There. Libby squinted at the drawing, finally satisfied that she had the storm petrel’s webbed feet drawn proportionately. And the distinctive bump on its beak too. According to the guidebook that sat open beside her, its pages weighted with rocks to keep it open, the Hydrobates pelagicus she’d been sketching must be an adolescent, given the narrow white bar on its upper wing.

She smiled, remembering its awkward shuffle when it had landed briefly on the shore and the fluttering, nearly bat-like movement of its wings as it flew. It didn’t hold a place in the hierarchy of nature as a strong bird, a fast bird, or a particularly beautiful bird.

But it was hugely migratory, the book said. That small fellow—or lady, one couldn’t tell gender at a glance—would see South Africa. Mauritania. Turkey. It would dive in waters she’d never touch, feast on jellies and small fish round the world, and somehow find its way back here again next year.

How lovely it must be to know your place in the world without ever having to think about it. To feel no need to defend yourself to your peers just because your flight wasn’t soaring like an eagle’s or your dive as deep as a murre’s. To simply eschew walking on land most of the time when your feet weren’t suited for it.

How lovely to just be who you were meant to be.

Who God made you to be. That’s what Mama would have said. Libby sharpened her pencil to a fine tip, leaned close to her page, and added the small claws at the tip of each web. Satisfied with the addition, she sighed and looked up. The last thing in the world she ever wanted to do was disappoint her mother—and even worse, make her worry for her immortal soul. But much of what the vicar at the village near Telford Hall espoused from his pulpit made no sense to her. It contradicted the things her own eyes observed.

She didn’t see creatures in need of a God to form every claw and beak and feather and dictate to them how they must work. What she saw were creatures capable of adaptation—creatures that evolved to fit whatever environment they were in. Creatures that fought and killed and ate and were eaten, that mated and reproduced and defended their young.

Breathe the word mated around the ladies of society, though, and one would be shushed with horrified glances. Which she knew firsthand. Their husbands may talk of breeding horses and dogs, but a lady wasn’t to speak of such matters.