Chapter Five
Integrity is the hallmark of the master ornithologist, trust me on this.
Birds Through a Sherry Glass , H.A. Quirm
The train arrived at Calais after midnight. Gas lamps lit the station, but the sea beyond was dark and still, and dampness made the air feel tired. A ferry waited to carry the train passengers on to Dover in England, and a veritable scrum had formed as everyone made the transfer. Beth clutched her satchel for comfort as she trudged along the dock, the noise and jostling of the crowd making her feel twitchier than a white-eyed hurricane sparrow. The day had been far too long, with far too many people in it (not to mention a deadly lapwing), and she wished she could hang back until everyone else had boarded the ferry. But it was going to be a matter of first on, best seated, and no one cared more about seating arrangements than birders. Should Hippolyta find herself farther from the exit than Mrs. Huang of the Chinese Avian Tracking Society, someone was liable to end up overboard.
Excitement for the competition ran high. Se?or Perez had glued yellow silk feathers to his wheelchair, Mrs. Nnadi’s hat bore a mechanical bird—at least until Miss Eliza Wolfe “accidentally” knocked it off with her next birder of the year flag—and Monsieur Chevrolet was for some reason outfitted in a Scottish kilt that only just covered his excellent thighs. (Beth noted several people staring at it intently, as if trying to manifest a sudden breeze.) Hippolyta, however, focused all her energy on Herr Oberhufter, some ten feet ahead. His luggage trolley was preventing her from overtaking him, and such was her frustration that she vibrated even more than an African sacred ibis in mating season.
Suddenly, the trolley met a crack in the dock’s surface and lurched to an abrupt halt. “D—!” said the footman, his curse reduced to polite punctuation by the clatter of toppling suitcases. The crowd swarmed past him. Oberhufter vanished from sight.
“Great galloping Jove!” Hippolyta exclaimed. Shoving aside two ladies wearing large so i ios badges, she pursued Oberhufter into the night, leaving Beth suspended in stunned astonishment.
“What a disaster!” cried the footman pushing their luggage trolley. Beth turned to give him a reassuring smile.
“Don’t worry, Samuel, we’ll just catch up with her on the ferry.”
“I mean, I can’t find Mrs. Quirm’s cosmetics purse!” The poor man was as frantic as a student who hasn’t studied for exams. “I think I must have left it on the train!”
“Oh dear,” she said. Hippolyta felt the same way about her cosmetic purse as Beth did about her satchel: like it was an extension of herself, containing the necessities of life. And while it might seem that Beth’s field journal, binoculars, and emergency supply of birdseed were more ornithologically valuable than mere toiletries, Hippolyta had once caught a poisonous goldfinch using a hairnet and rose-scented lip rouge, so Beth was not about to scoff.
“I can’t go back for it,” Samuel said. “I need to guard the luggage.” He gave Beth a wide-eyed, imploring look.
No , said her brain instantly as it contemplated the veritable forest of people, suitcases, birdcages, outdoor furniture, and at least one personal commode that she’d have to navigate in order to reach the train. But “Yes, all right,” said her mouth, of course. “I’ll fetch it.”
Samuel grinned. “Thanks, miss!” He waved to someone—at least, that was how it appeared, confusingly, to Beth, until he pointed at the locomotive, and she understood he was giving her directions. “If you go down the other side of the train, it’ll be quicker.”
“Hm,” Beth replied wearily. A drop of rain splashed against her hand; squinting at the sky, she winced as another fell onto her face. Samuel handed her an umbrella from the luggage trolley.
“Good luck,” he said. “I believe in you!”
A little taken aback by this enthusiastic declaration of faith in her purse-fetching ability, Beth murmured thanks, then hurried away. Moving around the head of the locomotive, she balked at how eerily quiet it was on the other side, between the train and the imposing terminal building. Darkness stretched before her, speared here and there by dim lamplight from a few carriage windows whose blinds had not been fully closed. She questioned the wisdom of proceeding, but there was no time to dither. The ferry would be leaving soon.
“Blast and botheration,” she muttered as she hurried alongside the train. Rain began to drizzle more steadily, requiring her to open the umbrella. Beneath its black oilcloth, the night seemed even more ominous. Beth paused, thinking that she really ought to turn back.
Suddenly, a low, sinister whistle slid through the darkness. Beth stopped, every hair on her arms rising. She knew that sound. A strix owl was calling out in distress.
Nonsense , she told herself. I’m imagining things. The strix owl was a vanishingly rare bird located solely in the Scottish Highlands. It would not be crying in the dark of a French ferry terminal.
And yet there went the sound again, coiling around her heart, making her shiver with a disconcerting chill.
She crept forward, listening intently. Perhaps a storm had blown the bird across the Channel. Perhaps it had escaped from an aviary. Whatever the case may be, she was constitutionally incapable of ignoring a bird in trouble.
Just then, the darkness ahead rippled. Beth instinctively edged closer to the train, angling her umbrella like a shield. A man was creeping along the side of the building, a small pipe between his lips. As he passed through a shaft of light, Beth recognized Herr Oberhufter’s secretary, Mr. Schreib (or possibly Schreib’s identical twin, her brain offered with a pedantry she really did not appreciate right now). He blew on the pipe, and once again the whistle of a strix owl echoed uncannily through the night.
I knew the bird couldn’t be here! Beth thought with rather smug gratification.
Er, please note that this is a trap , her brain countered, her heart pounding in agreement.
Another figure emerged from behind Schreib. “I wish they’d hurry up and get here,” he grumbled, huddling within a black trench coat. “I’m freezing.”
“Trust me, Cholmbaumgh, they’ll come,” Schreib said. “And then we’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
“But what if the footman couldn’t convince—”
“Trust me,” Schreib reiterated, and blew the whistle again.
“I almost feel sorry for Miss Pickering,” Cholmbaumgh said over the eldritch cry. “Nice lady. She’s not going to know what hit her.”
Beth gasped. The sound might have revealed her presence, but luckily at that moment both men chuckled in a manner she could only describe as unequivocally malevolent, and which a less educated person would call “nasty.” She urged herself to flee, but a lifetime of remaining perfectly still while watching birds had overdeveloped the habit, and she was frozen to the spot. Any second now the men would notice her, and all would be lost.
Suddenly, a hand clamped over her mouth. She had no time to panic before an arm came about her waist and she was being pulled against a strong, masculine body (or perhaps one of a lady athlete—Beth did not wish to judge). Her heels bashed against boot-clad legs and her umbrella swooped as she was hauled into the space between two carriages.
Supposing herself about to be murdered, Beth found her life flashing before her eyes. But it had not even finished going through her childhood before she was set again on her feet and turned around. The hand lifted from her mouth, to be replaced immediately with one finger. A dim strand of light from the station’s lamps showed that she’d been rescued by Devon Lockley.
He took her umbrella and closed it. The latch clicked slightly, and both Beth and he held their breath.
“Is someone there?” came Schreib’s voice. Its sharp tone seemed to echo with the smack of a fist. The sound of footsteps began to move slowly near.
Devon crouched down, pulling Beth with him, and they crawled under the wrought-iron gangway platform of one carriage. Huddled together, they barely breathed as Schreib approached.
“Hello?” the man called out. Beth watched wide-eyed as he stalked past the gap between the carriages, closely followed by Cholmbaumgh, who paused, glancing in, his expression writhing with shadows and smoky lamplight.
Beth’s life resumed flashing before her eyes—
And Cholmbaumgh shrugged, then moved away.
Devon exhaled in relief. Beth attempted to do the same, but the breath shuddered in her throat.
Devon grasped her hand in a firm grip. With his other hand, he stroked her arm. Outrageous! Rakishly scandalous! Actually quite soothing! Beth began to relax, despite being huddled closely with a scoundrel in a small, dark space.
Unchaperoned.
While danger stalked nearby.
For the second time that day.
She should pull away and hasten to the safety of a well-lit public space. But the prospect of being captured seemed more of a concern in that moment than her reputation, not to mention the fact that no one had touched her beyond her hands in years, and she was finding it more pleasant than she cared to admit. Perhaps sensing this, Devon advanced his ministrations, brushing a loose strand of hair away from her cheek.
Tingles went through Beth like a thousand tiny stars. She stared at the man, transfixed. His face was as faint as an albino owl in the darkness, his eyes some other nocturnal metaphor she could not summon from the sparkling haze that had been, merely ten seconds ago, a perfectly good brain. She wanted—
Nothing specific, actually. Just wanted , with a depth of feeling she’d experienced only once before, when a rare amphibian crow hopped across the sand in front of her. Obviously, the drama of the moment was to blame, since she had no desire whatsoever for Devon Lockley. He was an adversary in the field, an academic rival, an obnoxious villain with a gorgeous smile that came close to dissolving her kneecaps every time he turned it on her…
Beth felt herself drifting helplessly toward him…
He moved closer to her…
Toot!
They jolted apart in shock. For a moment, the world comprised nothing but shuddering heartbeats and rushed breath.
Toot! Toot!
“The ferry!” they gasped in unison. Scrambling out from beneath the platform, they emerged on the sea side of the train. Immediately, Beth spied Cholmbaumgh and Schreib—!!
—standing on the rear deck of the ferry, panting heavily from having done a mad dash, as the boat chugged out to sea. Workers were maneuvering the boarding ramp across the dock and wheeling away emptied trolleys.
“Blast and botheration and bloody hell !” Beth fumed.
Devon gave her an amused look. “Surprisingly well said, Miss Pickering. I don’t suppose you are any good at swimming?”
Beth felt her face grow white. “I’m sorry, but is that a joke? Are you joking? In this moment? Are you mad?”
“No more than any other ornithologist.”
“How can you be so calm in the face of this disaster?!”
His face creased in a bemused frown. “Disaster?”
“We are stranded on this dock,” Beth explained in the I-am-not-calling-you-an-idiot-but-that’s-because-I’m-nice tone she used when explaining to students, yet again, the basic metaphysical attributes of the plica semilunaris in prognosticating thaumaturgic passeriformes. “Although we escaped assault, that is small consolation under the circumstances. The others now have a head start in the competition. I’ve lost all my luggage apart from this one satchel, I doubt I’ve enough money on me for a new ferry ticket, and—” Her breath tripped in exhaustion. “It’s raining .”
Turning away from him, she tucked her hands under her armpits in a futile effort to warm them. A few dockworkers peered over curiously, but Beth could not summon even the basic courtesy of nodding to them. She stared out at the ferry, which was now no more than a blurred cluster of lights diminishing into the mist.
Thunk!
She jerked at the sudden sound. But it was only Devon opening her umbrella. He lifted it to shield her.
Beth turned to stare at him amazedly. He looked back with equanimity. The air between them, washed faintly gold from lamplight, glinted as raindrops drizzled through it. The sea’s whispering was interspersed with the bell-like sounds of halyards clanking against boat masts. Beth did not know whether she ought to take the umbrella in her own hand, or insist Devon share in its shelter, or just dive into the harbor and swim away so as to avoid embarrassment.
“Thank you,” she said as a last recourse.
“It’s the least I can do,” Devon said. “If I hadn’t noticed you lurking behind the train, I’d have walked into a trap. I should have known Oberhufter wouldn’t have left his binoculars on the train.”
“I wasn’t lurking,” Beth retorted. “I was pausing with a sensible discretion.”
Devon’s mouth quirked. “One day I’d like to read whatever dictionary it is that you use.” He tilted his head to regard her more seriously. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she said in Automatic British. “You think Oberhufter was behind this?”
“Actually I’m not sure. His footman may have sent me back to the train, but Oberhufter himself is not that sneaky. If he wanted to do away with me, he’d just have had me thrown off the train.”
“Why do you work with a man like that?” Beth asked curiously.
Devon shrugged. “My departmental head asked me to spend the summer helping his daughter train her pet falcon. In other words, spend the summer being maneuvered into marriage.” He shivered dramatically. “Chasing the deathwhistler with Klaus Oberhufter was a better option. It also meant I could ensure the bird ended up in a sanctuary rather than the weapons laboratory he planned to sell it to. Why do you work with a woman like Quirm?”
“I’m trying to prove a connection between psychic territories and the phylogenetic relationships of thaumaturgic birds,” Beth explained. “But I keep getting denied funding, so I need a field partner with resources. Hippolyta fit the bill.”
“According to Lady Trimble, she uses you as her personal servant.”
Taking umbrage at such an utterly ridiculous claim, Beth grasped the umbrella and stepped back. Devon kept a firm hold on her gaze, however, his eyes dark and amused and seeing far too much. Beth lowered the umbrella defensively. “Hippolyta respects my judgment,” she said, “and therefore relies on me.”
“She’d throw you off a cliff if it got her a bird.”
Beth thought of the several cliffs she’d rappelled down in order to inspect nests while Hippolyta stood at the top, shouting instructions. “I admire her ambition.”
“So you don’t think she was the one responsible for us being lured into a trap?”
“Oh, it’s entirely possible she was.”
“But you just said—?” He broke off, frowning in confusion.
“Hippolyta and I may be associates, but there’s no space for loyalty or friendship when it comes to ornithology.”
“That’s true.”
A lonely little moment of silence followed. Beth lifted the umbrella again, glancing at Devon. He stood beside her, hands in his coat pockets as he looked out over the sea. He seemed forlorn, and she surprised herself by feeling sympathetic toward him. Perhaps the man wasn’t completely bad. He’d just saved her life, after all. And more importantly, he’d kept the deathwhistler from a miserable fate.
“I have a little money,” she said. “Enough to buy us tea somewhere in town.”
Devon turned back to her, the forlorn mood replaced by an amused frustration. “Miss Pickering, we’ve just established the ruthlessness of ornithologists. You ought to leave me out here alone, wet and cold.”
Beth applied within for a witty response but came up blank. She was not used to playing with conversation—she was barely used to conversation at all. Unless a person was speaking about birds, or pointing to birds, or asking her to please tell them all the fascinating details she knew about birds, she generally avoided engaging. Moreover, inherent shyness, mixed with her attending university from a prodigiously young age, had not been conducive to her developing social skills. Even in Oxford’s ornithology department, as a female professor of twenty-four among predominantly old men, she seldom socialized beyond polite nods, observations of the weather, and joining in the occasional excitement about who stole Professor Humberton’s sandwich from the faculty lounge. And Hippolyta rarely required more than intermittent noises of agreement.
Besides, how was she supposed to be eloquent when the outrageous fellow didn’t even wear a tie, let alone the civilizing influence of a waistcoat? She tried for dignity but hit indignation instead:
“You are being presumptuous. Perhaps I intend some trickery that involves buying you tea.”
Devon took a step toward her. “Will you poison it?”
“I might,” she said, lifting her chin and absolutely refusing to retreat.
He set a finger beneath the rim of the umbrella, tilting it back. His eyes were full of dangerous promises as he looked down at her unblinkingly. “I might push you into the water,” he said.
Hot sparks went through her. “I might get you a croissant along with the tea,” she countered.
His mouth twitched. “I might tie you up, gag you, and put you on the next train to Istanbul.”
The sparks set fire to an unmentionable part of her body, and it was all she could do not to squirm. “You might,” she agreed, “but before you can, I’ll telegram my bank for funds to get you a ferry ticket.”
The twitch became a slanting smile. “Ah, I see the plan now. Bedazzle me with courtesy, then leave me in your dust. Very cunning, angel, but alas, I have my own money.”
Angel. Well! Really! Humph! Villain! And other emphatic words that sadly failed to halt the blush speeding toward her face! She’d never been called a nickname before (except in the deep privacy of her own imagination, that is, where she kept a list of suggestions should anyone want one, although no one ever did). She attempted a reply, but her voice seemed to have swooned.
“I’m sure I’ve enough to buy us cake along with the tea,” Devon continued, reaching into his coat pocket and withdrawing not a wallet but a small, narrow object.
“What the fuck?” he said, staring at it in shocked bewilderment.
Beth did not chastise him for this vulgar language, primarily because she was secretly thinking the same thing. “You have the caladrius call,” she said in a bland tone that concealed the emotional chaos swirling beneath it.
Devon looked at her with eyes that seemed even darker than usual, due to the pallor of his face. “I have no idea how it got in my pocket.”
“Sure you don’t,” Beth murmured sarcastically. Being nice did not mean being a complete idiot.
“I’m serious,” he insisted. “Would I lie to you?”
“Yes. You’d lie and steal my bird and send Mrs. Trimble to spy on me and—”
Splash.
Beth’s jaw fell as she stared at the midnight waters into which Devon had just thrown the caladrius call. “Why on earth did you do that?”
“To prove I wasn’t lying,” he said. “I genuinely don’t know why it was in my pocket.”
She turned her incredulous stare upon him. “So you just threw it away .”
He pushed a hand through his hair, frowning slightly and biting his lower lip as he considered the sea, which now contained one of the most valuable tools for capturing a caladrius and winning Birder of the Year.
“Perhaps not my smartest move.” Then he shrugged, and a smile sauntered back onto his lips. “Well, it’s done now. Let’s get moving.”
“Er, fine,” Beth said, striving to overcome her discombobulation. “We’ll find somewhere to have tea, catch the morning ferry, and be in England before noon.”
“Or,” he said, “we can hijack a boat and sail across the channel tonight.”
Beth gasped. “What a terrible suggestion!”
“I forgot, you are a proper lady. Of course you disapprove of hijacking.”
“I disapprove of sailing . A steamboat would be faster.”
Devon exhaled a laugh that deepened his smile and made him look so gorgeously wicked, she half expected him to transform into a carnivorous lapwing and bite her neck. “I do declare, Miss Elizabeth Pickering,” he said, “we may be birds of a feather after all.”
She bristled. “Please don’t address me that way. For one thing, we aren’t so well acquainted.”
“We’ve survived peril twice together already,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but Elizabeth isn’t my name.”
“Mrs. Quirm calls you that.”
“However, I am in fact Bethany. I introduced myself as Beth to Hippolyta, and she just assumed it was for Elizabeth.”
His stare turned quizzical. “You’ve never corrected her?”
“Heavens no! That might hurt her feelings.”
He seemed momentarily at a loss as to how to respond. But then he smiled again. “Very well, Miss Not-Elizabeth. What do you say to that fishing trawler docked over there?”
“I say it looks filthy and will probably fall apart halfway across the Channel. But that is better than remaining in Calais.”
“Hey!” cried out a nearby dockworker in a wounded voice.
“Je suis désolée!” Beth apologized, then hurried after Devon toward the fishing trawler as if she was not an intelligent woman who knew better than to go off alone in the middle of the night with a reprehensible, American-educated scoundrel who might just be someone very dangerous to her indeed.