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?”
“I say the more information about birds, the better. My family is a fairly normal size, my mother dead, my father retired back to Devonshire, from where he continues to attempt running the Cambridge physics department and my career, and I have no siblings—but I do have cousins who are aggravating enough to compensate, as well as the usual assortment of grandparents, uncles, and aunts. And yes, I’ve encountered a ghost owl, just once, in the hinterland of Peru. Fabulous bird, gave me hideous nightmares for a week.”
“Interesting. Very well, my answer to your question is yes.”
“Ask me anything, anytime you want,” he said, one finger stroking her belly and electrifying her so much they could have boiled water on her and made tea. “I’m happy to slake your curiosity.”
Beth reddened, for his words seemed as risqué as his behavior. He continued to slide his fingers farther down—then stopped, his progress thwarted by the unrelenting nature of her waistband. Silently cursing women’s fashions, Beth reached behind to unfasten a hook, loosening the band.
“Thank you kindly,” Devon said, and proceeded on course.
As he reached between her legs, Beth inhaled air that tingled with linnet magic, imbuing her senses with an exquisite sensitivity. “Oh my holy hens,” she gasped.
Laughing softly, Devon began exploring her gently through the layers of her fine linen chemise and drawers, tickling and caressing as her ability to remain upright became increasingly imperiled. He soon settled on one location, circling it, flicking softly, as Beth felt her lingerie grow damp. She gasped, unable to bear the sensation; she bucked against his hand, desperate for more. The bird lights spiraled around each other, and her feelings did the same, magic and pleasure weaving and blurring and suddenly cresting in a flare of ecstasy that made her cry out.
Devon held her secure, his voice a deep whisper in her ear, telling her about the wingspan of will-o’-the-wisp linnets, and their preferred habitat, and other defining features of the species, inspiring an extended series of aftershocks that rendered her breathless and giddy. Just when she was feeling almost steady again, everything swooped, and she wondered briefly, wildly, how she had become airborne. Opening her eyes, she realized that Devon had scooped her up and was carrying her back toward their campsite beneath the trees.
“What are you doing?” she asked dazedly.
“I’m taking you to bed, Miss Pickering.”
“But I’m not tired yet.”
“I don’t intend for you to sleep,” he said, and the wicked promise in his smile opened her inner manual of etiquette to a page that had previously been glued shut. “That is,” he added, “if you consent.”
“Consent?” she echoed with the instinctive caution of a teacher who had learned over the years that words could be deceiving (for example: my grandmother’s funeral is on the day of the test and I read every book on the syllabus before writing this essay ). Although she was fairly sure she’d agree to anything he wanted, prudence seemed, well, prudent at a moment like this.
“I require specific information before I answer that,” she said.
He sat her down on the bed of greenery, kneeling beside her. “I humbly request to make love to you,” he said, cupping a hand around the side of her neck and using his thumb to gently tilt up her jaw so he could kiss her. The brush of his lips against hers was so ephemeral it could have been a gust of smoke from the campfire, making all her nerves clamor for more. “I ask that you allow me to strip you naked and lay you down so that I may lavish attention on every part of your body.” He kissed the secret, tender place just beneath her ear in demonstration, and while she was shivering at that, he kissed her earlobe, her cheek, her lips again, whispering all the while about what he wanted to do with her. Growing silent at last as the kisses deepened, he began unbuttoning her shirtwaist. Beth pushed the coat from his shoulders, and after he shrugged it off she set to work on his shirt.
There followed a busy moment of unfastening and unbuckling and tugging at clothes until, before Beth knew it, she was bare of all but her stockings and half boots. The latter she levered off with such force, they flung across the campsite, barely missing the fire.
Devon chuckled. “Please give my regrets to your good manners.”
“Never mind them,” Beth answered impatiently, pulling him close to kiss him again. Her skin was flaming with anticipation. Her pulse raced with a beat that sounded like hurry, hurry . “Tell me what I can do for you.”
“Just be here with me,” he said, smiling with what almost looked like shyness. “And enjoy yourself, I hope.”
She answered that with heavy, luxuriant kisses that delved into passion but still felt insufficient. She wished she could get closer to him, even while their naked bodies pressed and slid together with a silky friction and their tongues met in the secret dark.
“So, do you consent?” Devon asked, his lips barely leaving hers to ask it.
“Yes,” she said—and found herself lying back on the grass bed faster than the flight of a peregrine falcon. Reclining over her, Devon abandoned her mouth, instead kissing his way down her throat, over her breasts, all the while reaching fingers once more between her legs. Beth arched, gasping—
Pain shot across her back. “Ow!”
She sat up at the same moment Devon lifted his head in response to her pained cry, and his brow collided with her chin. “Ow!” he said, tumbling over. And then again, “Ow, dammit!”
“Are you all right?” Beth asked anxiously, clutching her jaw.
“There was a rock,” he explained as he wrangled himself up. She tried to turn him so she could investigate his back, but he gathered her in his arms, hugging her close. “Are you all right?”
“A twig scratched me,” she grumbled with mock petulance.
He laughed. “Sex in the outdoors is a romantic idea but suffers from the reality of being in the outdoors.”
But then, as he looked at her, his smile began to dim, and unhappiness slipped across his countenance. Beth felt a familiar chill settle into her heart. She drew hair over her shoulders to cover herself.
“There’s—there’s something I have to tell you about myself,” he said. “I should have done so earlier, but I’m a coward. I knew telling you could change everything…”
As he bit his lip anxiously, a hundred dire possibilities rushed through Beth’s mind. The man was a bird smuggler. He had a wife hidden in an attic somewhere. He believed in grading students on a curve regardless of their actual achievements.
“When I was sixteen, I was bitten by a basilisk owl,” he said. “I escaped petrification, but I—I cannot have children. I don’t mind, I never wanted them, but…”
Beth exhaled with a relief so strong, she felt light-headed. “I’m sorry that happened to you, but can’t see how this changes things between us.”
He lowered his eyes. “More than one of my lovers left when they learned it, not wanting a future with someone who couldn’t offer them children. And fair enough, of course, but…” He fell into a heavy silence that seemed to expect no reply.
“I don’t want children,” Beth said plainly. “Being a parent would disrupt my teaching schedule. How fortunate that we don’t need to worry about contraception!”
Devon looked up at her warily, and she gave him a warm, encouraging smile. “Now I think there is something I can do for you,” she said. And reaching out in a spirit of intellectual inquiry, she took hold of his Magna erectus phallus and gently caressed it as he had caressed her before. Devon made a strangled sound in his throat.
“Professor Pickering!” he gasped. “I just told you my darkest secret and you just smiled and—and—” The word broke apart as she tightened her grip. “Oh my God,” he moaned unscientifically, his eyes rolling back.
“The evidence suggests you are either in a state of pleasure or pain,” Beth said. “Should I stop? I don’t want to hurt you.”
He answered with a kiss that quickly restored them both to mindless passion. “Come here,” he begged, gathering her close. “Please.”
Beth gladly allowed him to pull her onto his lap. But unsure of the etiquette—how and where exactly did one sit when one’s seat was so elaborate ?—she rose on her knees, draping her arms over his shoulders. Their gazes meshed, heavy with desire.
“Beth,” Devon whispered. “Beth.” He said her name again and again, kissing her throat or jaw or mouth each time, as if he were tasting something sweet. “You’re like a night full of bird stars and magical dreaming. I am so in love with you.”
“Thank you,” she replied automatically. Then the words reached through her old, defensive blockade of manners to fill her with happiness. A few grim memories crawled out, trying to scratch and bite her, but she shoved them away. “I love you too.”
“In that case,” Devon said, “we can reach only one logical conclusion.” Taking hold of her hips, he lowered her to complete and delightful corruption.
The heat that had evolved between them throughout their travels blazed now into a wildfire (fortunately metaphorical in nature, considering the tinder-dry conditions of the moorland at midsummer) as they moved together slowly, at first a little awkwardly while Beth grew accustomed to the mechanics involved. She tried to make mental notes for later inclusion in her field journal but quickly lost track of them. Leaves chafed her bare knees, but she did not care. Devon’s eyes watered—“smoke from the fire,” he insisted, and went on kissing her as if irritation of his corneas was not a serious threat. Their bodies grew slick with sweat, and their backs ached. Finally, grasping blindly for his coat, Devon spread it over the ferns, and they lay down, facing each other in a tangle of breath and limbs. Whispering of skies and thermals and oh my God, right there, don’t stop, I love you , they ventured a more intense rhythm until the night went utterly dark, and silence enfolded the moorland except for their mutual sighs as they reached fulfillment.
—
Devon woke at dawn, yanked from a dream by the obnoxious chut! chut! of a red grouse nearby. Aggravation clenched his body, but the moment he saw Beth lying asleep beside him, a shy wonder eased it away. He could scarcely credit that he’d gotten to spend the night with her. And moreover, she was still here in the morning. Granted, there was nowhere for her to go, out here on the moors, but Devon didn’t want to consider that. He watched her face grow luminous in the unfurling light, like a sacred pearl drawn out of the dark ocean, like a dream he could not believe was real…
He winced, appalled by this degeneration of his rational brain into cloying sentimentality. He tried to focus instead on how cold he felt, lying naked on the ground, the campfire having burned out—but it was no use. Beth quite simply bewitched him, beyond linguistic sobriety, beyond quantifiable data analysis. She was beauty. She was peace.
She was looking at him.
Devon’s pulse leaped up and began running frantically around his circulatory system, sweeping up, shoving things behind curtains, even while he gave her a languid smile. “Hi,” he said.
Her eyes grew wide, and she frenetically brushed her hair so that it covered her face and breasts. “Hello,” she answered through the shroud. “How lovely to see you. Would you mind terribly going away?”
Devon blinked, taken aback. “Um—??”
“No, don’t look at me.” She flattened the palm of her hand against his face. “I need to tidy—and wash—and oh God, my teeth.” He heard a puffed exhalation, then she groaned. “Don’t breathe, don’t look, just…give me a minute.”
“Okay,” he said against her hand, trying hard not to laugh.
“Close your eyes.”
“Sweetheart, I don’t care—”
“Close. Your. Eyes.”
He closed them obediently and the hand moved away. The warmth against his body vanished as Beth clambered up. Amused, he lay back, stretching and yawning as he listened to the urgent rustles of a woman getting dressed. The habit of wickedness in him hoped she would come back into his reach so he could pull her down and muss her again in delicious ways, but an unexpected domestic part of his heart smiled contentedly to think she was making herself nice for him, and he drew his coat over himself to conceal, and hopefully subdue, how much it aroused him.
“You may open your eyes now,” Beth said at last, sounding so dignified he felt certain her chin was tipped up and her arms crossed tightly. Opening one eye cautiously, he squinted up at her, and smiled to see his suspicions were confirmed.
“There’s enough water in the flask for you to wash also,” she told him briskly. “But no hope for tea, I’m afraid.”
Devon sat up, rubbing his face. “And no hope for wake-up sex?” he asked in an entirely scientific manner—after all, you don’t get a result unless you pose a question.
“Gracious heavens!” she exclaimed. “Is that quite the done thing?”
He shrugged. “In some parts of the world, yes.”
“Perhaps tomorrow morning, then,” she allowed, and all his metaphorical test tubes began bubbling over. “While I’m keen to replicate our experiments of last night, it’s more of a priority to get the caladrius safely to Dover.”
“You’re right,” Devon agreed, despite his baser nature. Casting aside the coat, he began to stand, and Beth hastily turned her back. “You’ve already seen it all,” he pointed out as he got to his feet and looked around for his clothes.
“Hhmughhmm,” she answered, and he just knew she was blushing. For that matter, he was close to doing so himself. He’d had more than enough sex over the years to feel blasé about it the next morning, but it turned out that love made a remarkable difference to the experience. Never before had he lain quietly afterward while a woman stroked his eyebrows, and kissed the corners of his mouth, and generally made him feel so cherished that he’d had to roll her gently over and slide back inside her just so he could breathe.
And it was just as good now—all right, mostly as good—listening to her talk about travel routes and buying yet another suitcase and what she wouldn’t give for a cup of tea, while she tidied the campsite. Her voice was like music to him, but he heard not one single word of it, too busy imagining when he might be able to get her into a bed.
Once they were dressed and ready to depart, they checked the caladrius, smiling as it shook its feathers and groomed its claws with a youthful, rather clumsy diligence. The morning light seemed to enliven it, but seed husks on the cage floor were threatening to become an enchanted garden, and thin, shining strands of magic wove up the cage bars, so they lowered the cover again for safety’s sake. Beth took the cage by its handle and was moving toward the road when Devon caught her wrist, stopping her.
She turned back to him with a politely inquiring expression, so lovely that the sun cast golden strands to adorn…
No , he told himself sternly. No more sentimentality! (And if his heart could beat in a steady rhythm, that would be rather helpful too.)
“Good morning,” he said again, wanting to reconnect with the feeling of intimacy they’d shared last night, the togetherness, before they faced the rest of the world. Really, just wanting her , with an intensity he felt might never diminish.
Beth seemed bemused for a moment, then understanding lit her eyes. She smiled—a smile just for him, one he could wrap up, tuck inside his heart, and keep forever. “Good morning, Devon,” she said. And putting down the birdcage, she hugged him.
Oh gosh , he thought dazedly. So this was what true comfort felt like. He’d never expected to know it in his life, certainly not after his mother died and his father decided the best way to deal with a wayward, brilliant child was send him alone to a far distant country—and yet here was Beth Pickering saying his name, holding him against her heart, and he realized that, regardless of what happened hereafter, he wasn’t ever going to recover from this beautiful moment.
—
Finally, they set off for Sheffield. Devon ached all over from having spent the night on the ground, and he noticed Beth stretch and twist her back so many times that he reached over to rub it for her as they walked. And yet they plowed on, encouraged by occasional peeps from the caladrius.
Only seven minutes later, they stopped in front of a stone building.
“Fox House Inn,” Devon said, reading the sign hanging above its door.
They stared at it blankly, undecided as to whether to laugh or cry.
“Hello! Good morning!” the innkeeper greeted them as they entered. “Up with the lark, you are!” He looked intently at their faces, then at the cage Beth held, and his eyes lit with excitement. “It’s a true honor to welcome you into my humble inn! You’re wanting a room? We have plenty available!”
He beamed a rather manic smile that suggested “plenty of rooms available” might be good news for them but was bloody terrible for his bank account, and would they please not pretend to be married?
“Excellent facilities, a bird’s-eye view of the moors, and our beds are the best you’ll find this side of Hadrian’s Wall! Soft, warm, like sleeping on a cloud.”
Luckily for him, the bird in their cage was not a carnivorous lapwing. Beth contrived a polite smile, and Devon managed not to curse, despite his various aches and pains offering up a few eloquent suggestions.
“Just breakfast, thank you,” he said. “And coffee. Strong coffee. Coffee so strong it could lift this entire building and throw it, say, half a mile back down the road.”
“And tea, please,” Beth added. “Thoroughly steeped. I don’t so much need a reservoir of peace as a deep, deep well of strength. We have a long walk ahead of us to Sheffield.”
“Sheffield? My lad’s taking a wagon there this very morning!” The innkeeper pointed to a young man who was loitering in a doorway behind the registration desk.
“I am?” Apparently this was news to the boy.
“Yes,” his father said firmly. “And you’re going to give these nice ornith—um, nice people a lift, free of charge. We here at Fox House always do our best for travelers! And we have excellent rates too! Just in case anyone—say, a newspaper reporter—happens to ask.”
Devon and Beth exchanged a speaking glance. But they allowed the innkeeper to lead them into the dining room and seat them side by side at his best table, and order them a full English breakfast, his gift, no thanks necessary, hospitality was the name of the game here at Fox House in Longshaw, right before the turnoff to Hathersage.
As he bustled away, they set the birdcage on the floor beneath the round table, concealed by the long drape of its cloth, then Beth straightened the cutlery and Devon picked up the newspaper folded neatly on the tabletop. The front-page headline almost made him summon the innkeeper and ask for some rum in the coffee.
THE ROBIN HOOD OF ORNITHOLOGY!
Professor Lockley Rescues Caladrius from Tyrant! Pretty Miss Pickering Joins Him in Race to Safety!
“ Robin Hood? Really?” Devon said, grimacing at the pun (which, to be fair, only a bird lover would have noticed).
“Pretty Miss Pickering?” Beth said, more justifiably.
“And how did they even know?”
“The stable hand at the inn yesterday might have told them,” Beth said. “Or one of Professor Gladstone’s servants. Or even that Mr. Feh—uh, something.”
“The PRESS agent?” Devon said doubtfully, and Beth shrugged.
“No one can be trusted.”
“My cynical angel,” he said fondly, reaching out to brush a knuckle across her cheek. Her tiredness dissolved into a smile, and the atmosphere between them turned sugary with adoration.
“It is them!”
They looked up, startled, at the spirited exclamation from diners across the room. Two women in matching blue dresses were pointing spoons at them; at another table, a pair of octogenarian gentlemen whispered and giggled.
Devon and Beth barely had time to sigh wearily before they found themselves surrounded by diners requesting autographs, a glimpse of the caladrius, advice on how to become an orthonogonist, and the date of their wedding. Breakfast arrived in the middle of this, but enjoying it proved impossible. Inn staff joined the diners, and between their enthusiastic clamor and the chairs beginning to sprout green buds in an untimely show of avian magic, neither of them noticed a man entering the room. Only when he slipped through the crowd to seat himself at their table did they realize.
“Herr Oberhufter!” Beth gasped.
“ Guten Morgen , Miss Pickering,” Oberhufter replied, tipping his hat. “Lockley. I’ve come for the caladrius.”
“Oh sure,” Devon said sarcastically. “We’ll just hand the bird over to you; it’s no problem whatsoever.”
“You will hand it over,” Oberhufter agreed. “As for there being no problem…”
He raised a pistol, aiming it at Beth’s face. “I guess that part’s up to you.”