Page 94
“It’s mandatory that you ride the entire distance,” persisted Deighton.
“Check our cyclometers.” Kit shrugged.
“You might have tampered with them.”
Patience. With Deighton, patience came at a premium.
“We rode the entire distance,” he said. “If my word doesn’t suffice, you can examine the page I took from the register at the Top House Inn.” He’d offered the puzzled innkeeper a pound to tear it out. “You’ll trust your own signature, won’t you?”
“Ingenious.” Prescott looked impressed.
“He wasn’t ingenious. He was ungentlemanly,” Deighton snarled. “No one anticipates his word being doubted unless he’s a liar and cheat.”
“Or dealing with a liar and cheat,” suggested Kit.
The crowd exploded into French-sounding hoots and hisses.
Kemble’s arm had advanced by several inches.
“The hook!” shouted Butterfield. “Finish him with the hook!”
A laugh cut through the masculine uproar like bell song. It was a high, clear feminine laugh. Not Muriel’s. She laughed like a flock of adorable geese.
He looked over his shoulder. A woman was gliding toward them. A dark-haired, flower-faced woman in a heavily trimmed biscuit-colored silk gown, with an underskirt of dusky rose.
Grace Swanwick, the diamond of the West End sapphists.
21
Glide on.
He willed it as he faced front, heart pounding. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed him. Perhaps she’d been gazing at the ships in the harbor. Perhaps she wasn’t about to hail him with a name that would cause the world to come crashing down.
“Mr. Griffith.” Egg spoke around a mouthful of orange. “Do you know the young lady?”
He pretended the contest absorbed him.
It did, in a way. A French sailor arm wrestling an English chappie in sportswear, witnessed by a motley collection of crewmen hailing from ports of call the whole world over. It was a fit subject for a painting—not for a Pre-Raphaelite, perhaps. For a painter of modern life.
“Mr. Griffith!” Egg spoke louder.
Hellfire.
Kit turned his head.
“Mr. Griffith,” echoed Grace Swanwick.
He turned completely. She stood a foot away, and the knowledge in her damselfly blue eyes was absolute.
“Miss Swanwick,” he said.
Knowledge in her eyes, but not judgment. Hope and dread warred in his chest.
Grace was unpredictable. She’d worked as an actress before Annie Groombridge had succeeded in wooing her from the stage, and her taste for drama knew no bounds. When Kit had met her, she was singing in Annie’s Mayfair drawing room, the main attraction at the Hesperus Ladies Club’s Saturday salon. They’d shared an instant rapport, which Annie had disliked at least as much as she’d disliked his trousers.
Had Annie come with her?
His eyes swept up the street. More sailors. Peddlers. Cornish women with baskets.
