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The next wave floated her into him, and he caught her around the waist, only for a moment. But as they waded toward the beach, his hand closed around hers, and she didn’t tug free. It all felt suddenly, disturbingly good. The cold swirl of the sparkling waves. His warm, tethering grip. The way her feet kept lifting from the ground.

“I haven’t gone swimming once since we arrived,” she said, and he tutted and shook his head.

“I have to do this, then,” he said. “To appease the holiday gods.” He released her hand and turned, grabbing it again as he dove backward, pulling her with him. She shrieked and swam, or rather half swam, given the awkward drag of her clothes and boots.

When they reached dry sand, dripping and bedraggled, exhilaration turned them toward each other, and Muriel grinned up into his face, before she remembered herself and stepped away, catching her breath, reclaiming her basket, and her hand.

“I’m rather glad that happened,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

She shot him a dirty look. “That makes one of us.”

He smiled, unconvinced.

She wasn’t convinced either. That was the bigger problem.

Sand clung heavily to her boots as she trudged up the beach. He didn’t pursue her, just called out as she neared the first bathing tent.

“Until tomorrow!”

12

Muriel had a good memory and a better sense of direction. As a child, she’d spent her free half days as far from her cousin’s shop as her feet would take her, exploring the forested hills and the heath, storing away the little details of the landscape so she could re-create her path home. Years later, she’d relied on her ability to make mental maps when she’d worked with local nurserymen in the northern provinces of China. Groups fanned out in the mountains, scouring for new cultivars of primulas and peonies, and she’d look up to realize she’d lost track of her companions. On each of those occasions, she’d found her way back to camp—not always quickly. But at least she’d never spent a whole night in a ravine, like Esmé.

The time had come, however, to admit defeat. It was noon, and birds were twittering, and she hadn’t the foggiest notion whether to turn left or turn right. She and James had walked inland, across fields and up this long hill with its tumbled stone walls and old, unkempt orchard, and now the path diverged before them.

“Do you remember what they said?” she asked James, who was sitting on a stump, sipping from a flask.

“They wanted to sell me their goat.” He held out his flask. “Sherry?”

“Not what they said about the goat.” Muriel waved away the flask. “About which way we’re supposed to turn.”

“Sorry,” said James. “I was too taken with the goat.”

Muriel turned to survey the path’s two forks. She had less of an excuse. As soon as the farm girls had heard Griffith’s name, they’d begun to giggle and exchange covert glances, and she’d grown flustered herself, entirely unable to concentrate on the directions to the bicycle shop. Had she turned into such a harridan that she begrudged young maidens a bit of sighing over a handsome swain? Was it censure she felt? No, more likely it was protectiveness, the same as she’d felt toward Clarinda Chiswick. The girls seemed so innocent, and Kit Griffith, anything but.

“This way,” she guessed. She picked up her hamper of dried seaweeds and started down the left fork.

“We were supposed to pass standing stones,” she said with satisfaction, as a cairn came into view on the next hill, although she rather suspected navigating by cairns in Cornwall was like navigating by beech trees in Hampshire.

“And a stream,” she said sometime later, and skipped across the little rill of water on flat stones, as James swung his arms wildly and teetered, having made a less felicitous choice: a slick and spongy log that crumbled underfoot.

It wasn’t long after that they passed a farmhouse. The little boy chasing chickens in the yard brought them around the barn and pointed out the footpath.

Another quarter mile and Muriel saw the odd gray tower in the distance. She quickened her pace.

“I am quite sure I can ride a bicycle.” She said it aloud, more to herself than to James. “This tour isn’t a disaster in the making. I’ve gone on much longer excursions with men I barely know, by boat and by donkey and cart, and on foot, and it always turned out well enough.”

She smoothed her hand over her skirt, one of her shortened, serge seaweed-hunting skirts, surely as practical for cycling.

“I dislike Griffith just the right amount,” she continued. “He’s not so odious in the moment that I recoil from the close association our bargain requires. And yet I remain conscious of his crimes and hypocrisies, and, therefore, on guard against his superficial charms. I have high expectations for his art, and low expectations for his behavior.”

“Ah,” said James.

A woodpecker began tapping, its steady tattoo ticking off the moments.

“That’s all you have to say?” asked Muriel.

He gave her a placating smile. “Your speech seems very well calibrated.”