A Shore Thing - Softcover

Lowell, Joanna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593549724 ISBN 13: 9780593549728

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A delightfully queer Victorian love story, featuring a boldly brash trans hero, the beguiling botanist who captures his heart, and a buoyant bicycle race by the British seaside — from the author of The Duke Undone.

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.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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 collections and novels as Joanna Ruocco. Those books include Dan, Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith, The Week, and Field Glass, co-authored with Joanna Howard.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

1888

St. Ives, Cornwall

"Seaweed wasn't my first choice either."

Muriel said it with an air of apology, wobbling slightly on the uneven rock, and cast a regretful glance into the gleaming pool of water. Seaweed wasn't her first choice, most definitely not the botanical topic about which she'd prefer to lecture upon arrival in New York. But marine plants were strikingly beautiful, undulating ruby fronds and green silk frills and tiny tufts of lilac. She could watch them float for hours.

Apparently not without a full-scale mutiny on the part of her oldest friend. James had assumed the desperate look of a man about to do something unspeakably rash. Despite his wideawake hat, his face showed signs of sunburn and his eyes were glazed.

"We'll head back to the hotel," she said. "We can climb up to the cliff path and take the long way round. It's shadier."

"The long way round." James spoke in a disbelieving whisper. "My lips are dry, or I'd laugh."

He lifted his arm, and, with it, the gutta-percha-lined basket filled to the brim with her specimens. She'd been overenthusiastic. Muriel could admit that now. This was their first day in St. Ives, after all. She might have foregone collecting and idled away the morning. She and James could have sat in those wicker beehive chairs on the hotel terrace and played cribbage and caught up more thoroughly on everything they'd missed in each other's lives over the last three years. Instead, she'd all but dragged him out of bed and onto the shore for a gruelingly prolonged march in unforgiving footwear. She'd gotten him soaked, leading him into the waves, so she could hook promising algae with a stick. And then she'd led him farther and farther away from the other holidaymakers, and lost track of time, hovering over the tide pools, while he crisped in the noonday sun, holding her basket.

"Seawater." His voice sounded stronger and more ominous. "Do you know the poem? Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."

"Sounds familiar." She gave him a bright smile. He knew she wasn't much for poetry.

"Familiar?" His lips weren't too dry for a rather exaggerated frown. "Try apropos."

She kept smiling. She had meant to pack a few provisions, but he'd come down so late to the dining room, and the tide had already ebbed, and her haste made her forgetful. Seaweed spoiled so quickly.

"Here." She handed him another jar, seawater, yes, and a rosy little Callithamnion. He tucked the jar into the basket, where it clinked against the others-a reproachful clink.

"James," she attempted. "I wish I'd brought tea and biscuits. Particularly because I'm the reason we missed luncheon." Contrite, she reached for the India rubber bag at her waist. "I collected an edible species. If you're quite famished, you could-"

"Good Lord." He did laugh. "You promised me a seaside holiday. And here I am, half-expired on the least hospitable stretch of shore for miles, and you're suggesting I revive myself with a mouthful of kelp."

"Not kelp. Irish moss. It's very good, as a jelly."

"I believe it's chiefly used as a mattress stuffing."

"Shall I pile some in the shade of the cliff, then?" She sniffed. "You can lie down and take your rest."

He looked at her darkly. "How many times am I going to let you trick me into this kind of situation?"

"I don't know." She felt a little burst of relief. She'd worried for a moment that she really had pushed him too hard, but, while his sunburn was real, she could tell now that his outrage was, as usual, largely an act.

"I suspect we'll go on like this," she added, "until you stop secretly loving it." She closed up her bag-Irish moss was absolutely punishing raw and worse unrinsed-and crossed her arms, arching her brows at him.

"Blast," he said, but without pathos. He enjoyed complaining in her company, perhaps because he was called upon to display unflappable calm and stern decision in everyone else's. Perhaps because they'd played together as children and never outgrew their formative dynamic.

"We don't have to go the long way round," she conceded, turning to look in the direction from whence they came. The waters of the bay were impossibly blue, edged with golden sands. Striped tents dotted the main beach, and the narrow, crowded houses of St. Ives rose above.

She turned back to James, who was knuckling sweat from his brow, expression resigned. "I simply thought it might be better," she explained. "More exercise, less sun. Isn't it the sun you find objectionable?"

"The sun objects to me." James sighed. "We had a falling-out of sorts. Haven't seen much of each other."

Muriel's gaze sharpened as she studied him. James had always been lean, with a thin, strong-boned face, all nose and cheekbones. His features fit him now. He was handsomer at six and thirty than he had been at sixteen. The new silver streak in his dark hair struck her as the epitome of dashing. But he'd grown gaunt and pallid, and his broad shoulders stooped.

"You and the sun are going to reconcile." She nodded firmly. "That's why I invited you."

"Like hell it is." James tilted back his head, surveying the steep slope up to the headland, the tumbled slates and scrubby vegetation. "You wanted an assistant."

"Yes, well, I could have asked someone else." A few of her botanical friends had even offered to make the trip. Any one of them could have provided more substantial assistance when it came to the collection and classification of British seaweeds. But she'd lived so many years abroad, traveling in Asia on commissions from plant nurseries and Kew Gardens, that those friends existed for her most fully on paper, as passionate but impersonal correspondents, their letters filled with taxonomies, enclosing seeds rather than sentiments.

James was still the person she knew best, the person who mattered most to her. She'd wanted an assistant, but she'd also wanted to feel, for these weeks, as though she were home. Home wasn't Hampshire, not anymore, but it wasn't Hong Kong either. It wasn't any place. It was this, if it was anything-squabbling with James, a stone in her boot, and a sudden lump in her throat.

"I'm happy we're here," she said. "You're happy we're here too."

"Humph." He grunted but didn't deny it. How could he? Some aspect of his London life was whittling him down, visibly.

James was a brain surgeon. Perhaps it was the long shifts in the operating theater? Horrors encountered during experimental investigations into neural tissue? Patients lost? Competition with colleagues?

Questions she'd held herself back from asking formed suddenly on her tongue. Before she'd settled on the right one, he creased his forehead and brushed past her.

"Upsy-daisy," he muttered, and started for the slope, picking his way slowly. Within moments, she'd outpaced him and was charting their course, showing admirable self-restraint as she passed an unusual sedge.

"Do you know there's no hospital in St. Ives?" James called up from below. "Mr. Trevaskis told me."

"That's why you were up until dawn?" she called back. "You cornered the hotel manager and interviewed him regarding the local medical facilities?"

"Lack of facilities. There's a general practitioner, but that's hardly sufficient. Down by the harbor, people live cramped as the pilchards in their barrels. Visitors have no idea. And then there are the mining accidents up on the cliffs."

The way became steeper, and she had to concentrate, proceeding upward via a series of ledges.

She was panting slightly as she responded. "You have enough people to worry about in London. This is a holiday. No operating on the fishermen."

"Your trunk is stuffed with microscopes, chisels, and pickle jars. And you're...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593549724
• ISBN 13: 9780593549728
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland