Page 55 of A Shore Thing

“You goaded him, really.” As soon as she said it, the truth of it struck her. Griffith’s wits were keen. Deighton couldn’t outmaneuver him so easily. “You knew how he felt about women cycling. And how he thirsted for another contest. The challenge was as good as issued as soon as you said a woman could ride that distance. But you said it without anyone in mind.” She shook her head slowly. “It seems an oddly big risk to take.”

“Perhaps I thrive on risk.”

“Perhaps you had an ulterior motive.” She remembered his claim and repeated it archly. “Ulterior motives are the most interesting.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. His gaze bored into hers, and the gray of his eyes seemed to leach away the sunlight.

“I—” She shook her head, disconcerted. But the strangeness of the moment dissipated. A second passed, and he was smiling with characteristic irony.

“I had an ulterior motive,” he said. “I just didn’t know it at the time.” He leaned toward her. “This victory will also be a victory for cats.”

She laughed. Her laughter felt restrained. New questions queued on her tongue. But she’d pushed him enough already, in error. She wouldn’t pursue an inkling, not now.

She had a bicycle to ride.

She surged to her feet, righted the fallen Rover with an upsy-daisy, and aimed it at the engine house. James wasn’t reading any longer, and he wasn’t alone. Redheaded Mr. Ponsonby occupied the other chair. Their conversation looked supremely spirited.

She climbed back into the saddle and flung forward before Griffith could reach her to steady the frame.

“I’m going!” she cried in excited disbelief. “I’m going!”

And she was. She was going, going at last, bowling along, the wind in her hair.

She heard Ponsonby’s baritone. “Can she brake?”

“Not sure,” said James.

Before the crash—the last of the day—she had time to experience the foretaste of victory, and to wonder how many ways she might win and lose in the weeks to come.

13

On Monday morning, Kit rolled up a coat, a pair of trousers, two shirts and undershirts, four handkerchiefs, as many stockings, a cravat, and a nightshirt, and packed them into his knapsack, along with leather shoes and spats, a needle and thread, a jar of salve, a bottle of alcohol and tannins, toilet items, and assorted tools and parts.

He took the straps in one hand and curled his arm.

Twelve pounds, give or take.

His eyes strayed to the table, where he’d stacked Friday’s purchases, art supplies from Lanham’s on the High Street. He packed the sketch pad and pencils. The sketch pad was missing a few pages, all crumpled in the fireplace. Each page represented a failed attempt to capture the form of the seaweeds he’d floated in the wash basin. Those seaweeds were drying now, on a rack he’d assembled from a handful of loose spokes.

He didn’t spare them a look. He left the knapsack on his workbench and rode to town, down Talland Road to Titcombe Hall, an imposing, many-gabled house, ivy-covered, with large bay windows.

He’d planned to talk with Deighton, to hold a parley of sorts, and discuss the route, but after a ten-minute wait in a dark, fussy drawing room stuffed with tapestry chairs and pompadour china, the door burst open, and an older man thundered toward him.

“You’re Kit Griffith.” It was an accusation. The man slammed a paper down on the table, the St. Ives Weekly Summary and Visitors List.

Kit knew perfectly well what it contained. Hawkings had stretched last Monday’s events across two articles. One, a jaunty account of the joust. The other, a waggish announcement of the Mutton Wheelers’ ten-day club run, including destinations, distances, and affiliated inns, and the terms of the wager.

“I’ve a mind to eject you from that chair.” The man rounded the table, head lowered, a charging bull in Harris Tweed.

Even if they’d met on the street, Kit would recognize him as Deighton’s father. He had the same wide neck and square jaw, and his deep voice boomed from his chest with the same aggressive volume, absorbed somewhat by the room’s preponderance of draperies.

“Let me save you the trouble.” Kit unfolded himself as Deighton Senior approached, which brought their faces into such close proximity that he felt a gust of hot breath.

“It was bad enough—my only son flitting about in knickers. Now he’s a laughingstock, lampooned in a bloody gossip rag. Do you know what I was doing when I was his age?”

Kit closed his lips in a smile so he didn’t voice his first thought.

Picking your teeth with human femurs.