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

by India Holton

“Thank you for your concern, Lady Trimble,” Beth added with a smile, “but I shall be quite safe. After all, what possible trouble could I encounter in a museum?”

“Don’t try that charm on me, if you please. I will not succumb like some—some—liberal arts undergraduate.”

Devon glanced over her shoulder as if expecting a sudden influx of ornithologists bearing lockpicks, pistols, and emergency marriage certificates for use upon discovering a bachelor and spinster alone together.

a dull brown bird, not much bigger than a magpie, with dainty legs and a small black beak. Vanellus carnivorus, her brain automatically recited. Rabid flesh-eating lapwing.

Beth refrained from explaining that attempting to outrace certain death while dressed in four pounds of embroidered cotton and lace, a whalebone corset, a linen coat, and several layers of undergarments, not to mention her hat, was no easy task.

“I thought you were a nice girl,” he said. She looked him in the eye steadily. “That doesn’t mean I’m weak.”

“No, thank you,” Beth replied stiffly. “While it’s been a pleasure escaping death with you, and I wish you all the best despite your general villainy, I should like to be alone now.”

And while he may be an Englishman and a professor at Cambridge, he was educated at Yale. Yale! The place isn’t even two hundred years old! It barely qualifies as a community learning center.”

She was so rigid, a person could use her as a ladder for observing bird nests.

He met her fierce gaze, and the air between them grew so charged, Nikola Tesla could have invented three things just by looking at it.

He wanted to undress her brain, stroke her perspective, make her gasp out the most fascinating theory she hid from all other men. (He also wanted to kiss the hell out of her, but that went without saying.)

Devon grasped her hand in a firm grip. With his other hand, he stroked her arm. Outrageous! Rakishly scandalous! Actually quite soothing! Beth began to relax, despite being huddled closely with a scoundrel in a small, dark space.

after just two days in his company she’d begun using loose language, arguing, even veering dangerously close to banter. Much more of this and she might become sassy.

We have a romantic adventure to organize, and I will be very cross if it ends up being madcap.”

“Can’t practice ornithology without a little trespassing, a little theft, a little seduction of farmers’ wives.”

Then Devon set a hand against her back and bent to say quietly, “You evict the passengers. I’ll deal with the driver.” She did as he asked at once, since compared with the feeling of his touch, and the intimacy of his voice so close to her ear, hijacking suddenly seemed a whole lot less scandalous.

Devon’s expression turned from wary to outright ornithological.

Iniquity was an excellent defense against vulnerability, and he had no intention of relinquishing it, not even for the sake of a beautiful woman.

you’re so damned sexy when you wear them, I want to keep handing you things to read.

With another woman, he’d make an educated guess, but this one was all sincerity and sudden knives, and he simply could not be sure.

Kissing was an altogether banal event. Certainly it did not compare to the sight of a sooty shearwater taking wing for its annual migration south.

“It’s bad enough you keep hijacking people, do you have to add the crime of cheesy jokes?”

Beth found herself driven to the verge of frowning. Why people—?! (That was the full extent of the sentence. Extroverts need not trouble themselves asking for an explanation.)

He lifted his gaze, and as their eyes met again, it felt like coming home. Which was ridiculous, Beth told herself. She’d only known the man a short while. He was the opposite of home. He was an unmapped horizon, or a bar chart without category names along the x-axis.

What was a mere scientist to do in response to such a woman? Stalk her, apparently. He grimaced. Iniquity was not feeling as good as it used to.

“Although we’ll be lucky to find any proof of our theory in this mess.” Beth lifted a piece of paper from atop a ramshackle stack and stared at it. “You mean like a letter between Professor Gladstone and the IOS secretary, explaining everything?” “Seriously, there’s a letter?” he said, striding across. “What?” She looked up at him vaguely, then at the paper again. “Oh. No, this is just his grocery list. But I mean, such a letter would be the ideal proof.” Devon laughed. “My God, I love—”

“This one, you can’t touch,” Devon warned. “Its magic will break your bones.” Beth abstained from rolling her eyes due to the urgency of the moment. Maybe later she would commission a badge showing her qualifications so that men would stop advising her on the basics of her job.

Etiquette, wounded and bleeding out, urged her to move back from him. But she could no more do that than she could believe in a conclusion based on uncontrolled experiments.

Devon rocked slightly on his heels, and Beth could only conclude from this evidence that she’d stumbled by pure accident onto her feminine wiles.

They smiled with the particular satisfaction of men who have paid someone below minimum wage for excellent results.

“I’m starting to think we should have listened more closely to Monsieur Badeau when he warned us about Miss Pickering,” Mr. Flogg said gloomily. “I didn’t expect the pretty girl to show her own sense of agency.”

Beth was delighted to find that Devon was right about the journey north being “fun.” The moment they settled into a private compartment on the train, he closed the curtains, removed his coat, and brought Beth to a state of bliss by taking a long nap, thus allowing her two peaceful hours to read the latest Ibis magazine.

“I’ll always say yes to you, Miss Pickering.”

Perfume did not so much waft from the room as emerge at force 7 on the Beaufort scale.

Good sense, upon being summoned, whispered pathetically that it was unwell and could not attend.

“Nice? The woman keeps pushing at the boundaries of ornithological science and outright refuses to grade students on a curve. I don’t call that nice.”

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

This logic had then extended to gazing around at the lovely, tranquil countryside (reconnaissance), noting various birds within it (professional development), and drifting slowly, sweetly closer to each other (team building).

It sounded like a casual inquiry, but beneath the words Beth heard a coldness that evoked weapons, the gathering of addresses, and a plan for vengeance.

Something had stirred beneath her heart. She’d assumed it to be the one mouthful of scone she’d been foolish enough to eat, but now she understood it was the magic of this moment, reaching back through time to claim her.

The woman was like a flock of seagulls at a beach picnic, Beth decided grimly—never driven off for long.

This is a historical fantasy, as may be obvious from the magical birds, not to mention the female professor.