The Songbird's Seduction (23 page)

She spoke lightly, but he heard the yearning behind the words, the slightest hint of confusion at how life could so substantially change from one moment to the next, from being well-loved to . . . not. “I’m sorry, Lucy.”

She shrugged. “Things worked out. They always do.” There wasn’t a trace of irony in her voice. “Besides, no one ever claimed they could take care of me forever. Quite the contrary. I knew straight off they were not permanent situations.

“And I learned something new in every place I stayed, too. How to make a penny disappear, pick a lock, play the piano, swim like a fish, speak like a duchess, sew my own dresses—which reminds me, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you for that loan. I’m tapped out. In fact, I still owe the dressmaker a few quid.”

“Of course,” he said, impatient to hear the rest of her story. “Then what happened?”

“Then?” Her expression softened and her gaze slipped to somewhere far away. “Then I came to Robin’s Hall.”

The way she said it, tenderly, with the expression of someone remembering something wonderful, told its own tale. “As I said, things always have a way of working out.”

She caught his eye and grinned. “So you see, I think I am quite within my rights to assume I could enjoy your island despite a few bugs and the straw pallet.”

“I believe you might, at that. I wish you could.” The words spilled out before he realized he’d spoken aloud. He felt the heat rise in his face.

She’d tipped her head to the side and was regarding him with a puzzled little wrinkle between her brows, as if she had just spotted something she hadn’t been looking for but had misplaced long
ago, and wasn’t convinced it could be what she thought it was. But then, her brow smoothed, her eyes cleared, and she took a short, deep breath, her lips parting on the promise of a smile. He found himself recalling the nearly magnetic attraction of her mouth, as he had all night and most of the day, ever since, in fact, he’d held her on that damn ferry. He forced himself to remember he was about to become engaged, that Cornelia considered it a foregone conclusion, that only the worst, most dishonorable sort of cad would keep such information silent—

“I intend to marry.” He blurted it out like a confession. Which it was.

She blinked, surprised. “Of course, you do. So do I.” Her gaze dipped and she smiled shyly. He’d never seen her look shy. It made her seem extraordinarily normal. When she was only . . . extraordinary. “Someday.”

“No. I mean . . . That is, there is a particular young lady. Miss Litchfield.”

Lucy froze.

“This young lady expects—” God. What a dolt. Could he
be
any less chivalrous? “We’ve known each other a good long time and I believe an understanding has developed between she and I . . . and I mean to ask her to marry me.”

He waited for her to reply. He didn’t know what he expected her to say:
Congratulations? Why should I care? Am I invited to the reception?

But in a thousand years he would never have expected her to respond as she did, with a scoffing little trill of laughter. “Really? What for?”

Hallo, rabbit hole
. “What do you mean, what for?”

Her gaze was direct, challenging. “Just that. What for?”

He started to speak. Stopped. Started to speak again and clamped his mouth shut and knew that the moment when he should
have said, “Because I love her,” had slipped away. If he said it now, it would only sound facile. Cornelia deserved better than that.

“See?”

He couldn’t think of a reply. No gentleman would discuss his future wife with another young lady. Especially one who had turned his world on end and who increasingly filled his thoughts, leaving no room for anyone else.

He waited in some trepidation, half expecting her to argue with him about his intention. She wouldn’t mean anything vulgar by it. It was just that Lucy was impetuous, a little audacious, and frighteningly candid. Her conversation followed an internal guide that was uniquely her own.

She didn’t.

Instead, for a long moment she simply stared past him, frowning a little. It unnerved him. He didn’t have any idea what she was thinking, if she considered him the worst sort of cad, if she wasn’t thinking of him at all. Maybe she was pondering her meal. And then she sighed, nodded to herself as though having realized something she should have already known, and pushed herself back from the table.

She dabbed at her lips, set the handkerchief down, and rose from her chair. He leapt to his feet to hold her chair back. Her hem must have become caught under the chair—she seemed to have trouble with hems—and she started to stumble; he caught her.

She looked up into his eyes. Her skin had turned a dusky, lovely apricot color. He could hear her breathe, see the rise and fall of the lace bodice, was too aware of it and the fact that now, finally, he knew that she smelled like vanilla and greenwood and sunlight, so much better than Fiji, so much—

“Excuse me,” she said, laying a hand on his chest—to keep him away? Had she read so much in his gaze? He stepped back, nonplussed, chagrinned that she’d needed to recall him to his manners.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, her voice nervous, her gaze slipping away from his. “I shan’t be a few minutes.”

He watched her leave the room, trailing the interested gazes of a half dozen Frenchmen in her wake. He lowered himself heavily back down and raked his hand through his hair.

He should have said something about Cornelia the day he’d met Lucy, the moment he’d laid eyes on her. He should have gone up to her at the Savoy and said, “Excuse me, miss, I am about to become engaged. Can I have my pen?”

But he hadn’t. And now . . . Now what?

He’d been raised to believe in a very strict code of honor and the importance of personal dignity. In the last few days he’d more or less jettisoned the latter, but he’d hoped to retain his adherence to the former. Now—

“Monsieur?” He looked up to find the waiter standing over him, holding a small silver salver with the bill. “The lady said you were ready for the reckoning.” He set the little tray down and withdrew.

Had Lucy gone back to her room? She’d said she would be back but after reviewing his less than gentlemanly behavior perhaps she had decided she didn’t need to spend more time in his company. He could hardly blame her.

He turned over the check. It was an exorbitant sum.

But then this trip had already proved far more costly than he’d ever imagined and in far more ways than one.

He reached inside his jacket for his wallet.

“At least you haven’t said, ‘I told you so.’ ”

“I’m biding my time.” Lucy, who had in fact returned, once again sat across from him, her head bent forward over the table in
a conspiratorial manner. She gave him a cat-in-the-cream sort of smile.

“I cannot believe that kid
robbed
me. I’ve a good mind to go back to his uncle’s shop and—”

“I doubt the man was his uncle,” Lucy hurriedly broke in. “He was probably just convenient.”

Archie sighed. “You’re probably right.”

She regarded him sympathetically. “I also don’t think there’s a chance of your wallet being returned. You might as well chalk it up as a loss.”

“I suppose. How much money did you say you had left?”

She winced. “Maybe five francs. I’m sorry.”

“I must say you’re being a real sport about this.”

She demurred, her gaze falling modestly from his. “I don’t see as it would help to sit around bemoaning our plight. And it’s not really that awful a plight, after all.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

Even for Lucy, this seemed an unnaturally positive outlook. “Don’t get me wrong, I find your attitude admirable, but we stand a very,
very
good chance of not being able to deliver your great-aunt to Saint-Girons within the proscribed time period.”

It was her turn to look bemused. “Why? We still have days to gather them up and see them to the meeting place. France isn’t
that
big.”

For all her seeming worldliness, she really was engagingly naïve. “I wish things went as smoothly and quickly as they do in your imagination, Lucy, but I’m afraid they don’t. I don’t have any identification. It may take days for me to contact the proper bank authorities in England, have them determine my identity, and then wire funds here.”

She frowned. “You’re not thinking of waiting here in Saint-Malo, are you?”

“Ah . . . yes.”

“But we can’t. We need to deliver my great-aunts to Saint-Girons.”

“Lucy, we have no money. Well, as good as none.” He spoke very calmly, in measured tones, even as he felt his muscles tensing with foreboding. He picked up the chit. “We can’t pay this bill. We won’t be able to pay the bill for our rooms come morning. We have no money to buy train tickets. You’ve explained that you can’t return an altered dress. Ergo, we have no choice.”

“I see.” She nodded in understanding.

He relaxed, but he was not happy. Lucy was right, the gravity of her great-aunt Lavinia losing out on her share of the rubies couldn’t be overstated. “But what to do?” he murmured.

She smacked her hand, palm down, on the table. “We make a run for it.”

He peered at her closely, certain he’d heard her wrong. She couldn’t mean what he thought she meant. “Run for it?”

“Yes,” she said decisively. “Clear out, vamoose, skedaddle.
Flee
.”

“We can’t just run out on our bills. It’s not only dishonest, it’s criminal.”

“We’ll pay them when we return.”

“Return? We’re not going to return. We’re going to stay here. With any luck, things will be squared away in a couple days and we can take a train to Châtellerault and then another to Saint-Girons. We’ll ride at night, if need be.”

She sank back in her chair, eyeing him disgustedly. “That won’t wash. You just finished telling me about the inevitable loss my great-aunt is sure to sustain. You can’t have it both ways.”

Damn it. “There is a chance. Why, how many times have I heard you say, ‘things will work out?’ Don’t you believe that anymore?”

“Of course I do. But having faith doesn’t entitle one to take Fate for granted. You have to show a little appreciation by helping Fate along whenever possible. And that’s what I’m doing.” She said this last with a great deal of emphasis. “I’m not going to let my chance of happiness disappear because I didn’t have the guts to act. I mean my great-aunts’ chance for happiness.”

“Lucy.”

“No. I’m not going to cool my heels here in Saint-Malo doing nothing while a fortune slips from my great-aunt’s fingers.”

“You are the most wrong-headed girl I have ever met. You can’t just steal away like a thief in the night.”

“I can and will. I have to.” She bit her lip. “And I was rather hoping it would be ‘we’ not just ‘me.’ ”

“And how are
we
to get to Châtellerault without any money?” he asked, more desperate than hopeful that she would see reason.

“We’ll beg a ride from someone on the road. Lots of people do it. Why Margery once traveled from Edinburgh to Chester without spending a penny.”

Oh, yes. Margery. Lucy’s “friend” who was accompanying her great-aunts. Why hadn’t Navarre mentioned him, only this Mrs. Martin?

“Well?” she asked hopefully.

“No. I’ve already left one unpaid bill at the ferry office in Weymouth. I am not about to become a serial criminal.”

“We’ll pay all of them back as soon as we’ve seen Great-Aunt Lavinia to Saint-Girons.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

“Jump!”

Stuck halfway between the Hotel Ligure’s first and second stories, clinging to some sturdy vines, Lucy peered over her shoulder to where Archie stood frantically beckoning her from below. She could barely make him out in the predawn darkness. In fact, were it not for some wrongheaded larks trilling unseen from the surrounding shrubs she would have sworn it was still dead of night.

She had been all for lighting out right after dinner. But Archie had convinced her that they weren’t likely to find many people on the road so late at night, at least any that were willing to pick up wayfarers, or, more to the point, who were the sort one wanted to be picked up by. They’d likely end up sleeping under a hedgerow.