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“To make the sheep less complacent,” he explained, although Muriel hadn’t asked. “They’ve lost the instinct to scatter.” He made a scattering motion with his hands.

“To the left,” she said, as the path forked. She was following directions she’d received from the innkeeper’s wife. Griffith was following her—out of obligation, obviously. He’d brought his sketchbook, but he didn’t seem interested in their destination—a cove known for its rock pools—and he didn’t seem interested in discussing their evening with the Hesperus Ladies Club either, shrugging at her questions when he could easily have fleshed out various characters and their relationships.

No, he was interested in, precisely, sheep.

He’d griped about their role in the aborted road race for the duration of the walk.

“A solid wall of fleece!” He was still going. “Absolutely immovable. They were less like sheep and more like the foundation stones of the Bank of England.”

“A monument,” she muttered, unable to hold back. “A memorial to the great road race to Mevagissey that wasn’t.”

“It was a race.” He hopped over a root—hopped higher than necessary. “I was going to win it. Until we hit that blockade of sheep and had to call it off.”

“The sheep. Yes, you’ve mentioned them.”

“They’ll get mentioned in the next edition of the British Almanac.” Griffith scowled at the treetops. “They were a phenomenon. They composed the most numerous, slowest-moving, inconveniently positioned flock of recorded time.”

She shook her head, amusement warring with annoyance. And disappointment as well.

She felt far too aware of the fact that they were alone, and that he’d made no move to kiss her. Far too aware of what her disappointment signified—she’d expected him to kiss her.

She cut another glance at him. He was rambling along, his gait athletic and almost hostile in its careless muscularity. The premature conclusion of the race had left him with too much unexpended physical energy. Or was his agitation the result of erotic restlessness?

Last night, after they’d returned to the inn, after he’d undone her with his clever fingers and wicked tongue, he might have lain awake, pent up with dissatisfied desire. He might have dreamed of release with someone else.

He might have dreamed of Lucy.

He met her gaze, briefly.

“I could almost believe Deighton plotted the whole thing,” he said, not for the first time, and began to rehash the idea. It involved an implausible relay of telegrams, errand boys, and farmers.

She focused on guiding them out of the wood and across a sloping heath. The path to the cove started behind the barrow on the clifftop and wound steeply down to the granite boulders that backed the beach. She scrambled over them and dropped onto the beach proper. The tide was low, the tiny crystalline waves breaking some twenty yards away. Kelp carpeted the dry sand, sun-bleached and salt-encrusted. The air stank of sulfur.

She headed for the low-water mark, passing pools that glimmered like mirrors between the wide black rocks.

“Here!” she called back to Griffith, climbing onto a rock that delimited the upper boundary of the largest pool, rich with marine life. “I see a dozen species.” None particularly rare, or worth collecting, but all as beautiful as jewels in the sun-struck water.

He came up beside her.

She kept her eyes trained on the pool. “They’re mesmerizing, aren’t they?”

She could feel him looking at her.

“Are you mesmerized?” he asked lightly. “Perhaps it’s in the stars—your destiny is algolgalology.”

“Algology,” she corrected. “And no, I’ll have had my fill of algae after this. My destiny is mycology. I can picture myself hunting mushrooms in the Catskills.”

“Mushrooms.” He sounded dubious. “The seaweed of the forest.”

She gave a helpless laugh and a small shake of her head.

“The Irish moss of the mountains,” he continued, encouraged. “Although, on second thought, the Irish moss of the mountains is likely…moss. The regular kind. And the sea lettuce of the mountains is lettuce. Does lettuce grow in the mountains?”

“Wild lettuce does.” She sighed, feeling weary. He would persist in ridiculousness. “Anything else you want to say?”

There was a little silence.

“Forgive me.” He spoke in a frank tone. “I’ve been acting like an ass.”