“Please don’t follow,” Beth urged Hippolyta in a tone of sincere concern. “I concluded matters between us days ago, while on the train to Oxford. Having to keep defying you is—well, redundant, and quite honestly confusing.”
Hippolyta opened her mouth to reply but was apparently all out of Jove. In her gobsmacked silence, only the rattle of her long, ornate earrings expressed just how furious she was. Devon backed himself and Beth to the edge of the lobby, where large double doors stood open to a tearoom.
“Why are we going this way, instead of out the front door?” Beth whispered from the corner of her mouth.
“I have a plan,” Devon whispered back. “Trust me.”
“Always,” she said—and the only reason he didn’t grab her face and kiss her right then was becausea crowd of rivals was waiting to leapthat was exactly the kind of manhandling behavior he really ought to stop.
Turning, they ran into the tearoom.
And the crowd, with a roar, took up pursuit.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Avian magic is beautiful. That’s what makes it so dangerous.
Birds Through a Sherry Glass, H.A. Quirm
Beth managed throughstrength of will alone not to waste breath apologizing to diners and waiters as she and Devon raced between the white-clothed tables at a speed that disallowed autograph requests. Hot on their heels came Hippolyta, Gladstone’s servants, theLadies’ Home Journalreporter, assorted ornithologists, and various hotel staff. Glancing back at them, Beth felt her straw boater topple, but there was no time to stop for it, or even to count exactly how many hats she had lost in the past week. Devon pushed aside a half-open door and they turned left along a service corridor, then right, Devon seemingly aware of exactly where to go. Passing a laundry room, he shouted,“Now!”and a hotel worker pushed a large trolley, piled high with bedding, into the corridor behind them.
Crash!The pursuers ran right into it.
“Aarrghhh!”Bodies fell in a writhing tangle.
“Goodness me,” Beth murmured.
They raced on, coming eventually to a wide door thatopened on the hotel’s delivery yard. Devon shut and barred it behind them, then indicated a narrow alley.
“We’ll cut through there and head for the South Kensington train station as fast as we can.”
“All right,” Beth agreed.
They crossed the yard, Devon glancing at Beth sidelong. “You don’t seem surprised that I’m here.”
“I knew you’d come—”
“For Birder of the Year?” he said, finishing her sentence. His voice sounded like it had its hands in its pockets and its gaze focused on the middle distance: not at all upset about her response, entirely nonchalant.
“For me,”she corrected him.
He stopped abruptly, halfway along the narrow alley, caught by her words. Smiling, he cupped a hand to one side of her face more gently than he would hold the most precious and rare bird.
“I will always come for you, Beth. You are my sunlight.”
She would have swooned, were it not for the present circumstances. Leaning into the warmth and comfort of his hand, she smiled at him in return. “You are my wild wind.”
They gazed at each other with a longing that felt like it could defy time—or that had simply forgotten half a dozen rival ornithologists were after them. The grim alley began to glow with soft, golden spangles, as though their hearts were emanating love as a radiant magic…
Oh, Beth thought, blinking away from Devon to stare up at the light.Damn.
—
As Beth shiftedher gaze, Devon went on helplessly gazing at her, transfixed. He’d thought she was pretty from the firstmoment he saw her, and she’d become truly gorgeous in his eyes the more he learned about her; but now he could think of no adjective sufficient for this woman. She was beyond description. She was something for which he needed a language of heartbeats and deep, satisfied sighs.
She reached out to touch one long, serene coil of light, and as it slid across her hand she seemed to light with another kind of magic. A very specific, beautiful Beth magic, Devon thought, one that unfurled from her soul in response to ornithology. “Such a comprehensive and elaborately luminescent manifestation of thaumaturgic energy is extraordinary for a juvenile bird,” she said.
And even if he hadn’t already decided on it, Devon would have known in that moment he needed to marry her, just so he could listen to her talk like that for the rest of his life. But then he realized she was frowning, and he frowned too, abruptly remembering the circumstances in which they found themselves.
