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Embarrassment rushed through her, a milder version of the shame she’d felt on the occasions she’d approached Esmé in her nightgown, only to have her tentative overtures quelled with a look.
“Most obliging.” Her mouth tasted sour. “Chivalry is not dead.”
“Two modern-day knights just charged each other on iron horses, wielding billiard cues.” He shrugged. “Chivalry is alive and well, and God help us all.”
She couldn’t interpret his expression. He drew closer, a step up the hill that simultaneously made his height increase by inches.
“Tell me the real reason you want to ride,” he murmured. “Ulterior motives are the most interesting.”
“It’s you,” she blurted, and swallowed hard, flustered by the knowing glint in his eyes. “Rather—it’s that I know who you are.”
He drew back sharply. “What do you mean by that?”
“You’re not the proprietor of a bicycle shop, or not primarily.”
His expression was hardening, the points of his jaws standing out, the lines around his mouth cutting deeper.
Misgiving stirred within her, speeding her words. “You’re an artist. An astonishingly good one. Your watercolor of the columbine—I’ve worked as a botanist for over a decade, but it changed how I thought about plants, about their cells and the light. I could see the sun inside the leaves.”
What did he see? He was staring at her as though she’d sprouted another head.
“I am giving a lecture in September, in New York.” She grew more nervous by the instant. “It is on British seaweeds, and my dearest hope is to commission you for botanical paintings.”
Griffith stood like a statue. His stillness had an ominous quality, gave her the impression of hostility tightly leashed. It made no sense. He’d practically purred over Poppy the bluestocking. Clearly, he didn’t object to women studying. Did he object to women pursuing careers?
“Our aims find perfect complementarity in this bicycle tour.” She used her lecture hall voice, carrying and confident, but she was breathing too fast, and the pitch of her delivery wavered. “You want to scupper Deighton, which I can guarantee. I am indefatigable. Ask James. And given that we’ll travel miles and miles of coast, I am sure to encounter more seaweed species than I would if I simply walked around St. Ives.”
Griffith’s mouth was turning down at the corners.
She rushed on. “I’ll only collect the very rare ones. You’d make the paintings in St. Ives, obviously. But if you did a few sketches along the way, we could—”
“Impossible,” he interrupted her. “No one has yet discovered a method for collecting seaweed while bicycling. Or sketching while bicycling, for that matter.”
As objections went, it seemed deliberately obtuse.
She spoke calmly. “We will dismount the bicycles, of course.”
“Thereby falling behind the Mutton Wheelers.”
“But who cares, as long as we reach our destination each night? As long as we get back to St. Ives on the tenth day?”
“I am not a flower painter.” Griffith sounded cold. Without the teasing animation in his face, he looked supercilious, as though his beautiful features had been fashioned for haughty disdain.
“The watercolor you mentioned,” he said. “I did it for a fundraiser. A fishing ship had been lost, name of The Columbine. That’s the only reason I painted a flower, as a tribute. Something pretty, in commemoration.”
“Are you saying you won’t take the commission?” Her body felt leaden. “I wasn’t suggesting a trade, my riding on the tour in exchange for your paintings. I would pay you, of course. Name your price.”
“I’d do it for pennies.” He gave her a strange smile. “If I were going to do it, I’d do it for Penny.”
“But you’re not going to do it.”
“I’m not.”
“Why?” It burst from her. “Because you think too highly of yourself? Because most flower painters are women?” The unpleasant sensation in her chest coalesced into anger, more anger than she had any right to feel. “Because you prefer more exalted genres? I suppose you specialize in scenes from history. Hulking oils that take up whole walls.”
He shrugged. “I paint scenes from history on occasion. Not lately.”
“Nudes?” She crossed her arms. A rake would paint nudes.
