“Oberhufter!” Devon murmured grimly.
“By Jove!” came a booming cry. “Never mind the wine, get back into bed, you buffoon! I haven’t finished with you yet!”
The blush drained from Beth’s face. “Hippolyta!” she tried to exclaim, but her voice had hidden itself beneath a blanket and refused to come out.
“Mein Gott, you are insatiable, woman!” Oberhufter declared, untying the sash of his dressing gown as he strode back into the room, slamming the door shut behind him.
Devon was silent, seemingly captured by some imaginedvision, the details of which Beth most definitely did not want to inquire about. She rubbed the heel of her hand across her brow as if she could erase her own imagination.
“Hippolyta told me she was going to the Cotswolds,” she said, bewildered.
“Suffice it to say, she lied.”
“What are they doing here?”
Devon raised an incredulous eyebrow. “I should think that was fairly obvious, even to a nice woman like yourself.” He paused for a heartbeat, then added wickedly, “The same thing we’re going to be doing.”
The words charged through Beth’s sensibilities like an avian metaphor she would have made had her brain not short-circuited. She opened her mouth, then closed it helplessly.
“Visiting Gladstone, I mean,” he added.
“Oh. Yes.” She nodded vigorously. “We must get there before them.”
A moment’s very interesting silence followed.
“First thing in the morning?” Devon suggested.
Beth understood what he was really asking. After all, she might be nice, but that did not mean she was stupid. And she knew exactly how to answer.
“Yes,” she said.
Suddenly, a raucous laugh from Oberhufter and Hippolyta’s room echoed down the corridor. Beth flinched. “But we can’t stay here,” she said. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” And without even one attempt to argue, Devon picked up his suitcase, took her hand, and led her back downstairs. As they slipped past the innkeeper and out into the cool gray evening, Beth found herself wondering if his manhandling continued in all situations…and for a wild, corruptedmoment she regretted the loss of the magnificent honeymoon bed.
“This way,” Devon said, tugging her eastward.
Then, fifteen minutes later: “This way,” he said, tugging her to the north.
But it was no use. They found only two other inns, both of which had been fully booked via telegram that very afternoon. Directed at last to a private boardinghouse, they were welcomed on account of their pitiful expressions (and willingness to pay double).
“We’re at full occupancy, but I do have one room you can use,” the landlady said as she ushered them into a cozy, dark-paneled foyer. “However, I’m afraid there’s a small issue with the beds…”
—
“None,” Devon saidin a dull voice, shaking his head as he surveyed what appeared to be a disused office. It contained a solid oak desk, an old filing cabinet, stacks of books, and—“No beds whatsoever.”
“But cushions!” Beth said brightly from behind an armful of them. “And a blanket. We can…make…”
Her voice faded as Devon pinned her with a dark, vehement stare. Her heart (or at least something) began to squirm.
“Three cushions and a blanket is not going to be adequate for our needs tonight,” he said. His tone could have melted railway steel faster than a feuerfinch.
Beth clenched herself into stillness, even while she raced frantically through her vocabulary for a clever response. But she found only bird facts and the dusty remnants of a joke she’d told in 1887.
Her eyes were eloquent, however, and Devon obeyed their request, striding toward her. She tossed the pillows aside, he caught her face in his hands, and they were kissing even before the narrative could summon a metaphor in preparation.
Beth’s good manners were instantly immolated. She reached for Devon with a kind of homing instinct, clutching his coat lapels, pulling the solidness and wildness of him closer to her heart. He wrapped his arms around her, encompassing all the shy uncertainty, desperate hunger, and textbook facts about courtship that tumbled confusedly within her. As their tongues slipped against each other in the secret dark, Beth wanted more, more, even knowing that a hundred years of this would not be enough, even as her bones seemed to melt into something that felt like pure liquid gold. Had the caladrius appeared in the room at that moment, interrupting them, Beth would have shot it.
