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1888
St. Ives, Cornwall
“Seaweed wasn’t my first choice either.”
Muriel said it with an air of apology, wobbling slightly on the uneven rock, and cast a regretful glance into the gleaming pool of water. Seaweed wasn’t her first choice, most definitely not the botanical topic about which she’d prefer to lecture upon arrival in New York. But marine plants were strikingly beautiful, undulating ruby fronds and green silk frills and tiny tufts of lilac. She could watch them float for hours.
Apparently not without a full-scale mutiny on the part of her oldest friend. James had assumed the desperate look of a man about to do something unspeakably rash. Despite his wideawake hat, his face showed signs of sunburn and his eyes were glazed.
“We’ll head back to the hotel,” she said. “We can climb up to the cliff path and take the long way round. It’s shadier.”
“The long way round.” James spoke in a disbelieving whisper. “My lips are dry, or I’d laugh.”
He lifted his arm, and, with it, the gutta-percha-lined basket filled to the brim with her specimens. She’d been overenthusiastic. Muriel could admit that now. This was their first day in St. Ives, after all. She might have foregone collecting and idled away the morning. She and James could have sat in those wicker beehive chairs on the hotel terrace and played cribbage and caught up more thoroughly on everything they’d missed in each other’s lives over the last three years. Instead, she’d all but dragged him out of bed and onto the shore for a gruelingly prolonged march in unforgiving footwear. She’d gotten him soaked, leading him into the waves, so she could hook promising algae with a stick. And then she’d led him farther and farther away from the other holidaymakers, and lost track of time, hovering over the tide pools, while he crisped in the noonday sun, holding her basket.
“Seawater.” His voice sounded stronger and more ominous. “Do you know the poem? Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”
“Sounds familiar.” She gave him a bright smile. He knew she wasn’t much for poetry.
“Familiar?” His lips weren’t too dry for a rather exaggerated frown. “Try apropos.”
She kept smiling. She had meant to pack a few provisions, but he’d come down so late to the dining room, and the tide had already ebbed, and her haste made her forgetful. Seaweed spoiled so quickly.
“Here.” She handed him another jar, seawater, yes, and a rosy little Callithamnion. He tucked the jar into the basket, where it clinked against the others—a reproachful clink.
“James,” she attempted. “I wish I’d brought tea and biscuits. Particularly because I’m the reason we missed luncheon.” Contrite, she reached for the India rubber bag at her waist. “I collected an edible species. If you’re quite famished, you could—”
“Good Lord.” He did laugh. “You promised me a seaside holiday. And here I am, half-expired on the least hospitable stretch of shore for miles, and you’re suggesting I revive myself with a mouthful of kelp.”
“Not kelp. Irish moss. It’s very good, as a jelly.”
“I believe it’s chiefly used as a mattress stuffing.”
“Shall I pile some in the shade of the cliff, then?” She sniffed. “You can lie down and take your rest.”
He looked at her darkly. “How many times am I going to let you trick me into this kind of situation?”
“I don’t know.” She felt a little burst of relief. She’d worried for a moment that she really had pushed him too hard, but, while his sunburn was real, she could tell now that his outrage was, as usual, largely an act.
“I suspect we’ll go on like this,” she added, “until you stop secretly loving it.” She closed up her bag—Irish moss was absolutely punishing raw and worse unrinsed—and crossed her arms, arching her brows at him.
“Blast,” he said, but without pathos. He enjoyed complaining in her company, perhaps because he was called upon to display unflappable calm and stern decision in everyone else’s. Perhaps because they’d played together as children and never outgrew their formative dynamic.
“We don’t have to go the long way round,” she conceded, turning to look in the direction from whence they came. The waters of the bay were impossibly blue, edged with golden sands. Striped tents dotted the main beach, and the narrow, crowded houses of St. Ives rose above.
She turned back to James, who was knuckling sweat from his brow, expression resigned. “I simply thought it might be better,” she explained. “More exercise, less sun. Isn’t it the sun you find objectionable?”
“The sun objects to me.” James sighed. “We had a falling-out of sorts. Haven’t seen much of each other.”
Muriel’s gaze sharpened as she studied him. James had always been lean, with a thin, strong-boned face, all nose and cheekbones. His features fit him now. He was handsomer at six and thirty than he had been at sixteen. The new silver streak in his dark hair struck her as the epitome of dashing. But he’d grown gaunt and pallid, and his broad shoulders stooped.
“You and the sun are going to reconcile.” She nodded firmly. “That’s why I invited you.”
“Like hell it is.” James tilted back his head, surveying the steep slope up to the headland, the tumbled slates and scrubby vegetation. “You wanted an assistant.”
“Yes, well, I could have asked someone else.” A few of her botanical friends had even offered to make the trip. Any one of them could have provided more substantial assistance when it came to the collection and classification of British seaweeds. But she’d lived so many years abroad, traveling in Asia on commissions from plant nurseries and Kew Gardens, that those friends existed for her most fully on paper, as passionate but impersonal correspondents, their letters filled with taxonomies, enclosing seeds rather than sentiments.
