“—and scientists. You’ll be quite safe from shenanigans.”
“If you suppose I am eventhinkingabout shenanigans, you are in cloud cuckoo land,” she told him archly.
He gave her one of his smug, provoking looks. “I’ve been there many times.”
“What?”
“What?” he echoed in a defensive tone, then relaxed once more. “I mean Yakushima Island, of course, where the cloud cuckoo lives.” Taking a nightshirt and towel, he departed for the bathroom, leaving Beth totremble nervouslybristle indignantly!alone.
—
An hour later,they sat facing each other cross-legged on one of the mattresses, both dressed in voluminous white nightshirts, both flushed with the warmth of the fire, and neither willing to admit that they were slightly tipsy.
“You’re scared,” Devon said, smirking, as he reached for the last piece of ox tongue pie. In the rich, heavy firelight, it looked almost good enough to eat, despite his experience with it thus far, and he needed something, anything, to counteract the sour taste of the wine.
“I most certainly am not!” Beth retorted, sitting a little more erect. “It is sensible of me to avoid corruption when it is placed like a lure before me.”
Devon broke off a piece of piecrust and put it in his mouth.He was at least enough of a gentleman to not speak while eating, but his eyebrows moved with eloquence, and Beth turned even more prickly.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll submit, just this once. Go ahead and ask again.”
“Knock knock.”
She sighed. “Who’s there?”
“Hoo.”
“Hoo who?”
“Why, Miss Pickering, I did not know you were an owl.”
She stared at him, and he took another bite of the dreadful pie so he wouldn’t laugh. She was beautiful in the drift of golden light and silvery shadow, with her hair a long damp braid that had left distracting wet patches down the front of her nightshirt, and her bare fingers a great deal more interesting than he’d expected. Their ink stains, scratches, and short, crooked fingernails attracted him as no manicure had ever done. But then, everything about her attracted him. Even her weary exasperation.
“That’s your idea of a witty joke?” she asked.
He did laugh then, almost choking on the pie. “No, darling, that’s my idea of a joke suitable for your ladylike taste. You’d almost certainly combust in flames of offended dignity if I told you something I considered witty.”
“Tsk,”she said, shaking her head. The wine had failed to loosen her attitude (although she was tilting a little to one side), and Devon suspected that, if he really did tell her a risqué joke, she’d lecture him until he surrendered with a promise to become a better man. And God, how awful would that be? Iniquity was an excellent defense against vulnerability, and he had no intention of relinquishing it, not even for the sake of a beautiful woman.
He reached automatically for his wineglass, drank what was in it, and grimaced as his throat burned. “I can’t believe you gave away that deathwhistler feather. Selling it would have bought us a decent bottle of chardonnay, if nothing else.”
“Unlikely,” she said. “It was just an underwing covert. Besides, the calamus was—” She broke off, shaking her head. “Sorry.”
Devon frowned mildly in confusion. “Why?”
“I talk too much about birds,” she said with wry amusement. But she would not meet his gaze, and he noticed her fingers twisting in the billows of her nightshirt.
“I’m an ornithology professor,” he said. “I don’t think it’s possible to talk too much about birds. ‘The calamus was—’ what?”
She looked at him then, her eyes dark at first with suspicion but slowly lightening as he smiled encouragingly, then beginning to shine with outright excitement. “It was marred with significant vertical cracks,” she said, her words racing after each other as if they’d been waiting offstage, clutching their scripts and jiggling their knees, desperate for an opportunity to be spoken. “This might indicate the deathwhistler was an unhealthy specimen, or it might have been in the process of pulling the feather out to facilitate molting, or else you caused the damage during your theft of the bird.” She gave him a reproachful scowl, and he tried not to grin. “Also, the plumulaceous portion was yellow, which suggests a juvenile bird, although it’s hard to be certain, since the deathwhistler retains its first underwing coverts until late in the transition to adulthood. In any case, the feather’s value was sentimental only.” She sighed. “Coming away with just one small covert I found in the dirt seemed appropriate for that particular venture.”
Devon tried not to wince as a strange little pain flicked through him. “I don’t apologize for stealing the bird,” he told her, “but Iamsorry you didn’t get the chance to observe it more. If it helps, my measure of the wing chord placed the bird’s age somewhere in its third year.”
Beth gazed at him wide-eyed, seemingly having forgotten the necessity of breathing. “Did you happen to notice the unusual formation of its beak?” he asked, just to keep the delightful expression on her face.
The delight flared even brighter, warming his heart. “Yes! I actually took a note of it…” She leaned sideways, reaching for her satchel, and brought out a field journal and spectacles. Opening the book at a steep angle, so as to protect its contents from him, she shared her observation of the deathwhistler’s mandibular rostrum. While he listened, Devon regarded her thoughtfully, trying to decide how much of her defensiveness was from mere caution and how much from actual dislike of him. He found neither particularly daunting. More than once, he’d spent hours on a freezing, windswept beach, coaxing some wary shark gull or sword-billed sanderling closer so he could study it. Convincing a woman to talk to him was easy in comparison. And he very much wanted Beth to talk—about birds, or anything, really. He’d luxuriate for as long as he possibly could in the precise, polysyllabic tones of her voice and the interesting things she had to say.
So he started detailing the deathwhistler’s measurements, keeping his manner light, and sure enough, Beth gradually lowered the book. She wrote his descriptions alongside a sketch she’d made of the bird, her penmanship delicate and clean, turning his words into something lovely. Her eyes looking up at him over the rim of the spectacles were wing-dreamingskies he wanted to lie back and stare at for hours. And when she bit the end of her pencil while listening to him explain the deathwhistler’s toe structure, he had to lay a pillow across his lap to hide the effect it had on him. Conversing with this woman was like the most delicious foreplay, only with technical descriptions of an avian species in lieu of touching.
