The Songbird's Seduction (11 page)

“ ’Tis a good thing yer traveling this morning, miss,” the ferry office’s elderly ticket agent said, printing out a receipt and sliding three tickets beneath the little caged window.

“Why’s that?” Lucy asked, taking the tickets and tucking them into her purse.

“The late crossing looks to be coming on particular rough and like to stay that way for a few days unless I miss my guess—and after forty years staring at that sea and that sky, I’m seldom wrong.”

She followed his gaze. Overhead, the sun shone in a clear blue sky, but farther out a dark cobalt smudge bled into the ocean’s western horizon. “Hate to think of them old ladies being tossed around like a cork in one of them new wash machines. Channel can get considerable tempestuous this time of year.”

She thanked him and headed back across the wharf to the wrought iron bench where she’d deposited her great-aunts, relieved they would beat the bad weather to the French coast. Lavinia in particular seemed to consider the journey a necessary evil, and
though clearly a little worried, seemed resolved to endure it with as much dignity as possible. She’d spent yesterday on the train from London gazing out the windows at the landscape tearing by.

“I can’t imagine what Mama would have thought of speeding along,” Lavinia had said more than once.

“Would she have disapproved?” Lucy had asked.

“I’m not sure,” she replied. “It’s just so different. Remember when travel was an art?”

“No.” She’d never been out of Great Britain.

She found the whole thing a grand adventure. Just the idea of walking the streets of a real French city sent ripples of excitement dancing along her skin. It would be marvelous! Though it would have been even more marvelous had Archie Grant been with them to make arrangements, look deliciously piratical—or even more deliciously confounded by something she’d said—and, well, speaking French.

She had never met anyone more in need of a good time than the proper, and properly gorgeous, Professor Grant. But for all his naiveté where women were concerned—and it hadn’t taken her ten minutes of watching him at Robin’s Hall to figure that out—he was no chump. For example, she’d had the uncomfortable suspicion he’d tumbled to her little deception about Madame de Barge, one she’d managed to keep from the old dears for years. And how likely was that? She’d made a career of acting, and had easily convinced her great-aunts that she’d taken French lessons.

She’d never out-and-out lied to them, of course. She really had received lessons from the tailor’s temperamental wife. Three lessons, to be exact. But when she’d realized that her great-aunts were paying for those lessons by foregoing their favorite blend of tea, one of their very few remaining indulgences, well, why would a girl like her need to know French?

Occasionally, she’d swept out the tailor’s workroom for a few
pence, eavesdropping on the de Barges to add a few phrases to her repertoire so that on those occasions when her aunts requested an example of her progress, she could dutifully trot them out, having a vague idea of their meaning based on the context in which she’d heard them. Being a natural mimic and even more natural storyteller, she managed to keep her secret.

She figured she’d do well enough in France as long as the conversation did not extend much beyond, “How much does that cost?” “I would like milk with my tea,” and “You would look very handsome in a new jacket.”

Besides, surely one could always find someone who spoke both French and English? She just wished that someone were Archie Grant. He’d looked so delectably nonplussed when she’d teased him about hunting her up. She simply hadn’t been able to resist. Not that she’d tried.

How coincidental that her pirate should be the grandson of the same man Aunt Lavinia had fallen in love with all those years ago. Why, if this were a popular musical, and a girl were a starry-eyed romantic, one would say they’d been destined to meet, the past having found its echo in the present. And in the next act, Archie Grant would be waiting for her on the ferry, his dark hair rumpled, the cleft in his chin accenting the manly cut of his jaw . . .

But she wasn’t, this wasn’t, and he wouldn’t be.

Drat.

Aware she was frowning, she fixed a smile on her face as she approached her great-aunts.

“What are you two talking about?” she asked, taking a seat at the end of the bench. “You look positively guilty.”

“Nonsense!” Bernice sputtered. “We were simply discussing Lord Barton’s grandson.”

Lucy started, wondering if the old ladies had added telepathy to their talents.

“Actually,” Lavinia said, far more tranquilly than her sister, “we were discussing the dimple in his chin.”

Mind readers, for sure.

“It is a cleft,” Bernice said, her former embarrassment forgotten.

“A cleft is a notch. He had a dimple.”

“What do you say, Lucy?”

“I should call it a cleft,” Lucy replied in a similarly serious tone, and Bernice shot a triumphant glance at Lavinia. “But that doesn’t mean someone else calling it a dimple would be wrong.”

Lavinia gave her younger sister an equally smug smile.

“Cleft or dimple, Professor Grant is a most well-composed young man,” Bernice said, willing to let the matter rest now that she’d been vindicated. “With much to recommend him.”

“He seems a mite solemn,” said Lavinia thoughtfully. “His grandfather was just such a somber young man. Very highly principled. Very honorable.”

It seemed strange for her great-aunt to look so unhappy about this assessment, especially as Lavinia generally admired those qualities. “But then, I could be accused of the same.” A touch of melancholy shadowed her face.

“Accused?” An odd choice of words.

Lavinia released the softest of sighs. “Believe it or not, I was accounted quite a modern woman for my day. I rode to the hunt, I wore the latest fashions, I read the daily newspapers.” She spoke with undeniable pride. “I was no beauty—no, Bernice, you needn’t protest. We are both well beyond the need to be complimented on our looks either through kindness or charity. I was no beauty, but I had character.”

“Of course,” Lucy said.

“But I was also a lady.”

Lucy tipped her head inquiringly.

“Though I have never said as much, I think it time to acknowledge that what I felt for Lord Barton was more than simple friendship.”

Her great-aunt had spent nearly fifty years guarding her privacy and her secrets, or so she’d believed. Lucy wondered why she’d suddenly decided to confess.

“I assumed he shared a similar attachment, though I will not belabor you with the reasons why I thought this—”

“I don’t feel belabored,” Lucy piped up. “Not in the least.”

At this, a twinkle appeared in Lavinia’s eye. “I won’t belabor you,” she repeated. “Suffice to say, I was hopeful that when the siege ended, our relationship would not. After we were rescued, John escorted me to Bombay, but with each mile that we drew nearer to our destination the young man on whose friendship I had grown to rely, who had been my bastion against fear and despair, seemed to fade. He became distant. Uncommunicative. Never sullen, but sober.”

Though she did not turn her head, Bernice’s hand crept over and clasped her sister’s tightly in her lap.

“I suppose I imagined a great deal of it. Under the circumstances, it wouldn’t be unusual.” She smiled a little sadly. “At first I harbored a tender hope that had it not been for certain factors beyond his control John would have declared himself, or at least informed me that there were commitments or obligations that required his attention before he spoke.”

“At first?” Lucy prodded gently. Lavinia had never been so forthcoming before. Her tale had always been told couched in allegories and allusions.

“Yes. At first. But with the passage of time I realized how foolish I had been.”

“Never!” Bernice muttered under her breath, her lower lip quivering with indignation.

Lavinia gave her hand a squeeze. “Yes. It is not entirely John’s fault that I never knew his feelings; I never asked. I bid good-bye to him in Bombay without saying a word about my own attachment. I
told myself I was being honorable as well, stiff-lipped and silent as he. And now I will never know.”

“But you do,” Lucy said. “He would not have given you his share of the rubies otherwise.”

Lavinia shot her a wry look, releasing her sister’s hand with a comforting pat. “Knowing I had feelings for him that he either could not or would not reciprocate would have been a lifelong burden for such an honorable fellow as John. He may feel he owes me this.” And then, amazingly, she smiled. “And so he does.”

Then she amazed Lucy even further by laughing. “My dear, don’t look so stricken. Not on my account. It was fifty years ago. I would be pathetic indeed, if after all these years I was still moping over some lost love I’m not even sure was mine to lose in the first place. I have had a happy life. Not exciting, but filled with the pleasures of home and family. Including you.

“Truth be told, I don’t suppose I could have choked the words out had I tried. I was eighteen and though intrepid, still a product of my time. No, I just wonder sometimes, is all. About what would have happened had I said something.”

Impulsively, Lucy bent over and pressed her cheek against Lavinia’s. It felt delicate and powdery, like rose petals pressed in a book. Not unexpectedly Lavinia, who was, as she had just acknowledged, a product of a much less demonstrative generation, blushed. But, Lucy noted, she looked mildly gratified.

Bernice gave a small gasp.

“Don’t be so puritanical, Bernice,” Lavinia chided. “I know it is a public place but Lucy—”

“It’s not that!” Bernice lumbered to her feet, her little straw boater bobbling atop her head, her face red with emotion. “Oh, Lucy. I am so very, very sorry!”

“What ever is wrong?”

“I have left our jewelry case back at the hotel!”

Lucy’s shoulders drooped with relief. The Litton “jewels” consisted of a few not-particularly-good paste replicas of her great-grandmother’s parure. They’d been sold and replaced with copies a decade before Lucy had arrived at Robin’s Hall. Even at eleven Lucy had recognized them as cheap imitations, though she’d never been so impolite as to point out that fact, of course.

“No, you haven’t, dear,” she said. “I very carefully combed both hotel rooms before we checked out and I am sure we did not leave so much as a hairpin behind.”

“It wasn’t
in
the hotel room. I was worried about something untoward happening and so I entrusted the case to the manager to put in the hotel safe.”

Lucy sympathized, but there was nothing to be done for it. There simply wasn’t time to return to the hotel before they were due to board and she doubted the ferry company would hold the boat while she fetched a few pounds of worthless glass.

“It’s all right, Aunt Bernice,” she reassured her. “I will telephone
the hotel at once. They will keep the case safe as houses until our return.”

“It’s not the jewels, Lucy.” Bernice wrung her hands fretfully. “Lord Barton’s letter was in the case, too.”

This
was an entirely different matter. Even with the letter Lucy worried whether Lavinia would be allowed to claim Lord Barton’s portion of the rubies. Without it there wasn’t a chance the bank would release the rubies to her.

She glanced up at the clock set in the pediment above the ticket office. They were due to sail in thirty minutes. If she managed to hail a taxi,
and
if traffic was light,
and
if she found the hotel manager the minute she entered the premises,
and
if he obliged with all haste in opening the safe, she
might
make it back. She might also dance a fandango at the Palace tonight. But the distance between possibility and probability stretched a long way.

The only other option was to take the later ferry.

Her worried gaze slipped to the western horizon where the cobalt smudge had thickened. A couple of
days
of bad weather, the ticket attendant had said.

She would just have to risk it.

“I am so sorry, Lucy.” Bernice’s pug face tightened with misery. “I thought only to be cautious and didn’t want to ask you to have to do it—you’ve already done so much—but I forgot to retrieve it! I never would have forgotten five years ago.”

Lucy patted her hand distractedly, her thoughts racing. If she
didn’t
make it back in time, who would shepherd her great-aunts to France? She didn’t want to expose them to rough seas . . . but she didn’t want to take the chance that they would be late arriving in Saint-Girons and that all-important anniversary. If Lavinia missed being present at the bank on the anniversary date, she might very well face being eliminated from securing a share altogether.

Lavinia placed a consoling hand on her sister’s arm. “Oh, darling, that’s not true. You would have likely forgotten ten years ago, too.”

Perhaps they ought to forfeit Lord Barton’s portion and be content with Lavinia’s?

Bernice frowned, distracted from guilt by affront. “I am sure
not
, Lavinia. Ten years ago my memory was as clear as—”

What in blazes was she thinking?
Of course, she wasn’t going to just give up a fortune! Not without a fight, she wasn’t.