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Kit ignored this. He had to focus on the more relevant question.
What in bloody hell was he going to do now? Inquire if the long-suffering wife cared to ride for ten days on his handlebars? Or that beneficent grandmother?
“Hallo!” Bernhard was legging it toward them. “We’re over there.” The painter gestured at the knoll that rose in the wilder precinct of the garden, even beyond the group of lacy young ladies selecting croquet mallets. Kit squinted. Two easels on the crest. Takada, sketching.
“Instead of waves, today we study life and character,” explained Bernhard. He spread his arms. “Panorama.”
“I’m bad at people,” Ponsonby sighed.
“You’re fine at people.” Kit managed a smile. It felt difficult to summon, but sincere. “One of the greats.”
“Bad at painting people.” Ponsonby flushed again and clapped a hand to the back of his neck. “Bad enough that anything else I do with paint or people seems better by contrast.”
“Here,” said Bernhard, pulling a shiny coin from his pocket. “Glückspfennig. For luck.”
He handed it to Kit.
Kit contemplated the bright bronze disc in his palm, the German word marching around the numeral one stamped in the center. A lucky penny. Christ.
“Thank you.” His voice scratched as he dropped the coin into his pocket. He checked his watch.
Seven minutes.
Two more ticked away as Bernhard and Ponsonby swapped artistic gossip, Kit staring at nothing, until Deighton crossed his line of vision. No bicycle. He was striding toward the house.
“Excuse me,” Kit muttered, and hurried after. He’d do this fast. He’d jump from the ledge before it crumbled beneath his feet.
When he caught up, Deighton was already locked in conversation with Deighton Senior, or rather, gnashing his teeth while Deighton Senior delivered a harangue with his nose almost touching his son’s.
“This is the last embarrassment,” Deighton Senior was saying. “I ignored your tomfoolery. I permitted you to fritter away your time. But you’ve taken it too far. You fritter away my reputation.” Deighton Senior stepped abruptly back, in disgust, and his hot blue eyes twitched to Kit.
“Bicycling was bad enough,” he continued, still glaring at Kit. “Even before you associated your little club with a ponce and a virago.”
Deighton himself hadn’t noticed Kit’s presence. “I’ll win the bet, sir.”
This recaptured Deighton Senior’s attention.
“Oh, you’ll more than win the bet,” he snarled. “Remember what we discussed.”
“Yessir.” Deighton slouched.
“Stand up straight.” The snarl became a bark. “When you return, you will put away childish things. No more bicycles. No more badges.” He flicked the Mutton Wheelers badge on Deighton’s striped jacket. “I’m sending you to Glasgow. You’ll run the Scottish office.”
“Glasgow?” Deighton went pale. “Sir. I—”
“It’s decided. Trust me, you’ll like the alternative far less.”
Kit cleared his throat. Both Deightons turned to him, shoulders touching so that they formed a solid wall of animosity.
Skewered by their identical glares, he realized he didn’t know what to say.
He’d misjudged everything. Consequences he couldn’t yet bring himself to imagine were taking shape all around him. He didn’t want to say anything. He wanted to release the howl that had been building inside since Ponsonby wired Lucy, and if he were honest, since long before that.
It stuck in his windpipe, closing off his breath.
“Ready, then?” Deighton shoved past, tight-lipped, cheeks waxen. He walked stiffly, with a self-consciously military bearing, back to the fountain where the Mutton Wheelers waited, each standing now beside his bicycle. The bugler was holding up two bicycles, his own and Deighton’s. To his right, almost hidden by Deighton’s front wheel, another cyclist waited. She inched her own wheel forward, and Kit saw her fully. Penny-bright hair coiled over her shoulder. Her hat was circled with a pale purple ribbon.
His fingers went to the matching silk at his throat as her searching dark eyes met his.
