Fresh Fiction excerpt from A SHORE THING
Muriel clambered over the wall and crouched beside the crumpled rider. He lay hatless, face down in the grass, and she put a tentative hand to his shoulder.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “My friend is a doctor. Lie still, and I’ll fetch him. It will only be a moment.”
The man rolled over, his palm and fingers pressed to his eyes.
“Lucy?” he groaned.
“No.” Muriel sat back on her heels. “Is that your wife? I’ll fetch her, if you like.”
The man made a low, negatory sound of distress. After a decade of travels through harsh and varied terrains, Muriel had learned the rudiments of first aid. If necessary, she could clean and dress a wound, no matter how gruesome, trusting that her nerve wouldn’t fail. In this instance, there was nothing gruesome to confront. The man’s skull was intact. He’d given it a good knock, though—how good a knock she couldn’t say.
James could say. But where was he?
She looked behind her. Stone wall. Blue sky. Two white gulls hanging in the air. James wasn’t vaulting toward them, and those three artists weren’t either. Were they so absorbed in their painting they’d missed the bells, the crash?
“Sophia,” murmured the man.
“Erm.” She looked back at him. “No.”
“Clara?”
“No.”
“Margaret?”
She narrowed her eyes and swept him with a glance. He wasn’t particularly large, but he was well-muscled, his body encased in gray trousers, white waistcoat, gray jacket, and mauve cravat. It was emphatically fashionable attire, better suited to promenading in Hyde Park than cycling through Cornwall. It suited him very well. His hand covered the middle of his face, but the angles of his jaw and the full lines of his mouth made it easy to anticipate the rest.
He was attractive as sin.
“Phoebe,” he sighed.
“You’re delirious,” she told him, and paused. Delirious, and in his delirium calling out
for….
Well, Lucy wasn’t his wife, and she doubted Phoebe was his mother.
She was flushing slightly as she continued. “I am Muriel Pendrake.”
“Muriel.” He rolled his head from side to side, demonstrating an encouraging lack of neck fracture. “Muriel. With the little garret in Chelsea? You can see the river from the bed, through the French lace curtains….”
He had a husky voice and it trailed off as his lips tipped up in a faint smile.
She frowned. “Not that Muriel. You’ve never been in my bedchamber, I guarantee it. And not least because I don’t have a residence in London.”
She tried to speak briskly and without judgment. The man was quite possibly concussed. And if he’d been in the bedchamber of every woman who did have a residence in London, as seemed increasingly likely, it wasn’t her concern.
“Can you move your arms and legs?” she asked. “Is anything broken? Wiggle your toes.”
“Muriel.” He didn’t move, his stillness more pronounced, and thoughtful. “Muriel. I paid the ransom for your pug. Princess. That was her name.”
“I don’t have a pug.” She couldn’t help it. Briskness edged into exasperation. “And if I did, I wouldn’t call her Princess.” She paused, breathing a bit too hard. This semi-conscious man possessed peculiar powers of annoyance.
She reminded herself that semi-conscious required certain concessions.
“I am sorry,” she said, “to hear that Princess was dognapped, and I’m sure it was very kind of you to pay the banditti.”
“Yes,” the man agreed, and lapsed into a silence so protracted she wondered if he’d transitioned from semi-conscious to completely insensible.
“Muriel,” he whispered. “With the ticklish knees?”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” She bit her lip, annoyance battling with curiosity. Raised in the country and married young, she’d never before met a bonafide rakehell, unless you counted the gin-soaked second sons who slimed around British legations, or the occasional dapper diplomat.
This man was a different variety altogether. He belonged in the pages of a romantic novel, everything about him louche and seductive.
How many Muriels had he bedded? For that matter, how many Marys and Elizabeths?
She decided on a safer line of inquiry. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
The man spread the fingers that covered his left eye, and she saw a gleam of iris, before his fingers snapped closed.
“I can’t say. It’s terribly bright.”
She scowled and leaned over him. A lock of chestnut hair flopped across his forehead. She’d have to push it back in order to tell if a knot was forming.
She brushed at his hair with her fingertips. It was soft as silk, its thickness and slight curl giving it spring. His skin felt hot.
No abrasion. No swelling.
She realized she was hovering over him, rather as though he were a tide pool, enticing her with the promise of beautiful secrets. This embarrassing thought didn’t trigger any impulse to pull away.
Her nostrils flared as she detected his scent, not heavy cologne as she’d expected, but something bright and fresh, similar to the delicious fragrances of the West Country summer itself—green leaves, sea air, sun-warmed heath.
She leaned closer. All at once, he lowered his hand and looked her straight in the eye. His eyes were gray, framed with straight black lashes. Their gaze was piercing.
“What are you doing?” he asked, and she toppled backwards, cheeks flaming. What had she been doing indeed?
Excerpted from A SHORE THING by Joanna Lowell Copyright © 2024 by Joanna Lowell. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Former painter and unreformed rake Kit Griffith is forging a new life in Cornwall, choosing freedom over an identity that didn't fit. He knew that leaving his Sisterhood of women artists might mean forfeiting artistic community forever. He didn’t realize he would lose his ability to paint altogether. Luckily, he has other talents. Why not devote himself to selling bicycles and trysting with the holidaymakers?
Enter Muriel Pendrake, the feisty New-York-bound botanist who has come to St. Ives to commission Kit for illustrations of British seaweeds. Kit shouldn’t accept Muriel’s offer, but he must enlist her help to prove to an all-male cycling club that women can ride as well as men. And she won't agree unless he gives her what she wants. Maybe that's exactly the challenge he needs.
As Kit and Muriel spend their days cycling together, their desire begins to burn with the heat of the summer sun. But are they pedaling toward something impossible? The past is bound to catch up to them, and at the season’s end, their paths will diverge. With only their hearts as guides, Kit and Muriel must decide if they’re willing to race into the unknown for the adventure of a lifetime.
LGBTQ | Romance Historical [Berkley, On Sale: June 18, 2024, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593549728 / ]
Joanna Lowell lives among the fig trees in North Carolina, where she teaches in the English department at Wake Forest University. When she’s not writing historical romance, she writes other things as Joanna Ruocco. Those books include Dan, Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith, The Week, and Field Glass, co-authored with Joanna Howard.
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