“You have moss in your hair,” he said. “May I?”
She nodded mutely, and he leaned forward, his fingers gentle as they plucked bits of greenery from the tumbled strands. As he worked, not looking at her, he said lightly, “I like you. I like you a great deal. Frankly, anyone who doesn’t is a fucking idiot. And anyone who says cruel things, or uses silence as a weapon, is a bully who knows how to be violent without lifting a finger. Don’t blame yourself, sweetheart. It’s not your fault or your shame.”
And while her brain was trying to cope with that, her heart hyperventilating, and her memory preparing a full-on flood of tears, he added: “I promise I will never, ever want to hurt you.”
The words made such a warm glow within her, she saw it like stars in her eyes against the night landscape. But she had no idea how to respond. Thank you, Mr. Lockley, seemed too polite. Let me take off your clothes and demonstrate my gratitude, probably not polite enough. Finally, worried that too long a silence would offend him, she said, “Gosh,” and he smiled as he smoothed a stray lock of her hair.
“I know you won’t hurt me,” she continued. “You never have. You’ve been…” She paused, her breath catching as his fingers brushed against her cheek. “You’ve been aggravating, nettlesome—”
“Um,” he said.
“—and respectful, thoughtful, kind. I haven’t had to be nice with you. Perhaps that’s why I lov—”
She stopped, lacking the courage to finish that word. But Devon wasn’t a genius for nothing. He reached out again, cupping her face with his hands, looking almost distraught with emotion.
“No one’s ever said such things to me before,” he whispered, searching her gaze for a lie. “No one’s called me thoughtful or lov—” Now he stopped, swallowing hard.
“Loved you,” she dared for the both of them.
Something seemed to break in him, collapsing his expression. He closed his eyes, and Beth pressed her hand against the hard beat of his heart, wishing she could soothe it. “I’m not just being nice,” he told her, his voice as velvety dark as the sky. “I meant what I said. You can trust me.”
“I do trust you. You’re a good man.”
She leaned closer, wanting to kiss the humor back into him. But something flashed in the night behind his shoulder, closer than a star, brighter than a fragment of moonlight. Beth stared as the speck of light began to dance.
“What is that?” she breathed.
Opening his eyes, Devon looked only at her. He smiled. “That, darling, is my favorite bird.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
What I learned from birds in love: turn your heart into a dance.
Birds Through a Sherry Glass, H.A. Quirm
They went together into the deepening night. But after only a few yards Devon stopped, whistling an ethereal song Beth did not recognize. Then he turned back to her, smiling.
And behind him, a score of tiny stars blossomed in the dark.
Beth stared in wonder. Linaria ignis fatuus. The will-o’-the-wisp linnet, a vanishingly rare thaumaturgic species she’d only ever dreamed about. They danced around each other in silence, the disk of cartilage on their foreheads glimmering with beautiful, eerie magic. Devon stood beneath the near-invisible flutter of their night-colored wings, like a sorcerer who had roused them from the secret heart of England. His face seemed part of the magic: a moon to the avian stars. He looked at her with an expression Beth had never seen from another person before.
She remembered the first moment she laid eyes on him, a mere month ago, at the most boring birders’ meeting ever held. She’d glanced up from a dusty raisin scone and there he was, trying not to yawn as Professor Singh rambled on at him about mousetwitter claws. Something had stirred beneath her heart. She’d assumed it to be the one mouthful of scone she’d been foolish enough to eat, but now she understood it was the magic of this moment, reaching back through time to claim her.
Devon offered his hand, and she took it, stepping toward him like she was stepping into a spell. “Watch,” he whispered. And turning her gently, he wrapped his arms around her, keeping her snug as she observed the dreamy swooping dance of the birds all around them.
At first Beth stood rigid, unused to such treatment, but gradually she relaxed, leaning back against the strength of Devon’s body, inhaling its warm, musky scent. He tilted his head to rest it against hers, and she felt the drift of a sigh across her cheek.
They stood quietly, absorbed in beautiful magic. One half of Beth’s brain, the half that stored her education and considered tweed the height of fashion, wanted to fetch her field journal and begin making observational notes about the linnets. Luckily, the wiser half knew a romantic moment when it encountered one and refused to budge.
Devon began to stroke her arm, heating her through the cotton sleeve of her shirtwaist. The cozy atmosphere molted its feathery softness, revealing something far more provocative beneath. As Beth stirred restively, Devon slid a hand across her breastbone, then down the shirtwaist’s row of pearl buttons. Her skin beneath began to tingle. The places he did not touch began to ache with yearning.
“You’re not wearing a corset,” he said, surprised.
“I left it off today. It’s hard enough to breathe around Professor Gladstone without being tight-laced as well.”
“That’s very…”
“Practical?” she suggested.
“Tantalizing. Knowing there’s nothing more than fine cloth between me and your naked skin.”
There was only one adequate response to that: “Oh. Gosh.”
She felt his smile against her cheek. He tucked his fingers beneath the waistband of her skirt, then paused. “Yes?” he asked.
It would have sounded like the enchanted song of Lothario podiceps, had her brain not become so swathed in white lace wedding veils that it barely heard him. Her heart, however, was more perceptive.
“Have you ever seen a ghost owl?” she asked.
There followed a moment of silence. “I beg your pardon?” he said uncertainly.
“Do you have a large family?”
“Um.”
“What is your stance on the general enmity between museum ornithologists and field naturalists?”
