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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
India Holton
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January 5 - July 7, 2025
“A little blackmail should do the trick. But if that fails, you can always seduce the membership committee chairman.” “Um,” Beth said. “He won’t be able to escape your feminine wiles, not in those ridiculous sandals he wears over his socks.” Beth, having been unaware until this moment that she possessed feminine wiles, and not entirely sure what they involved, could make no sensible reply.
“Oberhufter!” Hippolyta exclaimed again. “By Jove, this is outrageous!” “No, madam,” Devon said. “It is ornithology.”
And while Paris offered several good hotels, ornithologists liked to keep a close eye on each other, in case of fowl play.
Looking at him, Beth’s boredom vanished as a strange fluttering overtook her nerves. It must be guilt, she decided, in defiance of an intellect that had always placed her so far at the top of her classes they had to keep inventing new ceilings for her.
No man was going to disturb her equanimity. He smiled. “Villain!” she remonstrated at once, before she even knew what she was doing. And once she’d got going, alas, there seemed no stopping her. “Don’t try that charm on me, if you please. I will not succumb like some—some—liberal arts undergraduate.”
They strode along the street with every pretense of not knowing each other. And arriving at the next corner, they parted ways without a word, set on never meeting again. (Then traveled the same route back to Hôtel Chauvesouris, took the same elevator to the seventh floor, and walked down the same corridor to where their rooms were located side by side—but as both vehemently refused to notice this, the narrative is powerless to offer any comment.)
Villain, she reminded herself. Rival. Pretty, her heart replied with a sigh.
Professor Gladstone, Beth’s head of department and former mentor. An octogenarian who smelled of pipe smoke and slightly damp tweed, he had eyes permanently narrowed from too much peering through binoculars and no small finger on his left hand after it was bitten off in the wilds of Colombia by a feral undergraduate suffering from coffee withdrawals.
“Can’t practice ornithology without a little trespassing, a little theft, a little seduction of farmers’ wives.”
She should not harbor any foolish hopes. After all, the man was forever staring at her, thoroughly dumbstruck; he called her angel, which suggested he could not remember her name; and he was currently hunched so tightly at the other end of the mattresses they could have safely run a flock of geese through the space between them. The conclusion was undeniable: he disliked her utterly.
“Stop!” the milkman wailed, clinging desperately to the bench. “You’ll spill the milk!” Devon flashed a sidelong grin at Beth. “Shall I tell him not to cry over it? Or shall I butter him up instead?” She clicked her tongue with exasperation. “It’s bad enough you keep hijacking people, do you have to add the crime of cheesy jokes?” She heard the pun a moment after she said it and winced. The man was corrupting her even at the subconscious level! Devon laughed. “You are the cream of the crop, Miss Pickering,” he said. And it was like he’d kissed her again—the warmth, the tingles, making her
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“That’s not how it works, Devon.” “I know,” he answered easily. “And I’m prepared to continue twisting words and their meanings for as long as necessary until I get what I want, so you might as well save us both time and just say yes.
“Where are we going?” he asked as they made their way along the dusty corridor. “I am going to my office,” she said. He almost tripped over his feet, for entering Beth Pickering’s office was even more a titillating prospect than being invited into another woman’s bedroom. When she stopped at a door and began rummaging through her satchel for the key, it was all he could do to not lean seductively against the wall, smile, and call her beautiful out of sheer habit.
“Oh my God,” Beth gasped. “Jesus,” Devon muttered at the same time. Eeeeeeeee! the swan added in a distinctly more pagan tone.
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.
“Where is his house?” Devon asked, entirely casual, but with a sidelong glance at her that conveyed, I want to do a longitudinal study of your body. Beth swallowed dryly. “About half a mile west of the village.” “Half a mile? In these shoes?” Devon frowned down at his thick-soled boots, in which he’d tramped across much of America. “I lost my hat running for the whopper swan and am going to get terribly sunburned,” Beth said, even as twilight filled her vision with shadows.
“I’ll bring you a supper tray, shall I?” the landlady suggested. “It’s bangers and mash tonight.” Devon muttered something that sounded suspiciously like not anymore, it’s not,
