’re weeks on a steamer, there’s nothing familiar but the stars. They make a pattern in the blankness, so you know you’re somewhere instead of nowhere.”

“Yours is the North Star too, then,” he said. “The navigator.”

Her throat swelled. She liked it too much, the idea that they shared a star.

“You did learn celestial navigation?” He nudged her, teasing. “Or did the sailors only teach you dice?”

“Teaching me dice was more lucrative for them.” She giggled as she kicked her skirt, and he used it as an excuse to pull her all the way into an embrace. His fingers traced lightly up her ribs.

“I know what you’re trying to do.” She slapped at his hand. “It won’t work.”

His mouth pressed into her hair, and warm breath seeped to her scalp. She melted against him, and then his lips nuzzled her ear, and she gave a strangled shriek of laughter.

“It did work.” His whisper tickled all the more.

She hadn’t known her earlobes were so vulnerable. She writhed at the delicious torture, until he stopped her laughter with a kiss. He tasted of citrus and sorcery.

This already felt like part of her life. This ticklish, breathless joy. She could surrender to it, here, now. There was no harm in a thrilling summer fling.

So long as she didn’t fall in love.

She wouldn’t. She was resolved.

With a sigh, she wiggled from his arms and resumed the walk, her damp mouth tingling. “We’ll be late.”

“It’s fashionable to be late.” He caught up to her with a long stride. “But we can stargaze another night.”

Another night. Seven remained, on the road. Seven more in St. Ives.