“Go back to London, gentlemen,” Gladstone said, “and organize the award ceremony. I’ll see to it that Pickering behaves. If she doesn’t, she’ll lose her job. And I’ll provide Lockley with a sabbatical—behind the bolted door of my cellar. There will be no more shenanigans. No more making relations public. Just good old-fashioned ornithology.”
“But—but—you’re proposing to kidnap Mr. Lockley and blackmail Miss Pickering,” Mr. Fettick gasped.
Gladstone puffed out another smoke ring. “As I say, good old-fashioned ornithology.” He snapped his fingers, and three footmen stepped forward from where they had been waiting discreetly at the edge of the scene. “Show the gentlemen out,” he drawled in a bored tone.
As Messrs. Flogg and Fettick trudged despondently away, blood-curdling screams arose from the students.
“Wait!” Gladstone shouted, raising his hand. The footmen paused, and Messrs. Flogg and Fettick looked back hopefully. But Gladstone was squinting across the meadow at his frantic students. “Once you’re done,” he told the footmen, “bring me another pot of tea. I need liquid fortification; I have some failing grades to hand out.”
—
Back on the road, an hour after Messrs. Flogg and Fettick were thus dismissed, Devon stared with mute shock at the gap in hedgery through which Beth had disappeared. Three seconds later, his intellect snapped into service once more, and he leaped after her.
Plowing into a tangle of grasses beneath a heavy oak tree, he scanned the shadows ahead but saw no sign of Beth. Confused, he turned—and there she was, caught in the clutches of a dark-suited man against the back side of the hedge. The fiend pressed one black-gloved hand over her mouth, and in his other held a narrow, pointed object to her throat.
“Don’t come any closer!” he warned, “or I’ll use this!”
“It’s a pen,” Devon said.
“And I won’t hesitate to scribble on her!” the man growled. “She’ll not get the ink out of her skin for weeks!”
Beth’s eyes grew wide with alarm. But Devon calmly surveyed the man, thinking of all the ways he’d kill him for threatening Beth. The expensive suit and bowler hat, in addition to a briefcase set neatly on the ground nearby, reminded him of someone he’d recently seen. All at once, he realized: “You were on the train to Oxford.”
“Mmmm-mmm,” Beth said urgently from behind the gloved hand. Devon gave her a reassuring smile.
“Don’t worry, love, I’m going to—”
Alas, the exact manner in which he would have heroically rescued her cannot be related, for he was interrupted by Beth ramming her elbow back into her captor’s gut. As the man bent, crying out in pain, she slammed her fist up beneath his jaw. He staggered, she hooked her leg around his, some physics was applied, and in the next moment the man was thudding to his back on the weedy ground. His bowler hat tumbled off and rolled away.
“Eek!” the man squealed, cringing in terror. “Don’t hurt me!”
Devon stared openmouthed as Beth tilted her chin. “I apologize for the violence,” she said. “However, if people insist on equating my ladylike manner with powerlessness, they are to blame for the consequences. I wouldn’t be an ornithologist—not to mention a woman who went through years of schooling with mostly male classmates—if I wasn’t able to defend myself.”
She stared coolly down at the man, but almost at once her expression wavered. “Are you all right? I didn’t hurt you too much, did I? And, oh dear, I fear your hat may be scuffed…”
She hurried to rescue it, and Devon instantly moved forward, imparting a mild kick to the man’s leg.
“Up you get.”
The man scrambled to his feet, pale-faced and sweating. He performed a hasty bow, his sleek black hair flopping over his brow. “Please excuse my unorthodox behavior. I was worried you’d try to run away.”
“You’ve been following us since London,” Beth said as she brushed dirt off his hat and handed it back to him. “May we inquire as to your identity?”
“What she means,” Devon added, “is, who the bloody hell are you?”
“I certainly do not mean that,” Beth said indignantly. “There is no cause to be rude.”
Devon gave her an incredulous look. “You’re joking, right? He just attacked and threatened you.”
“For which he has apologized.”
“And you threw him to the ground.”
“For which I apologized.”
“Ha! You know, it’s possible to be too polite.”
“And sad to be quite so cynical.”
They stepped toward each other.
“I’m not cynical, I’m realistic,” Devon argued.
“Perhaps you need to imagine a little,” Beth said.
He blinked slowly, giving her a look absolutely overflowing with imagination, and she trembled as if he’d reached out and caressed her.
“Ahem,” said the man. Remembering his existence, they tore their attention from each other and back to him.
“Who are you?” Devon demanded.
The man’s eyes shifted nervously. “I’m with the Protection and Rescue of Enchanting Species, um, Service. We’re trying to rescue the caladrius, and you’re our only hope.”
“I’ve never heard of that group,” Devon said suspiciously.
“We’re a secret organization,” the man explained. “My colleague and I have just come from Professor Gladstone’s house—”
“Your colleague?” Devon looked around, reaching for his concealed gun before realizing he must have left it in his suitcase.
