“It’s not like this is a bird bred for domestication, learning tricks to enliven its existence. You’re depriving a wild bird of its natural self-expression, manipulating its magic for your personal gain, and making it sick in the process. I can’t believe you would do such a thing.”
“You’ve spent too long among field naturalists, my girl, if you don’t believe facts when they’re laid before you. I just told you I was doing it. And you can hardly condemn me. The funding alone will make me moderately well-off, to say nothing of all the free meals I’ll be given on tour!”
Beth shook her head, dismayed. “So this was IOS’s scheme from the start.”
“IOS.” Gladstone hissed a laugh. “They wouldn’t know their beak from their tail. I must say, though, the excitement over the caladrius that this competition has whipped up will be helpful indeed in attracting investors.”
He blew a smoke ring from his pipe. Behind him, patches of green mold were beginning to appear on the seat back.
“I won’t let you succeed!” Beth vowed.
“You have no choice,” Gladstone answered calmly. “You may be clever, but you’re just a girl.”
“I’m a doctor of—”
Gladstone snatched the pipe from his mouth. “You’re a girl. You could never best a man like me. And you might as well give up on Lockley coming to your rescue. He thinks you betrayed him to take Birder of the Year for yourself. He thinks you left him. You know he does.”
Swallowing back a heated reply, Beth forced herself to focus on the spreading mold. Tiny yellow flowers blossomed here and there amid it. Peep peep, the caladrius cried as it emitted a surfeit of erratic magic. From the corner of her eye, she noticed the burly servant turning pale. Gladstone just blew another smoke ring.
She glared at him, wishing she had enough courage to shout that he couldn’t have been more wrong! Devon trusted her. They’d walked together in the sunshine, swinging their hands. They’d kissed (et cetera) in the bird-lit night. And his eyes had lit like burnished copper when she told him that she loved him, revealing a depth of emotion surely no man could counterfeit. He would trust her just as she trusted him. Undoubtedly he was even now searching the crowd on the station platform, desperate to find her. And when he failed to do so, he’d realize that she’d been kidnapped.
Wouldn’t he?
Or would his skeptical heart assume the worst?
As the nasty little fear crept forward, sharp-clawed and sneering, a bitter taste filled Beth’s mouth. She realized she was chewing her gloved thumbnail. Grimacing, she removed it from between her teeth and instead laid her hand on the birdcage, as if doing so might somehow reassure her and the caladrius both. Her palm tingled beneath the glove. Her throat tightened.
No, Devon would trust her. She refused to believe otherwise. After all, what good was love if it failed at the first uncertainty?
Shoving the fear away, she lifted her chin and stared with supercilious disgust at Gladstone (specifically, his shoulder, since her newfound courage was still a little wobbly).
Toot!
The train began to move. And just like that, Beth learned the most important lesson of all: it didn’t matter if someone loved you, trusted you, was sure to come and rescue you, when the locomotive power of steam engines was involved.
There now existed a real and present danger of her winning Birder of the Year, and only she could save herself from it.
Thud! Thud! Someone outside bashed on the compartment door, no doubt furious that the departure time had been advanced without warning. “Stop!” they shouted, confirming her hypothesis. Gladstone chuckled, puffing on his pipe with triumphant equanimity, even as the vine reached out to twine around his bowler hat.
Closing her eyes, Beth repressed tears as the train carried her south toward London and tenure.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When the going gets tough, find a shortcut.
Birds Through a Sherry Glass, H.A. Quirm
Three days later
“What a dark moment!” Mr. Flogg groaned, staring into the depths of his coffee. Across the table from him, Mr. Fettick sighed in solemn agreement.
“I don’t see why,” Schreib said, taking the last cream puff on the three-tiered communal plate. “Miss Pickering will win Birder of the Year, which is at least half of what you wanted, and IOS is happy.”
“But the British Tourism Board is not,” Mr. Flogg said. “It was supposed to take longer than this for the caladrius to be ‘captured,’ so people throughout Europe would be inspired to come across, join in the excitement. And newspaper editors are not happy, since the grand romance they’d been touting has just fizzled away. Not even a dramatic breakup, not even a tragic but interesting death. Furthermore, our plan for a proper finale—our expensive, already-paid-for plan—has been ruined. We’ll be lucky if anyone employs us after this debacle.”
“I’m going to miss sitting in coffeehouses, arranging great adventures,” Mr. Fettick said.
“I’m going to miss having an income,” Mr. Flogg added.
This time, they both sighed in mournful unison.
Schreib cast a bemused glance at Cholmbaumgh, who shrugged. “But it’s not over yet, is it?” the latter ventured. “They haven’t handed out the award.”
“And Mr. Lockley hasn’t rushed to Miss Pickering’s rescue,” Schreib pointed out.
Mr. Fettick raised his gaze to Mr. Flogg, eyes glinting with hope. “That’s true. ‘Hope Remains.’ What say you, Otis? Do you think we can go for one more spin?”
Mr. Flogg smiled, reaching across the table to grasp Mr. Fettick’s hand. “Chester, let’s dance.”
—
Beth woke to the sound of sparrows. They were scratching at the windowsill, and for a moment Beth thought she was home again in Oxford, with the city awakening reluctantly to another week of lectures, and her landlady downstairs burning the breakfast eggs. But the pillow beneath her head was soft, wrapped in silk, and she did not smell the familiar greasy smoke.
Her mind lurched through time (pausing here and there as it spotted an interesting bird), then crashed into the present. She sat bolt upright, looking around blearily at the hotel room in which Gladstone had locked her three days ago while word went out that the caladrius had been captured by “The Extraordinary Professor Pickering from Oxford!”…because “Girls Can Do Anything (with a Quality University Education)!”…and that Birder of the Year would be awarded in the same hotel’s conference room.
Strong light suggested that the morning was well advanced—unsurprising, since she’d sat awake most of the night worrying about the caladrius, Devon, the newspaper headlines, the Dover railway clerk’s horse, and even Hippolyta. She’d paced the room, tried for the sixteenth time to pick the door’s lock, considered screaming for help again although it had achieved nothing thus far, and torn her fingernails in what she knew was a futile effort to open the bolted window. She’d even waved to passersby on the road below, not caring that such behavior was the height of vulgarity. But no one had seen her to be scandalized, let alone to rush in and perform a rescue. Finally, near dawn, she’d slipped into a troubled sleep.
