His pulse erupted.
She was standing at the far end of the corridor, talking to an attendant. Sunlight coming through the train windows flickered like bright phoenix wings against her profile and illuminated her hair with a reddish halo.Angelwas too feeble a word for her. She was heaven entire, embodied in a woman’s body. She was every superlative in every ridiculous emotional dictionary printed in a man’s heart. Devon wanted to walk up to her, take her in his arms, and feel the grit of his past turn to gold. But he could not move. Time had stopped, breath had stopped; he stared, entranced, wishing helplessly that she’d turn and smile at him. Then she actuallydidturn—
Panic gripped his body, flinging it through the open door of a compartment.
“Egad!” came a unified cry from two elderly women seated together therein. Hands fluttered; hat feathers threatened to take flight.
“Ahem!” came a loud throat clearing from two men seated opposite. Mustaches bristled; fingers tapped on briefcases.
Apologizing, Devon tried to back away, but the womentook in his appearance with one swoop of their lorgnettes and began verbally assailing him.
“Sit down! Sit down at once, young sir! Rest those legs of yours. No need to be shy; this is a public compartment!”
“Actually, as we tried to tell you, it’s not,” said one of the men, to no avail. The women tugged on Devon until he dropped to the seat between them.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, poor lad,” said the woman to the left of him, patting his knee.
He smiled. “A celestial being, in fact. Beautiful, with eyes like the sky.”
“Ooh, this is a boy in love,” said the woman to the right, patting his other knee. “So why are you sitting with us instead of her?”
Because you practically kidnapped me, he wanted to reply, but instead increased the wattage of his smile, blinding them to anything beyond its charm. “She’s my rival in a competition.”
The women gasped. The men shifted in their seats, glancing at each other with taut silence.
“You’re not an othologist are you?” asked the woman to the right.
“Yes, I’m a—”
“Cockermouth!” shouted the woman to the left.
The men jolted, almost dropping their briefcases. But Devon only frowned with mild confusion. “I beg your pardon?”
“The caladrius will be in Cockermouth. The town in Cumbria. Wordsworth was born there, and you know what he wrote about birds.”
“Er…” Devon didn’t read poetry, but in any case he couldn’t see how it would influence the caladrius, unless the bird had evolved considerably since last observed.
“Nonsense,” scoffed the woman to the right. “It will be in Scotland! Everyone knows it likes the cold.” She eyed Devon shrewdly. “You should take your celestial being to Gretna Green, just over the Scottish border. Marry her there and catch the caladrius at the same time!”
Devon choked on his breath.
“What’s your name, dear boy?” asked the woman to the left, patting his arm now and murmuring something about Brussels (or possibly “big muscles”; Devon wasn’t exactly paying attention).
“Devon Lockley,” he told her.
“Ooh, the boy in the paper!” exclaimed the woman to the right. Both ladies lifted their lorgnettes to inspect him more thoroughly, and Devon glanced toward the compartment doorway in much the same way an archaeologist glances at the suddenly closing stone door of a pharaoh’s haunted tomb.
“You kissed the girl,” said the woman to the left, “so youhaveto marry her!”
“Um…”
“And you certainly can’t elope to Gretna Green!” argued the woman who’d suggested it in the first place. “You’re famous! You need to marry in a cathedral.”
“Er…”
“The people will demand it!”
“You should have all white flowers, in honor of the caladrius!”
