The Songbird's Seduction (2 page)

She waved excitedly. “He’s dead!”

Like now.

“Yes, dear,” Bernice said, climbing to her feet and beaming up at her great-niece. “So we gathered. Do tell us, who is he?”

“Why, Wilfred Whinnywicke!”

“Did she name the tomcat?” Bernice murmured out of the corner of her mouth.

“She names every creature,” Lavinia whispered back.

“Aha!” they called up brightly, attempting to muster what they considered suitably sanguine expressions.

Lucy was not deceived. “Come now. You remember.”

“No, dear,” Lavinia admitted, grateful to not be required to pretend otherwise. As far as she could tell, Lucy was the only member of the family to carry a Thespian gene. It must have come from her father’s side of the family—the side Bernice preferred not to acknowledge. “I’m afraid we don’t. To whom are you referring?”

“Not whom, precisely, but
what
. The tontine thingie with the rubies!”

“It’s not a true tontine—” Bernice started to correct Lucy but was cut short.

“I’m referring to the fortune that goes to those left holding the bag, as it were, in India fifty years ago. The horrible Mr. Whinnywicke has died, very probably performing the only considerate—not to mention timely—act of his life, leaving you, Aunt Lavinia, one of only four people left to share the booty.”

Enlightenment dawned in Lavinia’s blue-gray eyes, once and still her chief attraction. “Oh!
That
Whinnywicke.
Sergeant
Whinnywicke. I haven’t thought of him in years. Dead, is he?” She sniffed at some memory. “Well, I’m not surprised. Drank like a fish throughout the entire siege. On the sly, as you young people say, but everyone knew it. Disgraceful. Fate was bound to catch up with him.”

“Fate riding a hobbled horse,” Lucy replied glibly. “He lived over eighty years.”

Lavinia ignored this.

“He was that awful fellow at Patnimba with you?” Bernice said.

“Yes. Terrible man. One of those small-minded fellows whose lofty opinion of themselves is entirely without basis. It was small wonder the native soldiers despised him. Not the sort of person with whom one wants to wait out a siege.” Her gaze grew pensive as she recalled long-past events.

Fifty-one years earlier, in an effort to marry off Lavinia after she
had failed to “take” the previous two seasons, Lord Litton had shipped his eighteen-year-old daughter off to her godparents in India, Lord and Lady Pictard. They’d assured him that, between the civilian and military population, the pickings there were very good for eligible young ladies. Lavinia had fallen happily in with the plan, more thrilled by the prospect of adventure than that of a husband.

She did not receive any offers of marriage; she did, however, have an adventure. Though not one she would ever have expected or wanted. While she was visiting a small military hill station called Patnimba with a party of other “young people,” the Sepoy rebellion broke out. Besides herself, the besieged party had been composed of Lady Pictard; a pair of young Englishmen, Lord John Barton and Kimberly Mills; a French banker named Bernard DuPaul and his daughter Arnette; and the eighteen-year-old son of the Portuguese ambassador, Bento Oliveria, along with his school friend, Luis Silva.

For long months the small garrison of soldiers and their officers held off sporadic attempts to overrun the compound, the roads around being held by rebels.

“So . . .
not
the tomcat,” Bernice finally murmured, breaking Lavinia’s reverie.

Lucy, who’d been leaning on her forearms out the window casement as she patiently waited for her great-aunts to return from wherever their imaginations had transported them, straightened. “Beg pardon?”

“We’d been speculating on whose demise you were celebrating and Lavinia proposed it might have been that tomcat who’s always bothering Pauline. I confess, for a few seconds I was afraid you might have—what is the theatrical parlance? Oh, yes—
done him in
yourself.”

Lucy’s eyes widened in surprised amusement and perhaps, to a lesser degree, chagrin.

“Better than thinking you might have disposed of the deacon,” Lavinia said.

The merriment in Lucy’s hazel eyes turned to confusion. “The deacon?”

“Yes. I considered that you might have been, er, eulogizing the deacon. I hear he’s taken to his bed again.”

“That’s ridiculous. If the deacon were dead I would gloat silently like any—” She broke off and shook her head as though to clear it. “My darlings, do you understand how close we are to being
saved
?”

Bernice leaned slightly toward her sister, a little alarmed. “Were we in danger?”

“I believe she is referring to our financial circumstances,” Lavinia said, “not what you and I would call danger. Lucy undoubtedly has a different understanding of the term.”

“You think she is being dramatic?”

“Of course, dear,” Lavinia replied. “She is an actress.”

“Did you hear me?” Lucy called down.

“Yes, dear. And we are most gratified!” Bernice called back up to her, happy, as always, to humor Lucy.

“I shall be down forthwith to explain.”

“That would be lovely,” Lavinia said, sinking gingerly back down to her knees. They tended to ache these days. “I’ve only a few more tulips to plant and I should hate to stop now.”

Lucy, in the process of lowering the casement window, abruptly stopped. A spark of devilry appeared in her eye. “Great-Aunt Lavinia?”

“Yes, dear?”

“You know that notion you had about my having a part in the disappearance of that awful tomcat? Not that he
has
disappeared,” she added, “only that if he
were
to have disappeared and I should want to dispose of the, er, evidence, I should . . . well, you’re not going to plant anything near the rhododendron, are you?”

The two ladies froze.

Lucy let them suffer a full ten seconds before bursting into laughter. “Sometimes, my darlings, given your rather odd ideas about me, I really do wonder that you ever let me in the front door. I am
teasing
!”

She shook her head and closed the window, leaving her great-aunts to stare after her with the same bemusement that they had worn to one degree or another ever since Lucille Rose Eastlake had arrived on their doorstep.

“Lady Pictard was the first casualty from our little party, the victim of indiscriminate gunfire, but alas, not the last. Kimberly Mills followed closely after, then Arnette DuPaul.”

They were sitting around a small wrought iron table in the conservatory overlooking the back garden. It used to be a very nice back garden but, as with the rest of Robin’s Hall, time had been quick to take back what two full-time gardeners had once kept at bay. Weeds had sprung between the flagstones and the boxwood hedge had grown into wall that obscured any view of the marble fountain at the bottom of a once-manicured lawn, now an overgrown jungle of vegetation.

At Lucy’s behest, Lavinia was relating the story of the siege of Patnimba. It was a tale Lucy knew by heart but never tired of hearing. Her great-aunt paused and Lucy took up the narrative. “There were only seventeen of you left in the little hill station fortress, five civilians and a dozen soldiers, by the time the lookout saw a rider
approaching on horseback.” She lashed imaginary reins over an imaginary horse’s withers.

“He came thundering up the road, shouting for the gates to open. For a few minutes it looked like he might make it, but forty yards from the compound his horse was struck and killed and the rider pinned beneath the carcass.”

Lavinia nodded. “I thought he was lost but then without any thought to their own safety, Lord John Barton and Lt. Burns rode out beneath the cover of our soldiers’ gunfire and somehow managed to drag him to safety.” Her eyes shone with admiration for the bravery of the young men and, Lucy guessed, one young man in particular.

“The rider proved to be very young, more a lad than a man, and though he gave his name as Robert Smith, what with his skin being the color of tea and his strangely accented voice, his ethnicity was indiscernible.

“Within a day, he had recovered sufficiently to insist on leaving, emphatic that he had information that was imperative be delivered. There was no stopping him. And so, an hour before daybreak the next morning, he prepared to leave.”

Lucy had often imagined the scene, flickering torchlight illuminating a small circle of people surrounding the lad: the pair of Portuguese lads, a middle-aged banker, a young English lord, and a brave girl standing alongside those few soldiers not manning the stockade.

“What happened next?” Lucy prompted, though she knew.

“While Mr. Smith was packing supplies into his saddlebag, he dislodged a pouch. His expression grew tight, as though recalling something he’d as soon have forgotten. He hesitated a moment then handed the bag to Monsieur DuPaul.”

“The banker?”

Lavinia nodded. “ ‘I can’t take these with me,’ the boy said. ‘It would be disastrous should they be found on my person.’ ”

“I wonder what he meant by that?” Bernice pondered at this point just as she had a hundred times before and, just as she had a hundred times before, replied, “I fear we shall never know.”

“I asked the boy what was in the pouch but all he said was, ‘They’re mine, don’t worry on that account.’ Then he seemed to come to a decision, for he said, ‘You’ve already done so much for me. Would you do one more thing and keep this until I return for them?’

“Lord John and I traded despairing looks at his brave words, neither of us willing to acknowledge what was uppermost in our minds: Mr. Smith wasn’t likely to live to return. Hundreds of rebels waited outside in the darkness. But Lt. Burns, then the most senior officer remaining, had no such compunction.

“ ‘But what if you . . .’ he started to say but then, looking at the brave lad standing in front of him, faltered.

“ ‘Die?’ Robert Smith shrugged. ‘So be it. If I do, divvy them up between the lot of you. You saved my life. God willing, you’ll have saved a good many more if I can reach my destination.’ ”

“But Lord John pressed him to give you some name that you might contact in the eventuality of his death,” Lucy said.

“Yes,” Lavinia said. “Lord John was always scrupulous about doing the right thing, though he got no pleasure in having to remind the lad that his chances of making his destination were slight.

“It didn’t seem to bother Smith. He swung up into the saddle and declared with an almost savage pride, ‘I haven’t got a family.’ ”

“But then the banker spoke up,” Lucy said. “ ‘And just how long are we to wait for you to come fetch these . . . whatever they are?’ he demanded angrily.”

“I think his anger was more for the situation than the lad,” Lavinia explained. “ ‘What are we to do with them if you don’t return? The fact is that none of us might make it out of here alive.’

“I felt my flesh grow cold at his words. I knew our chances of survival grew worse with each passing day but until that morning I had never allowed myself to appreciate what might befall me.

“I fear I must have looked faint. But then, I felt a hand brace my elbow and an arm reach around to support me and I heard John say, ‘We will,’ and his calm confidence restored my courage.” Lavinia’s gaze had grown distant but then she came to a sense of her surroundings with a start, a soft blush rising in her papery thin cheeks.

“Over the weeks of enforced intimacy, we had become close friends,” she said in a hushed voice.

More than friends; Lavinia had fallen in love with the young Englishman.

“Anyway,” Lavinia hurried on, “Monsieur DuPaul kept insisting Robert Smith say how long we should hold on to the purse until finally the young man threw up his arms and blurted out a time. ‘Fifty years,’ he said. And then he spurred his horse through the narrow gap of the gate.

“I watched until he disappeared, silently praying I would not hear gunfire and offering a word of thanks when I did not. But then I heard someone emit a low whistle of astonishment. I turned to find the Portuguese boys staring at a mound of colored stones in Monsieur DuPaul’s palm.

“ ‘There’s a fortune in rubies here,’ Luis Silva said. Then, ‘What should we do with them?’ ”

“And so you made a pact!” Bernice burst in excitedly.

“Indeed,” Lavinia said. “It was Lord John who suggested it, more as a way to bolster our courage than of any thought of future rewards. We decided we would honor Mr. Smith’s request and when he returned, we would have a celebration, give him his rubies, and demand the story of how he had come by them.”

“And if he
didn’t
return?” Lucy prompted, though she already knew the answer.

“If he had not returned by the time we were rescued, Monsieur DuPaul was to take them back to France; with all the nationalities represented it seemed the most central location. He would enter them into an account at his bank, registering all our names—civilians, officers, and soldiers alike—as co-owners. And if Mr. Smith did not claim them sometime during the next fifty years, we agreed to meet in in Saint-Girons and divide them up amongst those still living. Like a tontine.

“Two of our number did not live to see the end of the siege and several others died of wounds sustained there. But then a rescue expedition arrived and managed to evacuate the rest of us. We dispersed, each going back to the lives we’d led before.” She sighed and it seemed to Lucy a sigh from a place deep within her, from her soul. “I heard some years later that Lord John had married the daughter of an earl,” she finished in a softly musing voice.