“I see,” Beth murmured. She couldn’t remember having mentioned her business but clearly must have. Picking up her suitcase, for she was in a hurry to settle in, then visit the dining room, she turned—
“I can’t believe I’m talking to such a famous orothologisist!” the clerk exclaimed.
Well, perhaps she could spare a minute or two. She turned back with a smile—
“I squealed out loud when I read about you kissing that other orothologisist on the train platform!”
Beth’s smile vanished, taking her good manners with it. “Excuse me, what?”
“And you look just like your picture!” As Beth watched openmouthed, the clerk rummaged behind the desk, producing a newspaper, which she proceeded to flap excitedly, almost smacking Beth in the face. “It’s today’s Evening Standard. Will you autograph it for me?”
“Picture? My picture is in the newspaper for kissing a man?!” Beth went so white, there existed some danger of her being reported as a caladrius sighting. Accepting the paper from the clerk, she stared in horror at the headline on its front page.
ROMANCE TAKES FLIGHT IN BIRDER COMPETITION
There followed a sensational account of this morning’s frostbird capture and her kiss with Devon. They even reported her name, presumably supplied by one of the other birders present at the Canterbury station. The fact that it was misspelled as Peckerine offered some consolation…but the even more factual fact that all her colleagues would know it was her took that consolation and bashed it into a miserable, blithering heap of woe.
This was all the fault of that reprehensible, bird-thieving, manhandling villain, Devon Lockley! Granted, she had consented to their kiss, even knowing that a newspaper reporter stood right beside them, but that was beside the point! Indeed, the point was so far away it appeared as no more than a smudge in the distance, whereas her outrage loomed overwhelmingly large.
Requesting that dinner be sent to her room, she went upstairs with a speed inspired by (a) significant aggravation, (b) terror that someone she knew would see her and ask about the newspaper article, and (c) aaaaagghhhh. Coming to the Hypatia Bedroom, she locked its door behind her and leaned back against the paneled wood, closing her eyes and trying to calm herself by imagining a beautiful scene:
Wringing Devon Lockley’s neck.
—
Meanwhile, Devon was not giving Miss Beth Pickering the slightest thought. He did not ruminate on her soft blue eyes. He did not recollect her scintillating intelligence, which in turn did not spark any degree of warmth whatsoever in his nether region. Furthermore, there failed to be a single moment in which he yearned for their reunion so that he might take her in his arms and kiss her with such a blissful thoroughness she forgot he was a villain. Instead, he spent most of the day shopping for supplies necessary to help him track the Beth…er, the bird.
Finally, late afternoon, he met with his cousin, Professor Gabriel Tarrant, at a geography conference in Kensington. Gabriel was listening attentively to an ancient lecturer drone on about some limestone block in some village somewhere and showed no pleasure in Devon’s sudden appearance. Certainly he refused to leave with him. An appeal to familial loyalty failed; a charming smile failed. Eventually Devon resorted to threats of telling Granny that Gabriel was being rude to him—upon which, his cousin grudgingly relented, accompanying him down the street to the Minervaeum Club. In its warm, book-lined, tobacco-scented Shakespeare Lounge, the two men sat in leather armchairs older than themselves, surrounded by a selection of England’s greatest minds (and the people in whom those minds were located), and Devon began a new round of appeals.
“I need your help with this Birder of the Year competition.”
“No,” Gabriel said.
“If—”
“No.”
Devon bit back a decidedly familial word. He and his cousin might have served as a mirror to each other were not Gabriel objectively more handsome, more orderly—and probably more intelligent, although no one could understand his explanations of thaumaturgic geography well enough to determine the matter. But their characters might have been two roads in a yellow wood: they could not have diverged more.
Behind his inscrutable facade, deep inside his almost midnight-colored eyes, Gabriel might have hidden a sense of whimsy; if so, however, he never revealed it. Once, when he was a child, a classmate called him Gabe. He’d responded with nothing more than a silent, unblinking look, whereupon the classmate immediately transferred to another school, and no one had risked being chummy with him again. Except Devon, that is. But then, Devon approached risks the way other people approached a warm, cozy bed at night.
Within their family, Gabriel, who was the elder by a year, got constantly held up as an example of what Devon himself could become (although whether this was meant as encouragement or a warning depended on who said it). But the fact that he was currently and fastidiously using a napkin to wipe the rim of his wineglass, whereas Devon had already finished half his own drink, demonstrated the unlikelihood of that.
“I’d ask someone else to help me,” Devon lied, “but you’re the only thaumaturgic geographer I know.” The fact that Gabriel had also been his best friend until they were separated by Devon’s being sent to America did not require stating. Both men knew it, and both men would have been horribly uncomfortable acknowledging it aloud, even between themselves. In that, at least, they were the same. Matters of the heart stayed in the heart, behind several locked doors and barricades.
“I need a list of sites in Britain where magic is especially concentrated,” he explained. “Thaumaturgic birds are often attracted to places like that, and the caladrius, being very powerful, is hopefully no exception. It’s reported to be a freshwater bird, so I’m particularly interested in lakes and rivers with strong thaumaturgic energy.”
“That’s confidential information,” Gabriel replied sternly.
“Which is why I’m asking confidentially.”
Gabriel gave him an all-too-familiar look of mingled confusion and aggravation. “That’s not how it works, Devon.”
“I know,” he answered easily. “And I’m prepared to continue twisting words and their meanings for as long as necessary until I get what I want, so you might as well save us both time and just say yes. For one thing, there are simply too many ways I can blackmail you into agreement. For example, when you broke Aunt Mary’s favorite—”
“I recall.” Gabriel frowned into his wineglass, where floated what was either a bubble or a speck of dust. Wrinkling his nose, he set the glass aside. “Fine. Yes.”
Devon grinned. “Cheers, coz. You’re the best. Are you staying here at the club while you attend your conference?”
“Mm.”
“Perfect. You get started writing down place-names, and I’ll buy you dinner. I haven’t seen you for months. We’ll have a proper chat.”
“Chat,” Gabriel echoed dourly. “First you want me to illegally share information; now you want to chat. I’m going to need more wine.”
—
It took Beth three drinks before she finally soothed her aggravation about the newspaper article. By the time she poured a fourth, thus emptying the teapot, her mind was ready once more to focus on the competition—mainly because her body was tired of traipsing down to the bathroom at the end of the corridor, thanks to all the tea. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she consulted her map of Britain, along with several newly purchased field guides, and took copious notes as she brainstormed theories about where the caladrius might be found. It seemed an impossible task, but she wasn’t England’s youngest professor for nothing.
“I shall be unrelenting until I win!” she declared, brandishing her pen like a sword. “Unrelenting and utterly ruthless!”
But you’re an angel, Devon whispered in her mind.
Crack!
Beth blinked in startlement as the pen hit the far wall. She hadn’t even been aware of throwing it. Rushing to check there was no damage to the wall, she picked up the pen, then turned again toward her work…
