The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love (Love's Academic, #1)

by India Holton

For Amaya, with northeasterlies, wild oceans, and love

Ornithology is not all running around with nets. Sometimes you need to sit quietly and watch a bird’s heart unfurl before its wings do. Birds Through a Sherry Glass, H.A. Quirm

“Your eyes are like a sky spun by wild and beautiful wings,” he said.

“I trust you,” she insisted, proving that he’d corrupted her indeed, considering she was able to say something so villainous. His wretched, malnourished heart dropped to its knees and began weeping. He flinched, trying not to leap off the bed and run screaming into the night.

“It’s cold,” she repeated, her voice hushed. And Devon heard it then—what she really meant. What she hid behind her nice manners and apologies. The same thing he hid behind his cynicism: deep loneliness and longing for affinity.

He stroked her hair until she drifted asleep, then still went on gazing as the slow, feather-quiet sway of her breathing caressed him with peace. “I love you,” he whispered, closing his eyes, sinking into dreams.

And behind her own closed eyes, Beth lay awake, holding her heart tight, trying not to break into a thousand bright pieces.

It might seem like a cozily romantic moment, but only to someone who’s already brushed their hair and applied deodorant.

He loved her. It was astonishing; he’d had longer relationships with a block of cheese, but there it was—he interrogated the idea from several angles, set it against various laws of human behavior, and sought a second opinion from skepticism, before concluding that he just loved her, completely, hopelessly, with all the scrappy mess of his heart.

“Sleep well?” “Adequately,” she replied. But then her good heart had her adding in a softer tone, “And you?” He loved her, loved her. “Blissfully, thank you.”

So how she had gone from Absolutely Setting a Boundary with Mr. Lockley Like the Independent, Educated Woman She Was! to almost immediately thereafter tingling with delight as he guided her across the corridor was a baffling mystery. Even more baffling was the fact that she found little desire within herself for solving this mystery—and, conversely, a whole lot of desire for Devon.

I love you. The memory of his whispered declaration at the verge of sleep took her glittering amazement and turned it into moonlit snow: romantic but also chilling.

The man might be a villain, but he was a decent, good-hearted villain, and she could honestly no longer think otherwise. He listened to her, always made her feel welcome, and now here he was caring that she might be hurt. Not letting herself love that would be allowing all her bullies, the people who’d told her she was not worth care, to rule her heart. And it would be allowing them to devalue Devon too, which she couldn’t tolerate.

If it looks like a blackbird and sings like a blackbird, it might nevertheless grow sudden fangs and try to eat your face off.

“I apologize for the violence,” she said. “However, if people insist on equating my ladylike manner with powerlessness, they are to blame for the consequences. I wouldn’t be an ornithologist—not to mention a woman who went through years of schooling with mostly male classmates—if I wasn’t able to defend myself.”

The wise ornithologist keeps her friends close and her enemies tied up somewhere they cannot trouble her.

His voice was grim, his expression devoid of its usual ease, and Beth knew suddenly, unequivocally, that she loved him. Not even necessarily in a romantic vein; she loved him for who he was,

He glanced out the window again. “We could climb down using the window ledges, but only if we left the bird behind. And I’m not doing 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.)

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 the circumstances.

The adventuring woman should not just expect the unexpected, but be the unexpected.

“You’re keeping me steady,” he answered, flashing a grin to hide the fact that he meant it seriously, and far more soulfully than a licentious rake ought. Somehow over the past few days, Beth Pickering had become the center of his personal gravity.

Whenever he left her side for long, it felt like his heart was spinning out into darkness. He had to appreciate the irony: after all, he was only in this situation now because he’d been so aghast at his head of department’s matchmaking endeavors, and so determined to remain single.

So many wonderful memories, so much happiness—more than she’d known in all her life. When she let herself sink into them, she understood why she’d so rapidly fallen in love with Devon. He was extraordinarily lovable.

Why he loved her was more of a mystery, but she clung to the fragile belief of it. Far too often for good sense, she opened her field journal to the page on which he’d drawn her a dancing carnivorous lapwing,

She knew that Devon would come for her—perhaps not swinging in through the hotel window heroically, since (a) he did not know where she was and (b) it would cause an atrocious mess of broken glass; but certainly he would save her from winning Birder of the Year. Not that she didn’t intend to save herself, but a girl does like to have someone waiting in the wings, wanting to rescue her.

Beth selected a white shirtwaist, then a plain brown skirt on the basis that it included pockets. A woman felt she could do anything if she had pockets.

“You’re in the way,” she said, gesturing that he should move aside. Then she added, of course she did: “Sorry. Nice to see you. Please get out of my path.” God, he loved her.

“Why are you making a disaster out of this?” “Because it is one!” Devon had replied in a rather hysterical tone he’d not have used had he known he’d be recalling the scene later.

“I spend half my life chasing deadly birds and the other half applying for funding grants,” she told him, chin raised at her favorite haughty angle. “I can rescue myself.” “I know,” Devon said.

“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 because a crowd of rivals was waiting to leap that was exactly the kind of manhandling behavior he really ought to stop.

“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.

“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.

He took her hand and they increased their pace even more, the birdcage swinging wildly in Beth’s grip. Glancing back at Schreib and Cholmbaumgh, she felt a sudden, uncomfortable sympathy for all the birds she had chased.

“Perhaps this is not a good idea after all,” Beth said. PEEP! the caladrius argued.

All any of us want, bird and birder, is the freedom to find our own skies, our own magic.

Upon noticing Beth and Devon, the crowd went wild. (Which is to say, they cheered and clapped in a slightly louder fashion, considering this was Victorian Britain, where “going wild” would seem like “disinterest” to tourists from more emotionally healthy excitable countries.)

“Mummy, the bird people are holding hands. Does this mean they got married?” “Aahhhh!” gasped the crowd in delight. “Uh,” Beth and Devon said in unison, glancing at each other.

And behind them, Laz Brady and another young man in Oxford blue held up a banner reading reach for the skies with an ornithology degree. Comprehension struck Beth so forcefully, she gasped. “This has all been a recruitment drive!” “I think you’re right,” Devon agreed. “But that’s insane!” He shrugged. “Ornithology.” Reaching out with his free hand, he gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

**Tenure!** rejoiced one part of Beth’s brain. The rest, however, was a tumult of cynicism, overwhelming stimulation, and the desire to run away to some distant moorland where the soft melody of a whispering warbler provided the only sound for miles.

As the small wings flapped valiantly, carrying the bird into clean fresh not-too-horribly-polluted sunshine, Beth’s spirit lifted along with it. Fear seemed to dissolve like old thaumaturgic energy being shed in flight. Panic faded into a quiet sigh. The bird flew swiftly upward, trailing magic in long, beautiful feathers of light:

Beth turned back to Devon. He was gone. Looking around confusedly, she was bewildered to discover him on one knee before her. “Oh,”

“If you do stay, um, then I’d like to propose that we marriage. Er, get married. We could travel—um, wherever you want. Psychic territories of the giant moa. Eyries of American eagles. We could have fun, rescue a lot of birds, make a lot of—um. Yes. Well. There you have it. Never mind. Goodbye.”

Devon looked up at her with a vulnerability, and yet a love, that made her think of the first moment a bird took flight from a tree branch into the peril and promise of the sky.

“It requires very little analysis,” she said, “for me to conclude that your proposal has copious merits, and that acceptance would be the most profitable response on my part; therefore, please do take remittance of it.”

“Yes.” “Yes?” Devon echoed, his own intellect apparently having disappeared somewhere up among the clouds with the caladrius. Beth grinned. “Yes, please. I love you, Devon. I will most definitely marry you.”

Instantly, he was on his feet, grasping her head and manhandling her into a fierce kiss. Beth wrapped her arms around him, clutching his coat, not letting him go.

Laughter broke their kiss. Still hugging, they smiled at each other before lifting their gazes skyward with the irrepressible instinct of ornithologists, seeking wings. Far above, the caladrius circled the scene, peeping cheerfully, then flew away into mystery.