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“You’d lose a lot.” Kit knew a thing or two about the price of defiance. “Not everything. And there’s much to gain. The life you want to live.”
“What’s this about?” Deighton narrowed his eyes. “Your life is that bicycle shop. Which is about to be my bicycle shop. Worry about yourself.”
“I’m not worried about losing the bicycle shop.”
“You can’t wheedle it back from me. I have plans for it.”
“I won’t wheedle, because I won’t lose.” Kit cocked a brow, curious despite himself. “What plans?”
“Second clubhouse.” Deighton looked at the cat, who looked back at him. “Ferocious little fellow, isn’t he? I wish I could bring him with us. We need a mascot. I’d call him—” A sudden noise turned his head.
“Mrs. Pendrake,” he finished.
—
“Mr. Deighton.” Muriel was breathless, as though she’d run from the bar, when in fact, she’d walked at a deliberate pace, each measured step reinforcing her determination. “I must speak with Mr. Griffith before we go.”
“We are going now.” Deighton fixed his eyes on her. “And I must first urge you again to spare yourself the physical strain and the probable injury.” His eyes dipped, and he took in the sordid state of her gown, which yesterday’s misadventures had torn, stained, and misshapen. “The impropriety,” he added, with a hint of a blush.
“I know you must.” She gave him an impatient smile.
He kept looking at her, slow to realize this was her only answer. When he did, he snorted.
She stepped aside to let him stomp from the room.
“Butterfield!” She heard him bellowing in the hallway. Someone else was shouting too.
“Train’s running! Train to Truro!”
She ignored the commotion. The room was cluttered, redolent of rubber and old horse, with one small, cobwebbed window sieving the dismally thin light. Kit and a cat on a bicycle were regarding her with glowing eyes.
“Lucy is here,” she breathed. “Here in Bodmin.”
Kit didn’t blink. She tried and failed to decipher his expression.
“They’re at the White Hart.” She approached him, pulse thudding. “Lucy and two other women.”
He gave his head a slight shake. “No, they’re not. They can’t be. They’d have come and gone by now.”
She stared at him, and the longer she did so, the more his face resembled a mask. “You knew.” She struggled to comprehend it. “You knew they were on their way to see you.”
“Weeks ago. Ponsonby told me.”
“And so…” She remembered her intuition that Kit had goaded Deighton into their wager, not the other way round. Here it was. His ulterior motive. She stepped even closer, peering up at him. “You got yourself embroiled in this contest, to evade them.”
How perfect. How painful. She’d wheeled away with him, wheeled all around Cornwall, but fortune’s wheel had brought him to Lucy, regardless.
She had the power to relieve his pain, at least.
“I was right.” Shoots of real happiness pushed through the choking overgrowth of envy. “Lucy doesn’t think you’re Judas.”
His lips parted, but seconds passed before words followed. “You discussed me?”
“I only sat beside them. She was speaking to her companions.”
“You were eavesdropping.” He crossed his arms, thumb tapping at his bicep, a line of doubt between his brows. “What did this Lucy look like?”
“Sad,” she said. “This Lucy looked sad. She looked like a person deeply sorry that she’d harmed someone she loved.” She cleared the rasp from her throat. “Deeply sorry that she’d harmed you.”
