Muriel fell asleep on the train to Falmouth, her head on his shoulder. Neal rested his cheek on her hair, enjoying the feel of it against his skin. He was drowsy too, and the light streaming through the windows heated the compartment, pressed down his eyelids.
They’d all gone late to their beds.
She stirred against him, and he sat up, gazing out at the countryside. Green fields dotted with cows. Some sheep. Come midsummer the green would deepen leaf by leaf.
Come midsummer.
He drifted. Drifted to Golowan, Muriel’s first. The long day giving over to night, the paths dark, glowworms in the hedges. He was walking with Muriel, her hand in his, walking up to the bonfires on the hills, and then to the orchard, where the air was tart with swelling fruit. He lifted Muriel up onto a barrel, slid his hands up her legs, rolled down her stockings, and she bunched her skirt in her fists, held it higher and higher, exposing her bare calves, her sweet kneecaps, the tops of her thighs, which he kissed, so she gasped, jumping at his touch. He reached to steady her, one arm deep inside her skirts, palming the fullness of her backside. She lifted her skirt higher, and he licked to the apex of her thighs, to the split in the linen, the dark damp gold of her peeking out, and Christ, how he wanted to taste, to lower her over his mouth, and . . .
Ahem.
The discomfort of flesh bunched inside trousers grown suddenly tight alerted him to his . . . state.
Think of Blumenbachia chuquitensis.
He made a furtive adjustment. Like he was a bloody schoolboy. Except as a schoolboy he’d never slipped into daydreams about a woman on a barrel. It had taken Muriel to unlock the erotic potential of your basic English cask.
They’d barely gotten to explore the possibilities.
Last night, he’d have liked to hop off his own barrel and show her more exciting ways of positioning herself. A knee hooked over his shoulder, perhaps, or—once he removed the satin slipper she’d shredded on the nail heads in the floor—her instep flexing in his hand as he nestled between her legs, his tongue working a slow rhythm. Jigging could involve any part of the body, provided the practitioner had the agility and the endurance.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the time or the place for such an intimate performance.
She’d rehearsed the steps he taught her as she stared at his feet, the pink tip of her tongue at the corner of her mouth. Utterly, adorably concentrated. She’d proved a quick study.
Tomas’s eyes had started when he’d charged back into the room and glimpsed the two of them atop the barrels, tapping out one of their childhood routines. Neal hadn’t been able to let the opportunity pass.
“You’ve been edged out,” he’d called. “You’re no longer the second-best barrel-top dancer in Kyncastle. She is.”
“Second-best?” Tomas and Muriel had sputtered their indignation in unison.
Muriel fit right in with the Traymaynes, in terms of competitive spirit.
“You haven’t seen Emmeline?” Tomas had peered into the dim corners of the room. “She and Druce seem to have vanished. I’d hoped to find them here, eating ginger biscuits.” He’d stared moodily at the crumbs on the plate.
“It’s a nice night.” Neal had bit back a smile. “Perhaps they went to look at the stars.”
“My worry exactly.” Tomas’s frown had deepened. What a bear he was with Emmeline. Neal’s protectiveness as a younger brother had always taken on a more doglike quality. He was at the ready to attack should his sisters bid him, but he didn’t lumber about, nosing for trouble.
“Let’s ourselves go look at the stars,” Muriel had suggested, and he’d returned to earth, swinging her down from her barrel. Arm in arm, they’d breezed past Tomas and through the crowded assembly room, out into the clear, cool evening air.
They’d walked along the harbor, pressed close, the moonlight silvering the ripples on the bay. Luckily, neither of them cared overmuch for stars. When they stopped walking, they found their attention equally fixed on the closest—rather than the farthest—points of interest.
Eyes. Lips.
He glanced down at her, the dark gold lashes against her smooth cheek, mouth slightly open.
Should he propose in Great Peth? Or wait until they reached the Lizard? Yes, wait until the Lizard, when they’d walked over heath and down cliff paths fringed by honeysuckle to a quiet, sandy cove, picnic basket in hand, in fulfillment of his first promise.
Suddenly, Muriel bolted upright, the crown of her head knocking his cheekbone, elbow driving into his side. Her eyes were wide open, unseeing and terrified.
“A dream,” he murmured, a strange bubble forming in his chest.
When she had bad dreams, he would be the one to soothe her. He would come to know her moods, waking and sleeping, to know what visions played out behind her eyelids, her most secret fears—and desires.
Slowly, she relaxed her posture, muscles loosening, as her gaze focused.
“What was it?” he asked.
“One of those dreams where you’re being chased,” she said simply, and with her smile seemed to dispel the last shadow of it.
He bent to retrieve her notebook, which had slid off her lap onto the floor. She wrote in it diligently, what he wasn’t quite sure. Maybe she described the Cornish landscape, or recorded her thoughts for a future volume of her “Recollections.” He resisted the urge to open it, passed it to her. A card slipped from beneath the cover, fell into the narrow space between their bodies. He fished it out.
“Useless,” she sighed, taking it from him. “I wrote out a dozen of them before I realized we wouldn’t have little pencils for the ladies to fill in the names of their partners.” She turned the card over. Instead of numbers and blank lines, this side listed dances. “It’s just as well. The musicians didn’t follow the order anyway. And it was a marvelous ball regardless.” Her voice purred, and she leaned back against the seat, head tipped up, eyes closing again, that full, rosy, tempting mouth slightly curved with satisfaction.
He looked at her.
She was beautiful.
No, she was achingly beautiful.
She was not Muriel Pendrake.
He worked the square of thick white paper out from between the thumb and forefinger of the woman who sat beside him, studied the black script. Muriel Pendrake wrote on the whole a clearer hand, less ornamented, the letters upright and narrow. Even allowing for the more decorative style of calligraphy a woman might adopt for a dance card rather than correspondence, he could not reconcile the Ws, nor, most saliently, the Ps.
The P of that Polka was never the P of Pendrake.
He drew in his breath as the woman listed toward him, her weight settling again on his arm, his shoulder.
She was not Muriel Pendrake.
But perhaps he made too much of the inconsistency. An errant P wasn’t enough to prove a person was someone else entirely.
And yet, the certainty lay against his mind like a knife blade. As soon as his thoughts began to take shape, the certainty cut.
Thinking hurt.
The past days scrolled through his head, rife with vague suspicions he’d been quick to dismiss, so powerful was his ruling misconception. Now, in light of his discovery, the sum of inconsistencies indicted him as a fool. The little blank looks that punctuated her claims to some knowledge she never demonstrated . . . her aversion to dirt, to sun . . . her unwillingness to discuss any of the topics they’d introduced in their letters . . .
His throat felt dry, his eyes hot.
She’d asked immediately for “Recollections of a Plant Huntress.” A manuscript densely informative as to the topography of little-visited Chinese provinces. Christ. Was she a spy? A beautiful player of the Great Game, posing as Muriel Pendrake so she could get her hands on that manuscript, send it to Russia?
Nonsense. If she were a spy, she’d have done a better job at the impersonation, packed her trunk with specimen boxes instead of silk dresses.
Unless . . . ah, another twist of the knife. Unless she packed the silk dresses not to convince, but to distract, to overwhelm his judgment and appeal to his idiot vanity, his proven lust for pretty blond women, knowing he’d make allowances because he’d wish to believe his attraction was mature, intellectual, destined to deepen and endure.
But then . . . it seemed unlikely that Russian intelligence had made a study of his foibles.
You’re not so special that they would have needed to make a study. An unflattering voice in his head pointed out the embarrassing truth. Your self-delusions and attractions are the common sort.
Even so. There had to be another explanation. He couldn’t quite believe that this deception—however disquieting—rose to the level of international intrigue.
Perhaps she was a tart hired by a rival firm.
His brain worked better when he was moving. Walking, riding, swimming. If he had to sit still, he tended to jiggle his foot, tap his fingers. He needed a physical counterpoint for his mental activity. The wonderful thing about choosing a life as a plant hunter, and then finding himself the proprietor of the most successful plant nursery in England, was that, by and large, he avoided sitting still altogether.
That had been his goal when he went down from Oxford. An existence in which chairs played only a supporting role. A bad pun, but a sound principle. These days, he could dictate his business correspondence, delegate sedentary tasks, sit when and for how long he chose.
At the moment, fool that he was, he sat trapped, motionless, supporting the weight of this slumbering woman. Her soft, even breathing taunted him. His muscles were tense, but he didn’t twitch. His own breathing made no sound.
Despite everything, he couldn’t allow himself sudden movement. Something kept him frozen. He didn’t want to disturb her.
A tart. He tested the idea. A tart sent to glean information. Every year, the Varnham Plant Catalogue came out advertising new cultivars, and orders poured in. Certificates and medals from the Royal Horticultural Society and the Royal Botanic Society followed. This spring, his best gardeners had been breeding a hardy winter-flowering begonia.
If Edevane & Fernsby discovered which dwarf Andean species Varnham’s gardeners had crossed before the information was made public, they could experiment with their own winter-flowering begonia, try to get it to market first, claiming the credit and capturing the sales.
Muriel Pendrake—the real Muriel Pendrake—might have told old Edevane that Neal had tried to poach her for Varnham. That might have raised his ire, allowed him to justify to himself an unscrupulous plan.
Good God, maybe the real Muriel was in on it. That would explain her failure to appear at Bodmin Station. She’d given her blessing to the whole operation. Let a girl willing to exploit her charms—adept at bartering her kisses—act in her stead. The real Muriel never had any intention of coming to meet him. Or if she had, she’d let someone dissuade her. She’d listened to tales, perhaps, of his broken engagement. Of the widows he’d dallied with in the past. Decided he was a bad prospect as a friend, lover, or husband. She might have listened to darker tales—old Edevane would know them all—of James Varnham’s death in the Argentine. Certain versions of that tale painted Neal in a very bad light indeed. If she believed the rankest speculations, she’d have no reason to feel protective of his business interests.
He wouldn’t vibrate his legs, so instead his organs shook. He’d be sick if he didn’t still this ripple, which he felt in his liver, his kidneys.
It didn’t square with the facts as he understood them, this new hypothesis. Muriel—the false Muriel, the achingly beautiful untrustworthy woman sleeping trustingly on his shoulder—had hardly tried to pry from him the secrets of his hybridists. She’d seemed from the beginning—he could see it in retrospect—more preoccupied with guarding secrets of her own.
That flash of fear when she’d asked if they were heading toward Fowey.
The way she’d blazed at the prospect of sailing for France.
The sinews in his neck were so tight a headache had formed, low at the back of his skull. He couldn’t work it out. She’d been calculating, certainly. But was it all calculation?
When she’d waded out into the frigid bay to point the boats in his direction. When she’d organized a dance to please his dear young Druce-besotted cousin.
Every time she’d kissed him.
All part of her plan. Furthering her purpose. False.
His future wife.
His instincts hadn’t gotten better. They’d gotten worse. He’d decided he was ready to marry for the right reasons. Picked out the woman who looked perfect on paper, the kind of woman he wanted to want. Then he’d let himself fall swiftly under the spell of a lovely fraud who’d barely bothered to fake an interest in botany, so confident was she in the recommendations of her other assets.
She saw him much more clearly than he could see himself.
He burned with the humiliation of it.
He couldn’t sit still another moment. As if sensing his intention, the woman turned in her sleep, snuggling into him, so that he felt the curve of her breast against his arm, the warmth of her thigh. Her head grew heavier on his shoulder.
He should fling her off.
An impostor. A false Muriel.
He should shake her awake.
Whatever you’re after, he’d say, you won’t get it from me.
He’d woken this morning to the sound of roosters, the smell of bacon frying, hoping they were after the same thing. Love, family. He’d lain for a moment in the bed, wishing she were there beside him, feeling relieved—grateful—that desire had a place after all in the well-reasoned partnership he’d plotted at a distance. Desire wasn’t the whole of the bond between them, but it was its boon. Not a jeopardy, a joy. He could admit that he wanted her.
He’d believed, this morning, that he would have her, all of her. He’d slept little but had sprung down the stairs, gone out in the pale morning light and collected the eggs, as he’d done with Tomas as a boy.
He’d have to say goodbye to that particular delusion. What he wanted so badly had never existed.
The false Muriel would not be joining him in Penzance at midsummer.
He would take her past Great Peth, straight to tiny, remote, inconvenient Mawbyn, and there he would leave her. Out in a field if he had his druthers.
For now, though, he kept his body immobile, and Muriel—the false Muriel—rocked with him gently as the train picked up speed, wrapping her arms around his biceps and hugging it, smiling as she dreamed sweeter dreams.
This inn was more promising than the last. For one, it wasn’t situated on the edge of a bleak, howling moor. The hansom had rolled along through wooded green hills and stopped in a picturesque village square lined prettily with cottages climbed over with roses. The frontage of the inn was likewise bright with roses, and the man who greeted the cab, old and half-deaf, with a shock of white hair standing straight up from his head, had a twinkling eye and wore a spotless white flannel suit. He looked like a benevolent grandfather presiding over an afternoon lawn party with a full tea and the promise of a cricket match.
“Come along of me,” he said to Neal with charming simplicity. “I’ll send the boy to fetch the trunk for the missus.”
He thought Neal was her husband. So had the passengers on the train, all smiling their approval. They did look well together. And throughout the many legs of the journey, she’d clung to Neal like a newlywed. She’d needed his strength.
What if her flight from Cranbrook had been reported in the papers? If they pulled into a crowded station and she saw a reproduction of her own face staring back at her from beneath a lurid headline?
Her fears had proven baseless. The Cornishman listed rooms to be let, situations wanted, the produce and value of copper ores sold last Thursday at Truro. She’d scanned the dense type every time someone in her vicinity turned a page.
Advertisements for sulfur hair restorers. Wine of phosphates. Wholesale coals and potatoes. “The Tale of the Cat-Hammed Cow,” a humorous skit for sale at the undermentioned booksellers for sixpence.
Nothing about a missing duchess.
Cranbrook had kept things quiet. She didn’t have to worry that every farmer in the West Country had been mobilized to flush her from the hedges.
A wan sorrow mixed with her relief. Her mother had been expecting her to write from Fowey. Cranbrook would have to have told her. Shouldn’t her mother have forced Cranbrook’s hand, gone to the police herself, scandal be damned? For all she knew, her only daughter was dead in a ditch.
It helped Lavinia, of course, the lack of public outcry. She didn’t want to be found.
But it also hurt.
By the time she and Neal had boarded the second train, she’d managed to let go of her sorrow and her fear. In part, because she hadn’t let go of Neal. Touch bolstered her. She began to feel a bit giddy with him at her side. His presence comforted and excited her at once.
He wasn’t hers. He couldn’t be. She’d have to let go eventually.
Unless.
She watched as he followed the grandfatherly ostler into the inn. He hadn’t kissed her in the cab, as she’d imagined he might. He’d seemed preoccupied, distant. Something weighed on his mind.
His mother’s illness, perhaps. He would move heaven and earth for his mother, it was obvious. And if he had gone missing at Bodmin Station, that mother would doubtless be out scouring the hills herself, no matter how sick she was.
Lavinia stood in the sun, not caring that it warmed her cheeks. Birds were twittering. Her sorrow returned, stole up on her. She missed her old life in London, before everything fell apart. But no, it wasn’t so simple. The seeds of destruction had been sown long before they bore fruit, long before George’s death and her papa’s imprisonment. What she missed was a fiction, the belief that hers was, would always be, a charmed existence.
Two small boys went pelting past. An even smaller girl ran after them, but she tripped and went sprawling, the half-eaten bun in her hand rolling across the cobbles. The cab horse stretched its neck, plucked at the bun delicately with its lips, and devoured it in two bites. The little girl sat up, eyes filled with angry tears.
“Mean old horse,” she said. Lavinia walked the few steps to the girl and crouched down beside her. Princess gowns didn’t permit such indelicate postures. But Lavinia wore a blue cotton dress, with forgiving pleats, one of Emmeline’s, which she’d traded for her lilac silk with the Swiss waist. Not in the least fashionable, but tremendously comfortable, lightweight, permitting ease of movement. With her hair in a simple twist, she blended.
“That looked like a very good bun,” she said. “Was it cinnamon?”
The girl’s sticky mouth showed definite signs that it was cinnamon. Her brow furrowed.
“It’s all gone,” she said accusingly, still glaring at the horse.
“Well then, let’s get another,” said Lavinia, and put out her hand. “We can share it. Would you like that?”
The little girl’s hot fingers closed around Lavinia’s thumb.
The bakery door tinkled as they pushed it open, and the woman behind the counter looked up from the tray of buns she was sliding into place. She had the same wide-set hazel eyes as the girl, the same heart-shaped face.
“I told you not to go running off after your brothers.” She sighed. “Look at your poor elbows.” She sounded more amused than angry. The little girl went up on her tiptoes and flung an arm onto the counter, feeling for a bun.
“You’ll burn yourself on the tray,” said the woman, slapping the little girl’s hand lightly with a floury rag. “Leave over, now. You already had your sugar bun.”
“Horse ate it,” said the little girl, looking to Lavinia for confirmation.
“It’s true,” said Lavinia, stepping forward. “A mean old horse. I told her I’d buy her another.”
“If there’s one thing this child doesn’t want for, it’s sugar buns. Thank you all the same.” The woman smiled a broad, gap-toothed smile. She was pretty, and young, and female, but she wasn’t looking at Lavinia with antipathy. In fact, she wore a decidedly friendly expression.
“I saw you and your husband drive past,” she said, and Lavinia tried to ignore the flutter in her stomach. Neal. Her husband. What if that were the truth of it?
Mrs. Traymayne. Happily married. Easily befriended by wayward children and women who worked in bakeries.
Mrs. Traymayne would never feel this odd loneliness, this sense that she belonged nowhere.
“You’ve just arrived, and already you’re scraping my Annie off the ground.” The woman shook her head. “Usually a newcomer can expect an hour of peace before she steps on one of my children.” She sighed. “Welcome to Mawbyn.”
Lavinia left the bakery with a package of two sugar buns, Annie gripping her thumb in one hand, a bun of her own in the other. Neal was standing outside the inn looking down the street. He turned and she saw the moment he saw her. How his body stilled. Then he folded his arms across his chest. The cabdriver had climbed back up to his seat and chirruped to the horse, which began clopping toward them.
“Bad!” scolded Annie, pointing her bun at the horse, before hugging it close, a protective posture that very much did not protect the cotton of her dress.
Skinned elbows, buttery bodice.
If Lavinia were married to Neal, they might have this kind of daughter—grubby, disheveled, irrepressible—and maybe they would let her be, valuing her happiness over her presentability, letting her play without self-consciousness or shame. Letting her climb and tumble and shout, come what may.
Lavinia held Annie’s hand tighter, but the girl had glimpsed her brothers and went off like a shot, running toward the green, where a game of leapfrog was underway between towering trees.
Oaks. Or elms, perhaps. Hang it.
“Lovely village,” Lavinia observed as she drew up to Neal. She held up the package. “Sugar buns,” she said. “I doubt they compare to Kelyn’s pastry, but the bakery did smell divine. And the horse approved his portion heartily, so there’s that recommendation, if a horse’s taste can be relied upon.”
Something about the strange look in his eyes made her prattle.
“I like all these roses,” she added brightly.
Her husband. Everyone assumed it. She could touch him, she could lean into him, even in the center of the village. Why these misgivings? His mood in the cab had been just that—a mood, a fleeting indisposition.
But it hadn’t fled.
They stood close together, but his erect posture seemed to repel any overture, to communicate unbridgeable reserve. He’d never been reserved with her. He’d always been warm, easy, quick to laugh. Surely she was mistaken.
She put her hand on his arm, and they both looked at it.
Embarrassment and confusion flared.
She withdrew her hand, a sour taste pooling in her mouth.
“There’s a botanist, Laura Odgers.” He cleared his throat. “Classified the British mosses. Also published a very good volume of botanical watercolors. We’ve been exchanging specimens.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, eyes fixed on the treetops. “I’m going to pay her a visit.”
Her.
Comprehension was slow in coming. He meant—he was going to pay a visit to a lady botanist.
“Now?” She couldn’t muffle it, her surprise and disappointment.
He shrugged, glancing at her coldly, before his eyes slid past her again, looking down the lane. “I can’t pass up the opportunity to see her in person. She lives at Rock House, just up the hill, and keeps an extraordinary garden. I always drop in when I come through Mawbyn. You don’t mind dining without me?”
She blinked at her package of sugar buns, and he continued.
“Not on sugar buns, of course. Or pasties.” The words might have been teasing, but his tone was anything but. “It’s a common table, but what the fare lacks in Frenchness, you’ll find well-compensated in freshness. Duck. New potatoes. Gooseberry tart.”
He looked at her without seeming to see her. “Your room is on the second floor. Mr. Phillips will show you up.”
The final blow.
She sucked in her breath. He hadn’t let a single room for them both.
Mr. and Mrs. Traymayne, signed in the register. An old-fashioned four-poster bed with sachets of dried rose petals between the linens. His naked limbs, thick and tensed against their own power, so that he could handle her gently.
The glow of expectation that had softened her harder feelings—the loneliness, the dread—extinguished itself.
Tears gathered hotly behind her eyes. He watched her blankly. If he noticed her distress, he gave no sign.
Should she abase herself utterly, ask one of the questions that threatened to slip from her lips?
Was he passing the night at the inn himself?
Was he staying instead with this Laura Odgers?
Why hadn’t he mentioned Laura Odgers before? Why had he let her assume . . . what exactly? What had he let her assume?
Everything. It wasn’t assumption. A man didn’t invite a woman on an excursion to let her dine alone.
Except men did. Or they did with her.
In Cannes, she’d spent much of her time drifting alone through the grand hotel, reading novels at little tables, drinking chocolate that always tasted slightly bitter. Sometimes she’d glimpse George from the terrace as he sauntered down the Croisette.
But he couldn’t have invited her to the yacht races, or to the parties. Acquaintances from London might have turned up, might have recognized her, asked questions. It had made sense, his leaving her behind. It had even seemed loving, this consideration for her reputation. Protective.
Recently, she’d begun to change the story. To fault George for not loving her, not considering her, enough.
But Neal? If Neal, too, wanted to flee her company, maybe the fault lay with her.
She wasn’t worth loving.
“Is something the matter?” He put it to her casually, as though the answer couldn’t possibly be of his concern. A faint smile curved his lips.
“Of course nothing is the matter.” She said it with composure. In days gone by, she would have cried and stormed. “Confer with your colleague, by all means. I’m sure you have much to discuss.”
He had the grace to look chagrined.
“Pertaining to the flora,” he said stiffly, and the insistence made her heart sink further. He wasn’t being honest with her. She had no right to demand his honesty, of course. But she’d come to take it for granted.
Honest, steady, blunt, kind Neal Traymayne. He had had designs on Muriel Pendrake, she was sure of it.
Something inside her had leaked out, had worked this transformation.
My sweet Vinnie. George had liked to stroke her hair, rubbing the pale blond strands between his fingers, kissing her white shoulder. You’re like a meringue.
Meringues stirred the appetite. They didn’t satisfy.
She’d squeezed the package of buns too hard. She felt the oil through the paper.
Neal brushed a thick lock of hair from his forehead with the back of his large hand.
“You and I will go collecting in the morning,” he said. “In your last letter, you mentioned you were particularly looking forward to rambling in this part of the county.”
“I did.” She kept her voice level. Not a question.
“I am,” she said, and felt a small rush of hope.
Tomorrow might bring another reversal.
She lifted her chin. “Even more so now that I’ve seen the hills. They remind me of China.”
His lips curved again, a mocking light replacing the chagrin in his eyes.
“How fascinating it will be for both of us, then,” he said. “We’ll cover every inch of the terrain. Miles and miles. Starting at first light.”
She swallowed. “Good.”
“Good,” he said.
She wouldn’t watch him walk away. She gazed at the green, the laughing children rolling now down the slope.
She hadn’t thought she would truly escape Cranbrook. But his lust had its limits. As did her mother’s love. Her papa’s love. George’s love.
No one was searching for her. That realization was worse than anything.
She swallowed hard, looked down at the cobbles.
When she looked up, Neal was gone.