But Beth didn’t have the luxury of good manners. “I’m an ornithologist,” she called out, “and they’re trying to hurt the caladrius!”
A shocked gasp arose from the crowd. Close observers might have noticed the remarkable lack of feathers upon ladies’ hats and concluded that newspaper coverage of Birder of the Year had gone deep into the public psyche. Luckily, Beth was professionally trained in close observation.
“Please help me save the bird!” she cried.
At once, elegant ladies and somber gentlemen leaped forth to block the pursuit of Gladstone’s servants. A scuffle broke out. A furled parasol was employed, and a walking stick or two. One woman vigorously swung what appeared to be a handbag in the shape of a birdcage. Within seconds the servants had been brought to the floor.
Beth glanced back in amazement, then turned once more toward the exit doors…
“Excuse me!” said a young woman, darting in front of her. Beth skidded to a halt mere inches from collision. “I’m from the Ladies’ Home Journal. I’d like to interview you about—”
“Sorry, no time,” Beth said. Smacking the woman’s notepad so it skittered across the floor, she resumed her dash.
“Elizabeth, my dear!” Hippolyta herself appeared in a perfumed blur of flounces and lacy ruffles, as if summoned by Beth’s imitation of her. The woman was like a flock of seagulls at a beach picnic, Beth decided grimly—never driven off for long. Without even so much as a pardon, she skirted around her and kept going. Running faster now, she felt a breeze, promising freedom (and a lung infection from London’s air pollution), as the exit doors flung open…
And every beat of her heart came to a crashing halt.
—
Devon strode into the hotel lobby, his long dark coat billowing in dramatic hero style—and stopped abruptly, redness suffusing his cheeks as he stared at Beth. He’d been expecting to disrupt the award ceremony by leaping upon the stage to rescue the fair maiden just in the nick of time, but here she was, fair indeed (although not, scientifically speaking, a maiden any longer), and scowling at him furiously.
“You’re in the way,” she said, gesturing that he should move aside. Then she added, of course she did: “Sorry. Nice to see you. Please get out of my path.”
God, he loved her. Loved her so much he kept bringing God into it, and indeed was even at this moment contemplating a grand church wedding if such was required to have Beth Pickering in his life forever. When she’d vanished into the crowd at Sheffield’s train station, panic had almost overcome him in a way not even the deadly masked booby had been able to do. Glimpsing Hippolyta and one of Gladstone’s servants pushing her onto the train, he’d made a mad dash—but had been too late. Thumping on the side of the train had achieved nothing, and there’d not even been a carriage balcony for him to jump onto like a romantic daredevil. Although he’d known Gladstone would not hurt Beth, watching that train speed away had felt like part of his heart was being dragged away with it.
Traveling to London in agonizingly slow pursuit, he’d taken a room at the Minervaeum Club and spent two days trying to uncover where Gladstone was keeping Beth and the caladrius. Late on the second day, Gabriel had arrived, taken one disapproving look at the shambles of clothes, sheets, and dinnerware strewn about the room, another at Devon’s haggard, unshaven face, and sighed with exasperation.
“Why are you making a disaster out of this?”
“Because it is one!” Devon had replied in a rather hysterical tone he’d not have used had he known he’d be recalling the scene later.
“No,” Gabriel had said with stern impatience, “a disaster is when lightning strikes a Neolithic gravesite in Kent, disrupting the thaumaturgic wellspring thereunder and electrifying every metal object in the vicinity. Which is what happened this morning, and I’m heading there now to join the professional response. So let me make this quick. You know you’ll see your woman and your bird at the award ceremony. You have time to make a plan. Pull yourself together, all right?”
“All right,” Devon had muttered, feeling justly chastised.
So he’d made a plan, and tidied the room, and waited impatiently to rescue Beth.
Except she did not seem to want it.
“I spend half my life chasing deadly birds and the other half applying for funding grants,” she told him, chin raised at her favorite haughty angle. “I can rescue myself.”
“I know,” Devon said.
“Nice doesn’t mean incapable.”
“I know.”
“There was this one time in Greece when a lycanthropic owl—”
“Get them!” came a shout from behind her. Gladstone’s servants had almost wrestled their way out of the crowd. Hippolyta was creeping up with a net she’d had concealed in her hat, as if Beth were some kind of bird. And the young woman from the Ladies’ Home Journal was excitedly writing on a notepad as she watched the scene. Devon immediately drew his gun, aiming at them all.
“We’re leaving,” he announced. “And I will shoot anyone who tries to stop us.”
The entire crowd froze.
“Please don’t follow,” Beth urged Hippolyta in a tone of sincere concern. “I concluded matters between us days ago, while on the train to Oxford. Having to keep defying you is—well, redundant, and quite honestly confusing.”
Hippolyta opened her mouth to reply but was apparently all out of Jove. In her gobsmacked silence, only the rattle of her long, ornate earrings expressed just how furious she was. Devon backed himself and Beth to the edge of the lobby, where large double doors stood open to a tearoom.
“Why are we going this way, instead of out the front door?” Beth whispered from the corner of her mouth.
“I have a plan,” Devon whispered back. “Trust me.”
“Always,” she said—and the only reason he didn’t grab her face and kiss her right then was because
Turning, they ran into the tearoom.
And the crowd, with a roar, took up pursuit.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Avian magic is beautiful. That’s what makes it so dangerous.
Birds Through a Sherry Glass, H.A. Quirm
Beth managed through strength of will alone not to waste breath apologizing to diners and waiters as she and Devon raced between the white-clothed tables at a speed that disallowed autograph requests. Hot on their heels came Hippolyta, Gladstone’s servants, the Ladies’ Home Journal reporter, assorted ornithologists, and various hotel staff. Glancing back at them, Beth felt her straw boater topple, but there was no time to stop for it, or even to count exactly how many hats she had lost in the past week. Devon pushed aside a half-open door and they turned left along a service corridor, then right, Devon seemingly aware of exactly where to go. Passing a laundry room, he shouted, “Now!” and a hotel worker pushed a large trolley, piled high with bedding, into the corridor behind them.
