“Oh dear,” Beth said. “You’re going to hijack something.”
He laughed. “No. We simply have to make a run for it. We’ll head back down the way we came, and out the back door. You take the bird and keep going, no matter what happens.”
Beth’s expression grew wary. “And what about you?”
He cupped his hand against the back of her head and drew her closer, setting a kiss upon her forehead. “I’ll be right with you,” he said—at least, that is what Beth thought she heard dimly through her nerves’ delighted singing.
THUD!
With one enormous crash, the door broke open and the footman veritably tumbled into the room, followed at a more sedate pace by Gladstone. Beth did not spare a moment to assess the degree of anger on the professor’s face. She was running even before he’d fully entered the room.
“Out of the way!” Devon yelled as he led the charge, using all the authority vested in him by an organization whose goal was to
Hauling up her long skirt with one hand, Beth began a cautious descent of the stairs, the caladrius beating its wings frenetically within the cage and peeping at her to go more slowly while Devon, one step behind, practically vibrated with the desire for her to hurry up.
“Stop!” shouted the footman in their wake, proving once again his unfortunate lack of intellect. More unfortunate, however, at least for Beth and Devon, was that he made up for it with physical prowess: he’d run so fast, he would probably reach them in another few steps.
Glancing over his shoulder, Devon muttered a curse. “Keep going,” he told Beth. “I’ll catch up.”
Beth paused. “What—”
“Go!”
A lifetime of obedience forced her onward, around a bend, down another flight of steps. From above came a terrifying series of noises…thud! crash! “aarrgh!” thud! smack! “nooo!”…but she did not stop until she reached the ground. Racing past the closet in which she and Devon had previously hidden, she took a sharp corner into a musty, unlit corridor. At its end she arrived at an entryway cluttered with raincoats, galoshes, and rusted old cages. Opening its external door, she looked out to the lawn at the side of the house. Not far away was a hedge, some three feet high, and beyond that, a line of elm trees gleaming in the vivid morning sunlight.
Devon arrived, running straight for the door. His shirt was ripped at the collar and his hair disheveled, but he appeared otherwise unharmed. “Quickly!” he urged.
They sprinted across the lawn toward the hedge. Devon hurdled it without pause, but Beth struggled, hampered as she was by her skirts and the fact that the hedge was more than half her height. Taking the birdcage and setting it down, Devon helped her over—which is to say, half dragged her over, with a display of uncouth and decidedly unromantic handling that Beth was nevertheless grateful for under the circumstances. As soon as she was on her feet again, he picked up the cage and they dashed into the shadows among the trees.
“We have to get back to the village and catch that eleven o’clock train,” Devon said.
Checking the fob watch pinned to her satchel, Beth frowned. “It’s ten thirty now. We’ll never make it.”
Just then, with impeccable timing, voices sounded on the far side of the trees. Devon stopped so abruptly, Beth collided with him. He reached out automatically with his free hand to steady her, but his attention strained toward whoever was speaking.
“Damn it, you Arschgeige!”
“Desist from pushing me, by Jove!”
Beth and Devon shared a knowing glance. Moving forward cautiously, they noticed a narrow lane on the other side of the trees. Parked there was the curricle that had almost plowed into Beth earlier. Herr Oberhufter and Hippolyta Quirm stood a short distance from it, arguing.
“I’m not pushing you!” Oberhufter hollered. “I’m patting you!”
“Reprehensible liar!” Hippolyta retorted, smacking his arm.
“Ow!”
“Violent, pompous clodhopper!” She smacked him again.
Devon caught Beth’s gaze then tilted his head toward the curricle. She nodded. They crept between the trees, wincing with every crack of twigs beneath their feet, barely daring to breathe—although they probably could have sung a shanty in two-part harmony and they wouldn’t have been heard above the shouts of the field ornithologists.
“Idiot, I told you Gladstone didn’t have the caladrius! Your idea to follow Pickering and Lockley was a complete waste of time!”
“We only searched half the house! If you hadn’t worn an orange dress, we wouldn’t have had to flee when that chambermaid spotted us!”
“It’s not as orange as your face!”
This insult was not particularly fair, since Oberhufter’s face had in fact turned bright red. He grabbed hold of Hippolyta by the ruffles of the aforementioned orange dress and, pulling her hard against him, kissed any further vitriol from her mouth. Immediately, Beth and Devon dashed from the tree shadows. Climbing into the curricle as quietly as possible, they set the birdcage on Beth’s lap, she placed her satchel in front of it for protection, and Devon grabbed the horses’ reins.
“Oi! Stop!”
Glancing back, they saw Gladstone’s footman making hot pursuit through the trees. The command alerted Oberhufter and Hippolyta also, and they stared with shocked confusion as the curricle began to drive toward them.
“Lockley!” Herr Oberhufter shouted. “Was zur Hölle?!”
But there was no time for conversation. Devon urged the horses into a gallop. Beth, clinging to the bench seat with one hand and the birdcage with the other, heard only incoherent screams from Oberhufter and Hippolyta as they were compelled to leap into a hedge or else be run over. Had she ever diversified her education to include cultural studies, she would have appreciated the karma of the moment. Unfortunately, her only instinct was a British one.
“Sorry!” she called out.
Alas, judging from Hippolyta’s roar, she was not forgiven.
They sped along the sloping lane, sending birds flying up from the hedgerows in alarm and an elderly pedestrian into paroxysms of outrage at the side of the road. The footman gave chase for a while but was soon left in their dust, literally. As Beth tried to keep the birdcage safe despite the wild shuddering of the curricle, she heard nothing from beneath its cover and began to worry that the bird had expired from fright.
Within a few minutes, the lane descended at a steep angle toward the main road, and Devon slowed the horses. They trotted into the village.
“How long have we got until the train leaves?” Devon asked.
Beth reached for her fob watch—and blinked in surprise. The glass surface was freckled all over with tiny white crystals, as if some magical force had tried restoring its original state. But the only performer of magic in the vicinity was the caladrius, and according to all the information Beth had reviewed, its power was healing illness, not actual regeneration.
