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The village of Zennor was a stark smattering of low, gray cottages and a tumbledown church set under gorsy hills, the ground falling away in boulders on one side, to the sea. Even after she dismounted her bicycle, Muriel’s arms vibrated from the ride over the bumpy, hard-packed road. The pewlike chairs in the pub added unnecessary punishment to her aching backside. But the pint and the pasties revived her spirits, and Griffith seemed to slip under her skin with every sidelong look, his attention caressing her very bones.

He chatted easily with the ancient publican behind the counter, and the pretty girls in mobcaps, his granddaughters. He drank two pints to her one, recounting the local legends, mostly involving bloodthirsty giants, whose comeuppances were meted out by smaller, wittier, more courageous opponents.

“So, you see,” he said, grinning, “the folklore is on our side.”

“Folklore will prevent Deighton from breaking you in half?” She sipped her beer in delicate disbelief.

“Among other things.” He responded airily, then called for more pasties.

It didn’t irk her, his inconsequential prattle. It was colorful and amusing, and it made her feel colorful and amusing, and pleasurably conscious of her body, despite the myriad discomforts produced by four days of cycling lessons. The more they ate and drank and prattled, the more she felt herself melting into her unforgiving seat.

How unexpected this all was. The sensations that engulfed her when he was near. The urges that disordered rational thought. At seventeen, she’d tingled under Esmé’s regard, flattered and overwhelmed by his proposal, by all he offered. It was only later that she’d understood what he didn’t offer. She’d come to recognize the contours of an inaccessible intimacy from the outside, via uncountable little snubs.

Over the years, she’d sorted out her confused emotions, and she’d locked some of them away—the ones that had no place in her marriage.

No longing, no lack. A simple formula.

Kit Griffith’s least glance deranged her tidy equations. He seemed to see the tiny key hidden inside her. What if they turned it, together? Released some mad, molten force?

It would shake her to the core. But she’d lock herself tight again. She’d carry on, the same happy fortress as before. She’d forget—as she most often did—that her deepest being swirled with a wild, unmet demand.

But if Griffith met it? Met her, with equal force?

When their dalliance ended, she might yearn more than ever. She might have to live with the kind of loneliness from which she’d taken such pains to shield herself.

At that moment, Griffith said something utterly inane, and she laughed, laughed the ugly, booming laugh she usually tried to temper, and he leaned forward, elbows on the table, as though it were music, and he didn’t want to miss a single note.

Loneliness became a distant abstraction.

She chased her laughter with a healthy gulp of beer.

—

Disaster didn’t strike until after they’d left the Tinners Arms and started spinning through the moorlands.

It took familiar form. Muriel saw the motion from the corner of her eye, a blur coalescing into shining wet teeth and a lolling tongue, a long body spiked with fur like a wire-bristle broom. Her blood ran cold. She flinched from the sound, but the low-pitched growl lodged in her ears. The world winked out. Or no, she’d hidden her face with her hands. She could still see the beast in the blackness, stretching as it lunged.

A bruising impact slammed away her breath.

Her ragged inhale had the pitch of a scream. She fought. She fought as hard, and as uselessly, as she’d fought that long-ago summer day, striking with her fists. But her blows didn’t land on jumping muscle and knobby bone, and the smell in her nose wasn’t excrement and blood, but heather and earth. She was thrashing the ground, face soaked with sweat, or tears, or both, and the growls had faded to nothing. With a gasp, she sat up, winching her eyes open. The light felt jagged. Shining teeth. She curled into herself, shoulders braced, gaze darting frantically.

She fixed on Griffith. He’d dropped his bicycle and turned back down the path, approaching at a run.

“Are you all right?” He fell to his knees at her side. “Did that dog cut in front of you?”

“It must have.” She steadied her breathing. Just an ordinary dog. Friendly. A big, shaggy herding breed, with a place by the fire in a nearby farmhouse.

“You were writhing. You received some blow. To your head?”

“No.” In truth, she’d no idea. She couldn’t tell which part of her had hit the ground first. She was still numb.

“It happens.” He sounded gruff. “Dogs make sudden movements, or horses, on the road. It’s easy to lose control. Your hat.” He leaned forward, face passing near hers, and tugged her hat from a heather plant. She took it from him, too clumsily. Her fingers pressed his, and the shock of that contact restored warmth to her veins. He moved his hand, dropping the brim of the hat, twining their fingers together. With his other thumb, he skimmed her damp cheek.

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

She felt her throat move convulsively. He meant had she injured herself. He didn’t inquire after her oldest, most shattering hurt.

“Quite sure.”