Slowly, their kissing gentled, grew lush and silky, easing the storm of passion into true feeling. Tugging at the pins in her hair, Devon had it unbound in seconds, his hands smoothing the satiny ripples. His tenderness, and the palpable longing Beth could feel in his touch, brought her to tears. All the lonely years dissolved. Devon kissed away from her mouth in a glimmering trail down her throat, but before she could miss him he came back, kissing each sliding tear before touching his damp lips to hers again reverently. For the first time in a life of endless academic successes, she discovered what real happiness felt like.
Outside, night sank over the world, leaving only a soft wash of lamplight in the room. It swayed with breezes that slipped through cracks in the window frame and down the ashy chimney. Neither of them noticed. Without pausing between kisses,their fingers tangled while they worked to remove Devon’s coat and unbutton his shirt. As the cotton parted, Beth brushed a hand against his exposed chest, smiling when she felt the pulse beneath it tumble into disarray. Her fingers were snowy in comparison to his warm-colored skin. Ancient Greek script was tattooed across his left pectoral major:the wind is blowing, adore the wind, she translated, tracing the letters.
“Pythagoras,” she whispered, utterly seduced. His breath catching, Devon set a thumb beneath her chin and tilted it up.
“Let me see that beautiful cleverness,” he said, his voice husky with desire.
“Now you’re the one who needs a new dictionary,” she told him, her smile slanting. “Cleverness is incorporeal, therefore cannot be beautiful.”
“To hell with semantics,” he said, and bent to kiss her again.
Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock!
At the sudden loud rapping, Beth jolted. Her forehead smacked into Devon’s, and they stumbled back with cries of pain.
Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock!
Beth looked around for a giant woodpecker, despite their being endemic to Prince Edward Island, thousands of miles away, but Devon, scowling beneath the heel of the hand pressed against his forehead, strode toward the door.
“Wait!” Beth whispered urgently. “Your shirt.”
He stopped as if he’d collided with a wall of pain. For a moment, he did nothing but breathe; then he rebuttoned the shirt, tucking it impatiently into his waistband, before flinging open the door. On the other side, the boardinghouse landlady leaped back with an alarmed squeak.
Beth watched, fascinated, as Devon harnessed his temperand transformed it in less than a second into calm, endearing charm. “I’m sorry, you startled me,” he said, pushing a hand through his hair, smiling at the woman until she blushed. “Can I help you?”
“Um—um—” the landlady said, struggling to manage her flustered nerves. She held a folded newspaper, and Beth sighed even as she saw the heave of Devon’s shoulders that suggested he was doing the same.
“I just wanted to let you know,” the landlady said, “that I have a proper bedroom free after all…‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith.’ ”
She winked broadly, and Beth realized the pseudonym they’d given when checking in had not withstood their portraits’ existence in the evening news. Devon glanced back over his shoulder at her, and his expression was so scandalous, she went from pleasantly warm to steaming hot.
Hurrying over to the door, she offered her own smile to the landlady. “Thank you for such kindness. Is there any chance the new room has two beds, since we are after all merely professional colleagues, entirely innocent of all improper behavior?” She asked this as if she wasn’t standing disheveled, her hair unbound and lips swollen from kissing, beside an equally disheveled man—as if her good reputation wasn’t almost certainly destroyed, her job no doubt gone, and the entire birding circuit sniggering over newspapers at her thoroughly shocking behavior.Kissing a man! Sharing a room with him! Going about in public without a hat!Nice customs might curtsy to great kings (and grovel before Hippolyta Quirm and Herr Oberhufter), but they demanded scrupulous obedience from England’s lady professors.
And yet, when the landlady murmured apologies for there being only one bed, all Beth felt was secret erotic delight.
“Before we go downstairs,” the woman said, “perhaps you’d be so kind as to provide an autograph?” Holding forth the newspaper in one hand, a pen in the other, she shrugged obsequiously.
“Of course,” Beth said, taking the pen.
The landlady turned her head. “They said yes!”
Suddenly, a small crowd of people in nightclothes and dressing gowns swarmed the corridor, all with paper in hand and questions bursting excitedly from their lips.Do you think the caladrius is in Hathersage? How can I become an opthologist like you? When are you getting married?
Beth and Devon signed their names, and smiled, and provided the kind of opaque responses professors are skilled at giving when they don’t have a clue how to answer. After some ten minutes, every item was autographed, the caladrius declared practically a native of the village, Devon’s physique contemplated almost to the degree of tape measures being produced, and the crowd shuffled away, leaving Beth to sag against the doorframe while Devon rubbed his face wearily.
“Come now, let’s get you properly settled,” the landlady said with a beckoning gesture. As Devon turned away to get the suitcases, she leaned closer to Beth. “Don’t worry, dear, discretion is our motto at Chattering Elm Cottage. I won’t breathe a word about your being here. By the way, do you have plans for a big church wedding? Or perhaps an intimate ceremony in a garden?”
Beth could practically see the headline in tomorrow’s newspaper. She managed not to sigh. “Conjecture on the potential connubial eventualities of our currently emergent relational situation in all its frangibility would be inadvisably precipitate and, to any perspicacious individual, contraindicated by prudence. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Er…” The landlady’s expression fell slack.
Devon stepped into the dazed silence, carrying both suitcases. “Shall we?” he asked, nodding toward the corridor.
They were led downstairs to a room near the back of the house. It proved to be warm and comfortable, lit by gas lamps and smelling of freshly laundered sheets.
It was also clearly the bedroom of a child.
“My daughter was happy to volunteer her room for the night,” the landlady said as they stared at the toys cluttering the edges of the room, the frilly pink curtains, and the bedspread printed with kittens and butterflies. Beth felt herself lose most of her color, at least half her appetite, and every last fragment of her sexual desire.
