Chapter Four
A wise woman allows nothing to ruffle her feathers; she is the ruffler of feathers.
Birds Through a Sherry Glass , H.A. Quirm
Across the street from the Musée des Oiseaux Magiques, in a quaint little coffeehouse, two gentlemen with identical black suits, bowler hats, and brushlike mustaches sipped black coffee as they watched the crowd disperse.
“That couldn’t have gone better, Mr. Flogg!” declared one. “?‘A Triumphal Success!’?”
“It was all we hoped for,” said the other. “Did you see that man, Mr. Fettick?”
Mr. Fettick nodded, his eyes shining with the memory. “Tall, dark, and handsome indeed. We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect hero to walk into our little trap. Cheers!”
“Cheers!”
They raised their coffee cups in mutual congratulations.
Just then came the sound of a throat being cleared with the discomfort of someone who is about to eat crow. At the table behind them, a man sitting hunched in a trench coat, hat brim pulled low, glanced around the otherwise empty coffeehouse. “The blackbird has landed,” he whispered intensely.
“Did you hear someone speak, Mr. Fettick?” asked Mr. Flogg.
“I’m not sure, Mr. Flogg,” replied Mr. Fettick.
“Hmph.” The man rose from his chair and scuttled to sit at their table. Glancing around nervously once more, he pulled the hat brim even lower.
“Good job, men,” he murmured as Messrs. Fettick and Flogg sipped coffee. “I admit, I didn’t like your plan at first. Too grandiose.”
Mr. Flogg gave him a tight smile. “Monsieur Badeau, if the International Ornithological Society wants to create more interest in ornithology and encourage university enrollments, something truly attention-grabbing is required.”
“?‘More Bang for Your Birders,’?” Mr. Fettick added, and Mr. Flogg jabbed a finger at him in agreement.
“I know, I see that now,” Monsieur Badeau said. “Indeed, when the Fotheringham sisters came out with the bird in their—”
“No,” Mr. Flogg interrupted, shaking his head definitively. “Not them.”
“But they caught the lapwing.”
“I don’t care if they caught seven lapwings; for your competition, you need the kind of winner who will attract a broad audience. You need that man.”
He pointed out the window, and although the street was now empty, they all knew whom he meant.
“That man was Devon Lockley,” Badeau said darkly. “He’s a complete rascal. Copious brainpower but all he wants to do is enjoy life instead of spending his days in the noble pursuit of writing scientific papers for his peers to argue over. It’s disgraceful. And while he may be an Englishman and a professor at Cambridge, he was educated at Yale. Yale! The place isn’t even two hundred years old! It barely qualifies as a community learning center.”
“He’s an Englishman?” Mr. Flogg repeated. “What a bonus! With the British Tourism Board helping to fund this competition, we couldn’t really set up a foreigner to win International Birder of the Year.”
Mr. Fettick sighed happily. “A university professor, handsome, athletic, with simply divine legs—”
“Ahem,” Mr. Flogg interrupted.
“—in summary, this Devon Lockley is ‘An Eagle Among Sparrows.’ Young people will flock to university ornithology courses just to be like him.”
Badeau muttered something inaudible that nevertheless perfectly encapsulated the attitude of a man for whom “athletic” means walking from the lecture theater to the tea station three times a day. Then he huffed in surrender. “Fine. But someone’s going to have to recover that lapwing. You know what the boss will say if you lose his precious bird. Feathers will fly, and not in a good way!”
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Flogg murmured with professional reassurance. “There’s no need for concern; we know what we’re doing. That’s why IOS employed us, after all. The plan is set, journalists have been alerted, and our agents will see to it everything goes smoothly. Just relax, monsieur, and wait for the enrollments to, ha ha, roll in.”
“But what about the girl?”
Messrs. Fettick and Flogg exchanged a confused glance. “Girl?”
Badeau flicked a finger toward the museum. “Beth Pickering. She was standing there at the door.”
“I thought she was just a museum employee,” Mr. Flogg said.
“She’s an Oxford professor. Moreover, she’s a genius when it comes to birds.” Badeau paused, frowning. “I wonder why she left with Lockley.”
“Perhaps they’re lovers,” Mr. Flogg mused, staring out the window as if he could still see Beth and Devon on the doorstep.
The monsieur barked a laugh. “An Oxonian and a Cantabrigian? Never! ‘Rivals’ would be more likely.”
Mr. Fettick raised his eyebrows at Mr. Flogg, whose mouth began twitching. “Rivals, you say? The pretty lady and the dashing young man?”
Badeau nodded solemnly. “Pickering is entirely capable of beating Lockley to the bird, regardless of your plan . If you want to knock her out of the competition, make sure you get to it quickly—and quietly, so there’s no scandal.”
“Oh, I think we know exactly how to handle this,” Mr. Flogg said. Mr. Fettick chuckled.
“Good.” Badeau frowned, glancing around yet again. “This conversation never happened,” he said, then slunk back to his table to brood.
—
“By Jove! That’s dastardly!”
Hippolyta stared at Beth over the stacks of luggage in their hotel suite. “Vanellus carnivorus?” she exclaimed. “It’s a miracle no one was killed. Oberhufter has gone too far this time!”
“Absolutely!” Beth agreed, looking around for a pot of tea to soothe her jangling nerves. She couldn’t seem to stop recalling the danger she’d just been through: Devon Lockley’s flashing grin, the feeling of his hand over her mouth, and, oh yes, the deadly lapwing that had tried to slaughter them.
“I will be speaking to the authorities upon arriving in England!” Hippolyta declared. “Criminal behavior cannot be tolerated.”
“Yes,” Beth said. And when Hippolyta glanced at her oddly—“Er, I mean no?”
Hippolyta’s eyes narrowed. “You seem discombobulated, Elizabeth. Your hat is askew, to say nothing of your vowels.”
Beth checked again for a pot of tea, or a cup of tea, or even a tea bag she could chew on at this point. “Being chased by a carnivorous—”
“It is that Cambridge professor, isn’t it? That Devil Lovely.”
“Devon Lockley,” she tried to say, but Hippolyta was already half a sentence ahead of her and moving fast.
“He is a blighter. I heard he spent the past few years in America and only recently transferred to Cambridge. Apparently the Yankees gave him a scholarship when he was fourteen, on account of his genius.”
“Genius,” Beth scoffed.
Hippolyta nodded in agreement. “Those upstarts wouldn’t recognize true genius if I gave a lecture in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. It’s no wonder he’s so arrogant. Mark my words, Elizabeth, there’s nothing worse than a conceited person! Besides, he may have been born innocent,” (she sounded dubious as to this) “but anyone associated with Oberhufter is soon corrupted. The way he stole the caladrius call from you—”
“The Fotheringham ladies did that.”
“Cahoots!” Hippolyta shouted. Then recollecting that complete phrasing was usually helpful: “They were in cahoots with each other, I am sure of it. They and Lady Trimble and the whole diabolical cadre of bird snatchers.”
Beth did not point out that she and Hippolyta belonged to the same cadre. The first unspoken rule when it came to Hippolyta Quirm was that honesty seldom represented the best policy. (The second rule: it was tea in her silver flask, regardless of smell, color, or that half-empty bottle of rum sitting on the shelf. Which also handily illustrated rule one.)
“I’m certain you are right,” she murmured with only the smallest twinge of conscience. Devon might be guiltless in this matter, but she did not like the man, nor respect him, nor desire in the slightest to slide her hand through his wayward black hair. He was a bird-stealing fiend, never mind his various charms! They were fiends too, the whole lot of them! And she was a mature, sensible woman, despite the evidence of this paragraph.
She sighed, her heart drooping.
“Buck up, dear!” Hippolyta boomed. “I have—we have a caladrius to catch, and no unscrupulous men shall stop us. Fortune favors not only the brave but the decent and honorable!” She thrust out her hand sidelong, palm up. “Ticket!”
One of the three footmen standing to attention behind her stepped forward with a small card, which he placed tremulously in her hand. Hippolyta passed it to Beth.
“Here is your train ticket. The hotel maid has packed your things, although there is still much to organize before we leave.”
Beth inspected the first-class ticket amazedly. “How did you manage to get this so quickly?”
“I stole it from Oberhufter’s room.”
—
That evening, Herr Oberhufter himself, along with a rather weary Devon, departed H?tel Chauvesouris for the Gare du Nord station. A gentleman of Oberhufter’s caliber does not need anything so trifling as tickets to secure passage on a train. (Especially if he blackmails the railway company president into giving him free travel.)
They proceeded along the seventh-floor corridor toward an elevator, trailed by their butler, valet, and two footmen pushing a luggage trolley. Dinner had been a light, hasty affair, and Oberhufter was munching on an emergency cheese sandwich as he walked. But as the elevator door opened before them with a jaunty bing , the sandwich drooped, half its contents falling to the floor.
“Mein Gott!” Oberhufter shouted.
“Huh,” Devon added more succinctly.
Misses Fotheringham lay moaning on the floor of the elevator chamber, bestrewn with lapwing feathers. The bird itself was nowhere to be seen.
“What happened here?” Herr Oberhufter demanded.
A Miss Fotheringham hauled herself to her knees. “Masked man in a black suit,” she said, spitting a feather from her mouth. “Attacked us. Took the lapwing. Sister, are you alive?” She grasped the other Miss Fotheringham’s shoulders, shaking her.
Oberhufter waved his sandwich impatiently. “Never mind all that! Focus on what’s important, Elvira! Where is the caladrius call?”
“Gone!” Miss Fotheringham cried as she slapped her sister’s face. “Wake up, Ethel! Wake up!”
Ethel was in fact awake and yelping at being struck, but this did not daunt Elvira, who continued slapping, shaking, and at one point punching her sister. Oberhufter turned away as the elevator door slammed shut on the scene.
“Who was that masked man?” he demanded of the world in general.
Devon shrugged a reply. In truth, he was rather surprised by this evidence that Oberhufter hadn’t been behind the lapwing attack in the museum after all.
The man bit heavily into his sandwich. “I’m shocked!” he declared, although it sounded, through the mouthful of bread, more like he was shoffed. “This is the work of that reprehensible Quirm woman, I guarantee it. Well, well, Hippolyta. I take my hat off to you. If I was wearing a hat, that is. And if you were here. And if you wouldn’t just steal the hat to whack me with it.”
He chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then looked around with sudden concern. “Where is my hat? Someone fetch me a hat! At once! And why for the all the sausages in Germany are you just standing there, Lockley? Summon the elevator!” Taking another bite of sandwich, he muttered about dumb associates (or possibly “yum, opiates!” which might explain quite a bit).
Devon pressed the elevator button. Bing! The door slid open to reveal Misses Fotheringham wrestling on the ground, hands around each other’s necks. Oberhufter stepped in, moving to one side so Devon could enter next and the servants thereafter, maneuvering the trolley. With such a crowd, Misses Fotheringham were forced to relocate their skirmish to the rear of the chamber.
“Let’s get moving!” Oberhufter demanded as the valet placed a hat upon his head (having first surreptitiously removed the one already there). “The caladrius won’t catch itself!”
A footman reached for the control button to close the door—
“Hold that elevator, by Jove!” boomed a deep, galumphing voice. Oberhufter spat out a mouthful of chewed sandwich, which struck the footman’s cheek then slid down the front of his uniform. The footman did not so much as blink. He held the door open as Mrs. Quirm swooped in like an exotic bird-of-paradise that had just flown through a haberdashery store, and peremptorily employed her furled umbrella to clear space within the chamber. She was followed by Miss Pickering, more discreetly attired in a simple beige traveling suit, its sleeves barely puffed. With her chestnut brown hair gathered tidily beneath a straw boater and delicate spectacles settled on her nose, she looked so much like a schoolteacher, every man in the elevator stood up straighter.
“Sorry, pardon me, thank you,” she murmured. But her attention was focused on a book she held open in one hand, and Devon doubted she even knew whose company she’d joined. Whatever it was she read filled her eyes with enthrallment, and as she turned a page she seemed to hold her breath in anticipation. Watching her, Devon found himself holding his own breath too.
He was being foolish; he knew it. The woman might be pretty, but she was also a rival in the field, an academic foe, an associate of the unscrupulous Hippolyta Quirm, and so very pretty the air around her seemed to glow. The spectacles alone made him want to kiss her until they fell off invite her to dinner at a nice seafood restaurant. He could still feel her warm, soft lips against his palm from when he’d hushed her in the museum’s basement, and his nerves tingled, begging to touch her again.
“Atrocious!” Oberhufter shouted. Devon jolted, then realized the man was complaining about the ladies’ servants, who were angling an overburdened luggage trolley into the elevator. “Typical Quirm behavior! Taking up all the space! I might have known!”
(“Aagh, that’s my hand someone’s standing on!” cried a Miss Fotheringham.)
“You know nothing!” Hippolyta shouted back at Oberhufter. “Your head is emptier than a cuckoo’s nest!”
Rolling his eyes, Devon just happened to glance again at Beth Pickering and caught her staring at him with startlement and—was that interest? His pulse leaped. But she immediately jerked up her chin, tightened her expression into haughtiness, and pivoted on a heel to face the elevator door. Devon grinned. With a side step and a little angling, a little shoving at the luggage trolley, he insinuated himself into the space beside her. She was so rigid, a person could use her as a ladder for observing bird nests. She stared at her book with such fierce intent it was obvious she saw not one word on the pages. Devon weighed whether he should nudge her or whisper in her ear.
He had not yet decided when she turned a page in a crisp, emphatic manner that warned him to try neither, on pain of being publicly educated as to his flaws. With any other woman, he might have taken this as a challenge, but there still existed some question as to just how sincere she’d been when she said she wanted calm waters. Veering on the side of gentlemanly caution, a neighborhood he seldom visited, Devon shoved his hands into his coat pockets, where they could not get up to any mischief.
“Hurry up!” Hippolyta shouted, banging the tip of her parasol against the elevator floor. “I have yet another award to add to my pile.”
The door slid shut with an ominous clank. A footman moved the control lever, and with a tremor, the chamber began its descent. Beth tipped toward Devon, then righted herself mere inches before a delightful collision could occur. Devon’s body flashed hot. The woman smelled of lavender and pencil shavings, as if she’d just come from hiding in a bush to sketch birds. She was the perfect height for him to cuddle her close and kiss the top of her head—and the moment Devon thought this, he suddenly longed to make it happen.
“Such codswallop!” Oberhufter shouted. “Your pile will be a mere pebble compared to my collection!”
“Funny you should mention a pebble,” Hippolyta retorted, “since we all know that is the size of your—”
“Cheese sandwich, anyone?” a footman interjected loudly.
Devon angled his head toward Beth so that he might see what she was reading. Immediately, she closed the book by clapping her hands together. The resultant thud served to reprove him—or, at least, would have, had he any scruples. Instead, he touched one finger to the book and tipped it in her hold so he could see the title.
Behavioral Ecology —he read in the two seconds before she tipped the book back. He met her fierce gaze, and the air between them grew so charged, Nikola Tesla could have invented three things just by looking at it. Without blinking, Devon tipped the book again.
—in Ornithological—
Beth yanked it with such force away from his reach that she dropped it. A furious little sigh expelled from between her lips, and it was all Devon could do not to grin with triumph at having provoked her.
“Rotten blighter!” Hippolyta shouted.
“Harridan!” Oberhufter retorted.
Bing!
The elevator juddered to a halt at the fifth floor and its door opened. Everyone turned their heads to stare at two ladies waiting in the corridor. Both were resplendent in the latest fashion, hats magnificently plumed, feather boas hanging in a bright froth about their necks.
“Good afternoon,” one said pleasantly. “Is there room in there for us?”
Hippolyta frowned. “Are those ostrich feathers you’re wearing?”
“Rainbow ostrich, from South America,” Beth identified from over the rim of her spectacles. “Only five hundred of the species still alive.”
“And is that a liar-bird quill in your hat?” Oberhufter demanded, brandishing his sandwich.
The women glanced at each other, then laughed. “Who are you?” one asked. “The fashion police?”
“No,” Hippolyta replied ominously. “We’re ornithologists.”
“Oh dear,” murmured the first woman, growing pale, but the other stared them down.
“I purchased this feather from a reputable ornithologist in Paris!” she proclaimed.
“No, you purchased it from a smuggler,” Oberhufter said.
“You should probably run while you can,” Devon advised with a grin.
Squealing, the women turned and fled.
“Dreadful!” Hippolyta and Oberhufter exclaimed in unison. Then, exchanging a startled look at this agreement, they immediately scowled again.
“I heard you plagiarized your book!” Oberhufter shouted.
“I heard you plagiarized your personality!” Hippolyta shouted in return.
The door slammed shut, the elevator resuming its descent.
Devon crouched to retrieve Beth’s book from the floor, thus narrowly avoiding being struck by Hippolyta’s parasol as she thrust it toward Oberhufter.
“You’re a thieving beast!” she growled, whacking the hat from the man’s head.
“You’re predictable!” Oberhufter retorted, grabbing hold of the end of the parasol and attempting to wrangle it from her.
Rising again, Devon managed, purely and innocently by chance, to be standing even closer to Beth. He handed her the book and she took it with a nod of thanks, inspecting it for damage before securing it in her traveling satchel. The spectacles followed, and Devon looked around for some reading material so he could induce her to put them back on again.
“Aaargh!!” Mrs. Quirm roared, prodding Oberhufter with her parasol.
“Aaargh!!” Oberhufter roared, crashing back against the elevator’s wall. The chamber shuddered, causing Beth to stumble. Devon automatically put a hand against her waist to steady her.
He expected that she’d move away, but she didn’t, and electricity sizzled through him, rousing instincts a man really didn’t like experiencing in a crowded space. He wanted to undress her brain, stroke her perspective, make her gasp out the most fascinating theory she hid from all other men. (He also wanted to kiss the hell out of her, but that went without saying.) Only the steely willpower developed over years of bird-watching in icy rain, and teaching undergraduates first thing Monday mornings, kept him from drawing her closer to his side.
“And furthermore—!” Hippolyta declared.
“Pigs will fly,” Oberhufter interrupted, “before you win Birder of the Year!”
“I say, do you mean the hog parrot of Borneo?” Elvira Fotheringham piped up from the floor.
“Oh, be quiet, sister,” Ethel Fotheringham snarled. They began wrestling once more.
Beth’s eyes widened as she realized the sisters’ presence. She looked around like she expected the lapwing to leap up and begin an attack; not seeing it, she turned to Devon with a quizzical frown. He just met her gaze silently, his mouth curving up at one edge. Ask me and I’ll tell you. Say my name and I’ll give you all you want.
She did not speak, but neither did she turn away. Devon’s smile faded. Their mutual gaze deepened. Had a lapwing indeed been in the elevator, it would have been fricasseed the instant it took flight.
“You will never beat me, Oberhufter!” Hippolyta roared, flailing her parasol with such fury it knocked the hats from two footmen and nearly put out the eye of a third.
“Just wait, woman!” Oberhufter growled, throwing his sandwich wildly. All the servants ducked. “ Mein Gott! I’ll have you over my knee yet, and then you’ll know a beating like you’ve never had before!”
Instant shocked silence filled the chamber. As the elevator thunked to a halt, a footman had the door open so fast one might suspect him of possessing superhuman strength.
Hippolyta stepped to the threshold of the chamber and swung about, skirts whirling, to glare at Oberhufter. The elevator door slid across to collide with her, but she did not move even so much as an inch. Devon was only aware of this at the periphery of his attention, however, for he could not seem to look away from Beth. Nor, apparently, could she break whatever force kept them locked together.
“When I am once again Birder of the Year,” Hippolyta intoned, “I shall have your name stricken from the ranks of the Ornithological Society, Oberhufter!”
The door withdrew slightly, then banged into her again.
“When I am Birder of the Year,” Oberhufter shouted, “I shall have you banned from ever picking up a birdcage again, Quirm!”
Devon blinked. A ripple went through Beth’s expression in response.
“Heinously gormless faradiddling cockalorum!” Hippolyta roared with a tour de force of English eloquence, while the door tried in vain to force her out of its path.
“Gehirnverweigerer!” Oberhufter’s voice made the servants cower.
“Ahem.”
Devon turned his head, as did everyone else, to see a dark-suited man in a bowler hat standing in the hotel lobby, holding a briefcase and folded newspaper, politely blank-faced behind his mustache as he awaited his turn to use the elevator.
Mrs. Quirm harrumphed, and whirling, she stormed off.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Beth said politely, and followed.
Devon flinched at the sudden loss. He reached out unthinkingly to stop her, or even just to touch her one more time—
But she was gone.
“B?h,” Oberhufter said as the ladies’ footmen hastened to exit with their luggage trolley. “The sooner I am Birder of the Year and get to gloat over that woman’s tears of defeat, the better.” He clapped his hands. “Another sandwich! Now! More cheese this time!”
“Aaargh!” cried Elvira Fotheringham as her sister pounded her head against the floor.
Devon sighed. Another lapwing feather drifted past, scenting the air with vanilla, blood, and wicked magic. Watching it, he had a sudden premonition that this was going to be a long summer indeed.