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He couldn’t paint anything.

He could try.

And fail.

Or…

Maybe he wouldn’t fail. Maybe this was exactly the inducement he needed. Eyes still shut, he lifted his own glass and waited for the clink.

11

It was noon the next day before Kit could drag himself from the house, and even then, he cycled gingerly through the fields feeling like a tortured cat. Mrs. Pengilly from the neighboring farm had delivered his milk—loudly—well before seven. When the clock struck eleven, and he’d forced himself to stagger down into the kitchen, he’d failed to eat a bite of the breakfast he found congealed between two plates on the table. No fault of Mrs. Pengilly’s, of course. He’d employed her for the better part of a year, and the wholesome meals never varied. Squinting against the light, he’d dunked hard bread in sugared black coffee until his brain revived enough to sift through the final events of the night.

Buying a bottle of port from the barkeep, passing that bottle back and forth with Raleigh as they lurched down Fish Street? Banging on the door of Takada’s boardinghouse until the landlady threw it open, iron skillet in hand?

That had been real.

Riding home along the cliffs as the moon broke through the clouds, illuminating Muriel on a high promontory, naked but for those shooting boots, locks of coppery hair snaking around full, rose-tipped breasts? Climbing up to her on a perilous stair like the one that led to Svensson’s studio, kissing her rain-wet lips as waves rose all around them?

That had been a dream.

She’d looked for all the world like a wicked Venus.

Now he tried to keep his bleary eyes on the rutted, half-dried mud of the path. Muriel wasn’t naked on a ledge in the middle distance, awaiting his kiss.

She was, however, wearing those shooting boots.

It was the first thing he noticed when he finally came upon her, near Porthminster Beach, where the sands gave way to shingle and granite outcroppings. She was lying flat on a large rock, gazing into the water pooled in its center, those rubberized boots sticking out behind her. He stopped, transfixed, seized by an arousal so extreme he wondered if he were still dreaming, or at the least, still drunk. His pounding skull and sloshing guts refuted both possibilities.

She hadn’t noticed him, so he cleared his throat.

No reaction.

“Penny,” he attempted, too low. His voice didn’t carry above the sound of the waves. The sea looked green as it broke between black boulders.

“Tide’s coming in,” he announced, overloud.

She turned her head. Her straw hat shaded her eyes. The curve of her lips did not seem friendly.

“You,” she said.

“When it’s high, these rocks are cut off from the beach.” He already wished he’d picked a different opening.

She lifted her chin. This exposed more of her lovely face, and its rancorous expression.

“I know,” she said flatly.

“It happens faster than you’d think. Don’t want to look up and discover you’re stranded. Or that we’re stranded together.”

He laughed.

She didn’t.

“Well,” he said. “G’morning.” He scrambled up onto the rock and lowered himself down beside her.

“It’s not morning.” She turned back to the pool. “And I’m not inclined to take advice on tides from a man who fails to track the most basic effect of the Earth’s rotation.”

He wrapped his arms loosely around his knees. This was going about as well as he’d expected.