“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 intowhich 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 justthrew 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 ofsailing. 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.
Chapter Six
The field ornithologist is a sophisticate, at ease with the diversity of people she meets in hotel lobbies and salons around the world.
Birds Through a Sherry Glass, H.A. Quirm
As it turnedout, hijacking a trawler was easier said than done.
To begin with, there was the matter of boarding. “I wish I’d sought a special license to wear trousers,” Beth mused as she stood at the dock’s edge, eyeing the narrow but hazardous distance between herself and the trawler’s deck.
