“Oh yes, I keep it under my hat,” Beth answered, provoked to sarcasm.
Thud! Thud!The efforts on the other side of the door had escalated to kicking, with considerable success: the barricading chair fell, and the key began to rattle in its lock.
Devon regarded Beth mildly. “You aren’t wearing a hat.”
“Mr. Lockley,” she chided, “this isn’t the time for bantering. Please confine yourself to helpful suggestions.”
He glanced out the window again. “We could climb down using the window ledges, but only if we left the bird behind. And I’mnotdoing that.”
Beth had never heard anything more sexy in her life.I really do adore him, her heart sighed.I could kiss him all over this very moment.(Which was not a particularly helpful suggestion either, but she couldn’t blame herself.)
They looked at each other in taut silence, then Devon’s eyes lightened, a smile gliding across his mouth.
“Oh dear,” Beth said. “You’re going to hijack something.”
He laughed. “No. We simply have to make a run for it. We’ll head back down the way we came, and out the back door. You take the bird and keep going, no matter what happens.”
Beth’s expression grew wary. “And what about you?”
He cupped his hand against the back of her head and drew her closer, setting a kiss upon her forehead. “I’ll be right with you,” he said—at least, that is what Beth thought she heard dimly through her nerves’ delighted singing.
THUD!
With one enormous crash, the door broke open and the footman veritably tumbled into the room, followed at a more sedate pace by Gladstone. Beth did not spare a moment to assess the degree of anger on the professor’s face. She was running even before he’d fully entered the room.
“Out of the way!” Devon yelled as he led the charge, using all the authority vested in him by an organization whose goal was tokeep a bunch of high-spirited young adults from wreaking havocimpart a valuable education upon its students. Startled by this sudden offensive, the footman instinctively leaped aside, and they barreled past him, past Gladstone—catching a whiff of pipe smoke, a broken gasp of outrage—before speeding down the corridor. They were almost to the stairs before the footman reorganized his wits and gave chase.
Hauling up her long skirt with one hand, Beth began a cautious descent of the stairs, the caladrius beating its wings frenetically within the cage and peeping at her to go more slowly while Devon, one step behind, practically vibrated with the desire for her to hurry up.
“Stop!”shouted the footman in their wake, proving once again his unfortunate lack of intellect. More unfortunate, however, at least for Beth and Devon, was that he made up for it with physical prowess: he’d run so fast, he would probably reach them in another few steps.
Glancing over his shoulder, Devon muttered a curse. “Keep going,” he told Beth. “I’ll catch up.”
Beth paused. “What—”
“Go!”
A lifetime of obedience forced her onward, around a bend, down another flight of steps. From above came a terrifying series of noises…thud! crash! “aarrgh!” thud! smack! “nooo!”…but she did not stop until she reached the ground. Racing past the closet in which she and Devon had previously hidden, she took a sharp corner into a musty, unlit corridor. At its end she arrived at an entryway cluttered with raincoats, galoshes, and rusted old cages. Opening its external door, she looked out to the lawn at the side of the house. Not far away was a hedge, some three feet high, and beyond that, a line of elm trees gleaming in the vivid morning sunlight.
Devon arrived, running straight for the door. His shirt was ripped at the collar and his hair disheveled, but he appeared otherwise unharmed. “Quickly!” he urged.
They sprinted across the lawn toward the hedge. Devon hurdled it without pause, but Beth struggled, hampered as she was by her skirts and the fact that the hedge was more than half her height. Taking the birdcage and setting it down, Devon helped her over—which is to say, half dragged her over, with a display of uncouth and decidedly unromantic handling that Beth was nevertheless grateful for under thecircumstances. As soon as she was on her feet again, he picked up the cage and they dashed into the shadows among the trees.
“We have to get back to the village and catch that eleven o’clock train,” Devon said.
Checking the fob watch pinned to her satchel, Beth frowned. “It’s ten thirty now. We’ll never make it.”
Just then, with impeccable timing, voices sounded on the far side of the trees. Devon stopped so abruptly, Beth collided with him. He reached out automatically with his free hand to steady her, but his attention strained toward whoever was speaking.
“Damn it, youArschgeige!”
“Desist from pushing me, by Jove!”
Beth and Devon shared a knowing glance. Moving forward cautiously, they noticed a narrow lane on the other side of the trees. Parked there was the curricle that had almost plowed into Beth earlier. Herr Oberhufter and Hippolyta Quirm stood a short distance from it, arguing.
“I’m not pushing you!” Oberhufter hollered. “I’m patting you!”
“Reprehensible liar!” Hippolyta retorted, smacking his arm.
