Page 46
“What did you and James talk about?” she asked brightly.
He stared. After a moment, he shrugged.
“How you’ve been shabbily treated by a botanist in New York. It angered me. I find anger inspiring, as a painter.”
“That is what changed your mind about the commission?”
“In part.”
A possibility occurred to her, belatedly, and brought with it a hot rush of embarrassment. Good gracious. James hadn’t been so drunk he’d joked to Griffith about exchanges involving nights in beds?
She winced. “James didn’t propose anything scandalous?”
“No.” Griffith smiled his indecent smile. “What did you have in mind?”
Damn her mind. It was suddenly a jumble of sweat-glazed images, clinging lips and legs, clasped hands, a tangle of mauve sheets, window curtains fluttering.
This was proof positive. Collaboration with Kit Griffith was a terrible idea. Erotic fascination without esteem—it felt lewd, sullying.
Exciting.
“A transaction.” She sounded breathless. “That’s all. You paint. I cycle. Nothing else.”
“What else is there?” he murmured, a new glint in his eyes.
Her heart began to drum. “You start painting tomorrow. You can pick up the specimens at the Towans.”
“You can drop them off at the bicycle shop. It’s in the engine house near Tregerthen Farm. You start cycling tomorrow.”
Fair enough. She gave a curt nod. Then, afraid he was going to shake her hand, she busied herself with packing her basket.
“Extraordinary.”
When she turned her head, she saw that Griffith was lying at the edge of the pool. He twisted to grin up at her, holding her pocket lens up to his eye. His eye seemed to jump out at her, magnified to twice its size. The lens revealed, in minute detail, the curves of his lids, the black fringe of his close-set lashes. A silvery-gray star rayed out from his pupil. The rest of his iris was deepest, darkest blue.
Sensation shivered up her spine.
“Give me that.” She reached for the lens. He handed it over and returned his attention to the pool.
“They look like chrysanthemums,” he said, gleeful.
“The anemones?” She didn’t need to see for herself. She’d already scrutinized the pool, poked the walls and turned over the little rocks. But she found herself stretching out awkwardly beside him. She rested her chin on her hands, her right elbow brushing his left.
“What’s that one?” he asked, ignoring the contact, or perhaps he hadn’t noticed. “A slug? Queer little thing.”
“A sea hare.” She glanced at him, at his perfect profile outlined against the sky.
He cut his eyes toward her. “I don’t know that I’ve looked properly into a rock pool since I was a child. It reminds me of the colorful fripperies in a dress shop. All bright ribbons and beads and flounces.”
“Slug spawn and fish ova and Rhodospermea,” she said dryly. “Very fashionable.”
He laughed, and she felt a delicious thrill.
“What’s that?” he asked, looking down again. He reached out and touched the water’s surface.
She tried to extend the line of his finger, to visualize where he pointed. The shallow pool was not more than two feet in length, studded with barnacles and anemones, sandy bottom a mix of empty shells and tiny locomoting creatures. Snails. Marine spiders. Who knew? The tattered oarweed fronds were stitched with wiggling red annelids.
Was he pointing to a jellyfish? A sponge?
