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A nearby gull, soaring up on the breeze, shrieked in emphasis, and Muriel gave it a dirty look.

“At this point, I’m most likely to do something impulsive to you.” She twisted to direct her comment down to James. “And you won’t enjoy it.”

“At this point, I’m most likely to operate on myself as well.” James sighed. “After I tumble down this bloody cliff.”

She twisted back around. “We’re almost to the top. I can see a few easels.” She was wearing her collecting outfit, an indecorously short serge dress, the hem hitting well above the ankle, but even so, she had to hike her skirts for this last effort.

“Easels!” James’s shout sounded less breathless than she might have expected. But then, he was a natural athlete, however weakened his state. “You claimed this route was better because we’d have more shade. But in fact, you’re hoping to find your artistic prodigy, your transcendent genius, the indispensable collaborator upon whom your stratagem depends.”

She made a face. James was right. She did harbor the foolish, overeager hope that she’d stumble upon the artist she’d come to St. Ives to commission. There was no need to stumble upon him—or her, as the case might be. Mr. Bamfylde would supply the relevant information when they met for tea on Monday, and she’d act upon it promptly.

But neither was there need for James to mock her with her own tipsy descriptions—he had nefarious taste in sherry—so she ignored him, aided by the convenient excuse of a stitch in her side. Then she was cresting the slope, catching her breath, the green sweeping out in front of her, the grassy patchwork of farmland divided by hedges. A picnicking couple was strolling along the path. The gentleman shot her a startled look that veered swiftly into disapproval.

“How do you do?” She took her hand from her side and waved.

The gentleman thinned his lips and dipped his chin, a minimal motion, due to scantness of enthusiasm, and also, scantness of chin.

“George.” The lady peered around him. “Tell me that shocking-looking woman didn’t just pop up over the side of the cliff.”

“It appears she did.” George spoke out of the side of his mouth, but his voice carried as clearly as the lady’s. “Keep walking, Margaret.”

I don’t bite, offered Muriel, but only in her head, because truly, what was the point? She eyed George’s basket, which contained a sweating bottle and several wrapped parcels, sandwiches or strawberry tarts. Begging a glass of wine for James was out of the question.

The couple walked on. There were three artists in the near vicinity, easels facing the bay. Not one turned his head to glance in Muriel’s direction.

Monday. It wasn’t so long to wait.

Nonetheless, she drifted toward the nearest artist, tall and bearded, kneeling before his easel, head jerking as he shifted focus between the scenery and his canvas.

Even more foolish—this notion that she’d recognize her transcendent genius by the work itself. She’d seen but one example! But as she peeked at the bearded man’s picture, she dismissed him instantly as a possible candidate.

The picture was competent, surely, but bland. It left her entirely unmoved.

Whereas she’d shivered at the sight of the genius’s watercolor, a strange heat building behind her eyes, despite the unprepossessing quality of the encounter. She’d been in Pimlico visiting a colleague, sipping a cup of Miss Bamfylde’s botanically complex but unpalatable tisane, when she’d spied the watercolor hanging crookedly on the soot-streaked plaster wall, surrounded by newspaper clippings.

It was unsigned, small, a study of a columbine, the pink flower nearly translucent, glowing with the light that fed its cells. Somehow the genius had combined unstinting morphological accuracy with the ineffable mystery of being.

As art, as science—she’d never seen its equal.

She’d known instantly that the person who’d painted it was the one, the guarantor of her lecture’s success.

The bearded man coughed—not at her—but she gave a guilty start and retreated.

And that’s when she saw it.

She blinked, momentarily uncertain, wondering if she’d made too little of her own thirst, if mild dehydration could produce such a vision.

But no. She was staring at a columbine. It grew on the other side of the path, close to a low stone wall. Among its green leaflets, a single blossom nodded in the breeze, pale blue petals, deep blue sepals and spurs.

Columbines were plentiful in Cornwall. But they flowered in the spring, never in August.

Her heart flipped in her chest.

Nature was indifferent. Violent thunderstorms had nothing to do with the fury of the gods, just as a flower blooming out of time and place didn’t mean that fate smiled upon her.

But this unseasonable bloom—she felt its import like a bolt from the heavens.

Her lecture would be a triumph.