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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.