He shrugged and nodded.
Gabriel turned a page in the Times. “I assume it involves the woman you refuse to discuss, the one to whom you were villainous in Canterbury, judging from the report in this newspaper.”
Devon glared, to no effect. Gabriel merely turned another page, studiously ignoring him.
“Fine. Maybe the same woman,” he relented. “She’s my professional rival but I always seem to end up flirting with her.”
He propped his feet up on the opposite bench, and Gabriel shifted away from them, frowning.
“For a genius, you are remarkably obtuse. Has it occurred to you to just behave nicely with the woman?”
“Has it occurred to you to visit your wife?” Devon shot back.
Gabriel’s expression turned so icily lethal, it could have been employed by Her Majesty’s armed forces as a weapon of mass destruction.
“Forget it,” Devon said (the universal masculine code for I’m sorry but am too proud to actually say so). “I appreciate you coming with me. We should have brought Amelia along too, had an adventure of the cousins, just like old times.”
“What an abysmal idea,” Gabriel muttered. Even in childhood, it had been his stance that two was a crowd, three a catastrophe. Closing his newspaper, he folded it in a brisk, efficient manner. “I’ve agreed to use my standing as an Oxford University professor to get you into their ornithology department offices without suspicion, but there will be no adventure.”
“Come on, have some fun. We both know I saved you from the terminal boredom of listening to that lecture about the Foreskin Phenomenon—”
“ ‘The Fordwich Phenomenon of Thaumaturgic Erosion Trails, Illustrated by the Transportation over Loam of the Saint Augustine Limestone.’ ”
“I think I died a little just from hearing that title.”
Gabriel didn’t bother replying, instead setting his paper on the table at an eighty-nine-degree angle, then nudging it the final degree to perfection. Devon tried not to sigh.
He hadn’t expected to see Beth again. But when he’d arrived at Paddington Station, there she’d been, buying a ticket, looking as frazzled as he felt—but also gorgeous, gorgeous; how had he ever thought her merely pretty? Rossetti would go down on his knees to beg the honor of painting her. (Were he still alive, that is, resurrection being a step too far for Devon’s expensively educated imagination.) What was a mere scientist to do in response to such a woman?
Stalk her, apparently. He grimaced. Iniquity was not feeling as good as it used to.
He stood abruptly. “I’m going for a stroll.”
Gabriel stared at him with bemusement. “A stroll? On a train?” Then his eyes narrowed. “You’re going to spy on that woman.”
“Am not,” Devon retorted. Really, who was the idiot who’d suggested bringing his cousin on this trip? Oh yes, the same idiot who was now planning to sneak along the train corridor and spy on a woman because he missed her face, and the way she chewed her thumbnail, and how her eyes lit like a summer sky at the very mention of birds.
With a groan, he leaned against the compartment door. “Tell me not to do it.”
“Don’t do it,” Gabriel said.
“You truly think I shouldn’t?”
“You want to know what I truly think? Truly?”
“Yes.”
“I think that the Fordwich Phenomenon is a perfect example of how—”
Thud. The compartment door slammed shut on the rest of that sentence. Devon turned to head along the corridor, promising himself that after one quick glimpse of Beth, he’d go back to being an intelligent adult. No more allowing his heart any influence on—
His pulse erupted.
She was standing at the far end of the corridor, talking to an attendant. Sunlight coming through the train windows flickered like bright phoenix wings against her profile and illuminated her hair with a reddish halo. Angel was too feeble a word for her. She was heaven entire, embodied in a woman’s body. She was every superlative in every ridiculous emotional dictionary printed in a man’s heart. Devon wanted to walk up to her, take her in his arms, and feel the grit of his past turn to gold. But he could not move. Time had stopped, breath had stopped; he stared, entranced, wishing helplessly that she’d turn and smile at him. Then she actually did turn—
Panic gripped his body, flinging it through the open door of a compartment.
“Egad!” came a unified cry from two elderly women seated together therein. Hands fluttered; hat feathers threatened to take flight.
“Ahem!” came a loud throat clearing from two men seated opposite. Mustaches bristled; fingers tapped on briefcases.
Apologizing, Devon tried to back away, but the women took in his appearance with one swoop of their lorgnettes and began verbally assailing him.
“Sit down! Sit down at once, young sir! Rest those legs of yours. No need to be shy; this is a public compartment!”
“Actually, as we tried to tell you, it’s not,” said one of the men, to no avail. The women tugged on Devon until he dropped to the seat between them.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, poor lad,” said the woman to the left of him, patting his knee.
He smiled. “A celestial being, in fact. Beautiful, with eyes like the sky.”
“Ooh, this is a boy in love,” said the woman to the right, patting his other knee. “So why are you sitting with us instead of her?”
Because you practically kidnapped me, he wanted to reply, but instead increased the wattage of his smile, blinding them to anything beyond its charm. “She’s my rival in a competition.”
The women gasped. The men shifted in their seats, glancing at each other with taut silence.
“You’re not an othologist are you?” asked the woman to the right.
