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“A party.” Butterfield frowned. “I knew it. How many ladies? They were probably in want of gentlemen if there was dancing.”

Now Kit suppressed a grin. “They were not in want of gentlemen.”

“Says you.” Kemble thrust his head forward. “I say you are in want of the fraternal spirit. Have we moved in on your territory? No! But you haven’t so much as thrown us—”

Kit interrupted. “My territory?”

“Mrs. Pendrake.” Kemble sounded impatient. “She’s a nice bit of raspberry. And we don’t even look at her! Then another fine piece turns up, and you keep her for yourself as well.”

“You could look at Mrs. Pendrake, you know.” Kit thanked the waitress as she set his coffee in front of him before turning back to Kemble. “You could talk to her. The key is treating her like a human being.”

“Kemble doesn’t know.” Butterfield dabbed at his mustache with the corner of his napkin. “He’s a Neanderthal.”

“And you’re a prig.” Kemble poked at his tomato. “Five years on and you think you’re still head boy.”

That hit a nerve. Butterfield’s nostrils flared. He folded his napkin neatly and returned it to the table.

“At least I can think.” His gaze turned inward, and his next muttered words had the well-worn pathos of a mental refrain. “I should have gone to Oxford.”

“Wish you had.” Kemble shoveled the tomato into his mouth and spoke with a bulging cheek. “I should have beat that Frenchie. But you broke my focus.”

“Why didn’t you go to Oxford?” asked Kit, more to steer the conversation away from beating Frenchies than because he cared to find out.

“I am the firstborn Butterfield.” Butterfield pushed his mushrooms to the rim of his plate with the back of his fork. “Firstborn Butterfields join the family firm at eighteen.” He gave Kit a thin smile, all but hidden by his mustache. “Egg is going instead. He’ll come up this term. I expect he’ll get sent down again promptly.”

Kit considered defending the unpromising adolescent on principle. It hardly seemed worth the trouble.

“And where is young Egg?” He sipped his coffee and looked around the room.

“In the courtyard with Prescott, wiping off the bicycles.” Kemble glared at Butterfield’s mushrooms, then at his own. “This training diet will be the death of me. No cutlets. No pork chops. No pudding. No pastry.” He looked up as Kit’s plate arrived, heaped with fried eggs and potatoes, two kinds of pudding, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, fried bread, and a double serving of bacon.

“No bacon,” he whispered, as though in pain.

Kit laughed and nudged the plate toward him. “Help yourself.”

“Thank you, I will.” Kemble speared a piece eagerly. Butterfield shook his head.

“What?” Kemble snarled. “Deighton’s not here.”

“Is he wiping off bicycles?” Kit didn’t think it likely.

“He’s negotiating with the proprietor,” said Butterfield. “It’s one of our objectives for this club run—getting more hostelries to affiliate with the CTC.”

“Commendable.” Kit raised his coffee, the toast ironic, but the sentiment more or less sincere. The Cyclists’ Touring Club was the largest cycling organization in England, and one of the few that included women. Its mission to facilitate cycle touring involved securing discounted lodging rates for members and printing an annual directory of the establishments that offered them, along with maps and other guides. He thought back to the wheelmen gathered around the notebook at the Treryn Dinas Inn.

“You’re recording the club run,” he said as realization struck. “For the next edition of the British Road Book?”

“For a Cornish Road Book,” corrected Butterfield. “The CTC wants more routes through Cornwall. More places of interest. More detail on road conditions. We’re including paths too, for the adventurous. Noting everything down.” He was noting Kit’s plate, with a face that belonged in a Renaissance painting of a martyred Christian saint.

“You can have some too.” Kit sighed. “Just leave me the eggs and potatoes.”

Butterfield hesitated, glancing at Kemble, who’d pounced on the puddings.

“Perhaps a sausage,” he murmured.

Kit finished his potatoes while Butterfield ate sausage with quick, furtive bites and Kemble grunted with rapture. His brain had snagged on an appalling thought.

He gave it voice. “Deighton’s a consul, then?” CTC consuls were scattered throughout Great Britain. They brought inns and hotels under contract, and also supplied local information and aid to touring cyclists. Ideally, they encouraged esprit de corps among followers of the wheel—all followers of the wheel, men and women, old and young.