The men glanced at each other, frowning confusedly. “Take off, my budgie smuggler?” one hazarded.
“Er…” Devon did not avert his attention from them as he asked Beth, “How do I say, ‘we’re birders and we need you to follow that ferry’?”
“Don’t ask me,” she said. “I will never move them in French, unless it be to laugh at me.”
He turned his head then to stare at her. “Really? Shakespeare, at a time like this?”
“Anytime is a good time for Shakespeare,” she replied patriotically.
“This is what you learn at Oxford? With such an impractical education, you have no hope of winning Birder of the Year.”
“And—and Yale offers an education so practical, it may as well be a technical institute!” she retorted, clearly unfamiliar with sniping, but giving it her best shot. “I suggest you just go home and await my award acceptance speech.”
Devon grinned. His hand longed to reach up and brush away a raindrop glimmering on her cheek. Other parts of his body expressed longings so Shakespearean he almost laughed at the irony. “You are a martinet,” he told her amiably.
“And you are scandalous,” she countered.
“Ahem,” contributed a fisherman.
Returning to his senses with a jolt, Devon turned to find all four men leaning back against a large equipment box, arms crossed, watching the scene in fascination. He scowled. Gesturing with his gun toward the misty sea beyond, he ordered them in brusque English to follow the ferry. And apparently the barrel of a Webley Mark I spoke a universal language, because they jumped to obey.
While the fishermen worked, Devon kept his weapon trained on them. Beth, however, paced the lantern-lit deck, chewing her thumbnail with no consideration for the glove encasing it.
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” she told the captain.
“Please forgive us,” she told the first mate.
“You are ever so kind,” she told the two crew members, smiling with the kind of warmth that suggests something is about to burst into flames.
“Really, just dreadfully sorry,” she reiterated to the captain.
And so on, until the fishermen ended up assuring her it was perfectly fine she had pirated their boat. Whereupon she relaxed and began instead to ask about their operations, mingling hand gestures and pidgin French, apparently intent on getting her mariner’s license at the end of the journey.
The fishermen patiently explained each rope’s purpose and the fundamentals of steam engineering, and even let her steer the wheel for a while. Not a mile out to sea, they began bringing her tea, and jam sandwiches, and a coat that she declined on the basis of being quite warm, thank you (although Devon, smelling it from where he stood on the other side of the deck, suspected she preferred freezing to stinking of old fish). In return, she taught them several bird whistles and extracted from each man a promise to never shoot down an albatross should they happen to stray into the Southern Hemisphere while trawling for mackerel.
Devon watched all this with a cynicism that had been polished by years in the ornithology field. The woman truly was fascinating, and he would have gladly kissed her in Calais had the ferry’s horn not interrupted. When she laughed with the fishermen, everything inside him sighed with a longing he could not repress. But…
But…
Er, there had been a but within that train of thought, he was sure of it. He just couldn’t seem to remember where.
No one offered him sandwiches. Indeed, all he got were menacing looks and more than one muttered promise that he would “nourrir les poissons” the moment he let his guard down. Knowing poissons did not actually mean poison somehow failed to reassure him. Apparently what was good for the goose was not good for the gander after all. He made himself an uncomfortable seat upon a coil of rope, hunched in his coat against the endless drizzle, hungry and tired and thinking thoughts so impolite, Beth probably would have fainted had she known them.
As night labored on through murky darkness, Devon drifted asleep despite himself. Upon awakening in the faint, blue-toned light before dawn, he looked out with relief at the town of Dover, its black silhouette glinting here and there with lights like slumming stars. The boat was dawdling into harbor. The fishermen stood around the wheel, talking quietly and casting him vicious looks. Surprised that they hadn’t turned the boat around while he slept, Devon nodded to them as he crossed the deck to where Beth sat on an equipment box, sheltered by a makeshift canvas roof.
She was rigidly upright, clutching her satchel against her midriff protectively, but her eyes were closed, and Devon indulged in a moment of observing her without fear of being chastised. She must have been freezing in her light skirt and jacket. He wanted to wrap her in his arms—merely on the scientific principle of sharing body heat, of course. He wanted to remove her hat and unbind her glossy hair slowly, pin by pin. It would reach almost to her waist, he guessed with the expertise of a man who had unraveled many a coiffure. It would feel like silk against his skin. He’d brush it back, then tip her chin so as to kiss her soft, lucent throat until she opened those heavenly eyes and saw him…
Saw him.
His heart, decidedly unimpressed with such a dangerous notion, silenced all further thought. Removing his coat, he draped it over her.
“Wake up, angel,” he whispered. Then louder: “Wake up, we’re almost here.”
“Strix owl,” Beth muttered, then wakened with a jolt. She blinked up at him dazedly, her eyes brimming over with shadows.
For a moment, Devon forgot to breathe. The emotion visible in her gaze was so stunning, and made her so beautiful, so haunting, it was as if she’d risen from the sea like a forgotten daughter of Poseidon. But then she rubbed a hand across her brow, and when he saw her again she was guarded once more.
“I must have dozed off,” she said.
“We’re almost here,” he repeated. “Dover.”
“Already?”
“Already?” he echoed incredulously. “It’s taken at least three hours. This boat is a tub.”
She sat even straighter. “It’s an eighty-six-foot steam drifter with a tonnage of—” She stopped herself. “In any case, the gentlemen were kind to bring us at all.”
A laugh broke from him, and he hastily turned it into a cough. Solemn, Beth regarded his damp, crumpled shirt, then the coat enveloping her.
“This is yours,” she said. The words snagged a little on her breath. “You gave me your coat.”
“You looked cold,” he said gruffly. “I—I didn’t want you to be cold.”
His brain sighed in self-disgust. Beth touched the coat, and Devon found himself shivering like it was his skin she’d laid those finely gloved fingers upon. Her wondering expression might have broken his heart had she not quickly hidden it away.
“You look colder,” she said with a brief, shy glance at his damp shirt. “And that is a worrying cough you have.” She handed him back the coat. “But thank you for your kindness.”
Devon came so close to blushing he could feel its heat in his throat. No one had ever accused him of being kind before. Mesmerized, he reached vaguely for the coat and missed; it dropped to the deck. He barely noticed. In the dreaming twilight, he knew nothing but her.
