Dazed, Beth pulled herself out of the absorbingly sensual moment and turned to give the woman a polite nod—and Devon, turning alongside her, nudged her elbow with his in a friendly manner that forced her to nod a second time while trying desperately to recall the mechanism of speech.
“Good day, Mrs. Daughty,” she managed at last. “Thank you for your help.”
The keeper did not immediately reply, instead scrutinizing her as if she were a bird just brought in from the wild. “You look different from when I saw you last term, Professor.”
“Oh?”
“Almost…happy. I haven’t seen you look happy in, well, ever.”
“Ha ha,” Beth said. Turning away, she pulled off her spectacles, despite wishing she could keep them on so that the world—and Devon’s suddenly solemn expression—would remain a blur. “I have to go home for my suitcase,” she told him. “I’ll meet you at the station.”
A shadow of worry slipped through his eyes. “Youwillmeet me?”
Biting her lip, Beth nodded. Then she swept out of the aviary faster than a cat escaping an Alaskan warbler, before her feminine wiles did something terrifying.
—
“Well, that couldn’thave gone better,” Mr. Fettick said to Mr. Flogg. They were nibbling on buttered scones at a table in Jabbercoffee, a small, slightly crooked coffeehouse opposite the Lamb and Flag Passage in Oxford, to which they’d retired after witnessing the whopper swan’s capture. “Our two professors did exactly as we hoped.‘Birders in Blissful Moment After Saving the Day!’ ”
“I myself would have removed some of the prurient behavior from the scene,” Mr. Flogg said with a disapproving little sniff.
“But wewantthis to be a romance,” Mr. Fettick reminded him.
“Yes, but if they could close a door on the more explicit details—”
“He only kissed her hand, man.”
“Twice. And he took off her glove to do so. And, well, there was a good deal ofgazing…”
Both men flushed intensely. Mr. Flogg gulped tea; Mr. Fettick dolloped marmalade onto his scone bottom. Finally, after a long, rather titillated moment of silence, Mr. Flogg cleared his throat briskly.
“In any case, we must congratulate ourselves. The whopper swan provided excellent drama on what was shaping up to be a slow news day.”
“That young Lazarus Brady did a marvelous job,” Mr. Fettick said. “One couldn’t even tell he was acting! We shall have to hire him for more scenes.”
They smiled with the particular satisfaction of men who have paid someone below minimum wage for excellent results.
“Furthermore,” Mr. Flogg said, “we’ve managed to slow our professors down. Almost certainly they will be resting together after such a rousing experience—”
“ ‘Resting,’ ”Mr. Fettick sniggered, inducing Mr. Flogg to scowl.
“Furthermore, the caladrius remains safely tucked away, university bookstores everywhere have sold out of ornithology textbooks, and tourism companies report being besieged by inquiries. Everything’s perfectly on track!”
Tinkle tinkle.
The little copper bell above the coffee-shop door rang. Messrs. Flogg and Fettick glanced up to see Cholmbaumgh enter. He stopped abruptly, staring at himself in the ornate mirror that hung opposite the door. The sight made him jolt,rabbitlike, and no wonder, for his eyes were rimmed with shadow, his jaw unshaven, his jacket severely wrinkled. Noticing the publicists, he trudged over and dropped into the empty chair beside Mr. Flogg.
“I’m exhausted,” he said. “First I chased Miss Pickering while she cycled from her lodgings to the university, then I chased her back to her lodgings, then onward from there to the train station. I’m all for allowing women to advance in society, but must they do it on wheels?”
Mr. Fettick frowned. “What are you talking about? According to the most likely narrative, Miss Pickering should at this moment be somewhere in private with Mr. Lockley, enjoying an intimate conversation, the particulars of which we shall politely not consider. This has all been plotted with care, down to the decidedly expensive fact that no hotel in Oxford currently has a vacancy of more than one room.”
“I didn’t understand half of what you said, mate,” Cholmbaumgh admitted, “but unless it was ‘Miss Pickering got on a northbound train some twenty minutes ago,’ your plot has a hole in it.”
“Egad!” the publicists exclaimed. Mr. Flogg whipped off his bowler hat in a frenzy of astonished dismay. Mr. Fettick dropped his scone bottom, sending marmalade splattering across the plate.
“Ornithologists really are ruthless,” Mr. Flogg said. “How could she leave him after he was so romantic in the park?”
“I’m starting to think we should have listened more closely to Monsieur Badeau when he warned us about Miss Pickering,” Mr. Flogg said gloomily. “I didn’t expect the pretty girl to show her own sense of agency.”
