The Songbird's Seduction (25 page)

And he hated it.

“But I am not sad, I am not sorrowful,

My fate is soothing to me:

All that is best in life that was given me,

In sacrifice I have riven from me,

For you, my dark and fiery eyes!

Always in my heart

No further than my dream,

I will wait for you.

I will challenge Fate for you,

My dark eyes!”

It was a ridiculous rendering of an old Russian song and in any other venue it might have been risible. But here, with autumn leaves rustling in the darkness, the yearning strains of the unseen fiddles playing ardent counterpoint to Lucy’s tender voice, and the wind shredding the torchlight with passionate abandon, it felt heartbreakingly real.

She drifted between the benches, trailing her fingertips along the gentlemen’s jackets and sharing sad, knowing looks with the ladies. But then, as capricious as the Gypsy lover the song alternately denounced and beseeched, the music abruptly shifted tone, going from melancholy yearning to fiery challenge. With it, Lucy’s entire demeanor changed, too.

Her eyed flashed with scornful defiance. Her posture grew taut
with tensile fury, her arms rising above her head and fingers snapping like castanets while her feet drummed the ground in an impassioned staccato. Her eye caught his and he raised his cup, silently commending her on her act. Instead of smiling back as he’d expected, her gleaming eyes narrowed and she tossed her head.

Then with the regal hauteur of a queen, she raised her hand and beckoned him toward her, clearly expecting him to join the performance. He gave a derisive snort and shook his head, returning his attention to the cup of hard cider in his hand. It was one thing for Lucy to dive headlong into a hackneyed, overwrought role; quite another for a college professor to do so.

Around him his fellow diners murmured. He kept his gaze firmly on his cup. Better than watching Lucy toy with some poor sot . . . A cool hand caressed his cheek. He froze at the touch, as soft and tantalizing as a dream. The crowd quieted, their hushed anticipation as loud as applause. Too bad. He wasn’t about to be the cat’s paw in Lucy’s act.

Very calmly, without turning around, he reached up and pulled her hand away from his cheek.

The crowd broke into raucous laughter. The man beside him clapped him on the back while around him people cheered or snickered, depending on their gender. One woman loudly proclaimed that he was certainly a heartbreaker and her husband countered that he “
une centaine de sortes de imbécile!
” He’d have to give his nod to the husband because he didn’t feel like anything but a fool, caught on tenterhooks of anticipation, while Lucy seemed determined to undermine any shred of dignity he had left.

And she hadn’t finished. She grabbed his shoulder and jerked him around. The diners’ commotion ended as sharply as if a needle had been lifted from a gramophone record.

Gaze locked with his, Lucy slowly sank down onto his lap. He froze, certain that any movement might lead to disaster. She
reached up and bracketed his face between her hands, eyes shining with mystery and challenge. Even knowing it was an act, his heart beat faster in response.

“I will wait for you.

I will challenge Fate for you,

My dark eyes!”

Her eyelids slipped halfway shut. Her cool fingers shivered against his cheek. His heart thundered in his chest as he dragged in a ragged breath. She tilted her head and melted toward him, her lips parting, gold eyes lambent with promise as she pulled his face closer—

A woman suddenly tittered nervously.

More roughly than he’d intended, he grabbed her wrists and wrenched her hands away. The crowd erupted in mixed hoots of approval that he’d resisted the
femme fatale
and disdain that he could be so dim-witted.

“Brilliant, Archie!” Lucy whispered sotto voce. “They’re eating it up! Keep playing along.”

She thought . . . She didn’t realize . . . Archie stared at her, amazed she could be so . . .
dense
.

With a covert wink, she snatched free of his grasp and leapt to her feet, glaring down at him. Then she snapped her skirts back and spun around, turning her back on him.

Oh, he’d play along all right.

She made it two steps before he caught her arm. He jerked her back, toppling her onto his lap, catching a glimpse of eyes wide with surprise just before his mouth descended on hers.

The crowd went wild.

“How much to stay and do the same again? I pay you fifty francs a week.” The troupe’s impresario, Luca, had suddenly recalled he did know a bit of English and he used it now to try to convince Lucy to join their “family,” it apparently being a foregone conclusion that where
le femme
went so went
le homme
.

“We are
not
going to do the same again,” Lucy replied severely, amazed that
she
was saying such a thing. It seemed more like something Archie would declare.

To say his kiss had flustered her would be a gross understatement. Shaken her to her very core was more like it. No one had ever kissed her like that, open-mouthed, searing, passionate, his tongue stroking hers . . . every bone in her body had seemed to melt with yearning. Had he become drunk on the sensation, too, an instantaneous inebriation, craving more before the first taste had even ended?

She released a shaky breath and peeked over at where he stood, leaning nonchalantly against the wagon’s side, chewing on a splinter of wood, his hands in his pockets. He looked particularly piratical this morning, a dark lock of hair falling across his forehead, his hard jaw unshaven, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up over muscular forearms lightly covered with dark hair. And his hands . . . Lord! He had beautiful hands!

She raised her brows, inviting him to join the conversation because, yes, he should
definitely
be the one telling this fellow that they were not going to kiss for public entertainment—
God
! When had she become such a prude?!

He didn’t seem to notice. In fact, he didn’t seem to be paying any attention at all.

“Tell him,” she said.

“Hm? I’m sorry, I was thinking of something else.”

“Tell this chap we aren’t going to—” She broke off in frustration, utterly discombobulated by her inability to say “we aren’t going to kiss in front of people for money.” It was beyond ridiculous. She’d
been kissed on stage before. Eighty-two times! Which was the full run of
Lady Treetop’s Secret
. What was
wrong
with her?

“Aren’t going to what?” Archie asked.

“Aren’t going to join his merry band and spend the rest of our days wandering about Europe reenacting last night’s performance.”

“Good heavens, of course not.”

Well, she’d wanted his agreement, but he needn’t sound so horrified by the idea. It wasn’t as if it had been a disagreeable experience.

Abruptly, her irritation turned into dismay.

Oh, she knew well enough Archie didn’t think their
kiss
a disagreeable experience. She was not so green that she didn’t realize he’d enjoyed it—no one was
that
green—but perhaps he thought her vulgar for instigating it? She didn’t know.

He’d kissed her thoroughly, deeply, just long enough to teach her that everything she thought she knew about kisses amounted to nothing. And then he had jerked back his head as if stung and dumped her from his lap. Her bum still hurt. The dinner audience had burst into applause and showered them with coins—most of which had ended up in the troupe leader’s purse.

It had been bloody good theatre—except for her, it hadn’t been theatre.

“But, monsieur,” Luca was saying to Archie, “this is festival season in the south of France. Everywhere, everyone has some sort of fair. We could make a fortune!” the impresario pleaded. “I pay you a
hundred
francs a week.”

“Terribly sorry,” Archie said. “We have an appointment we cannot miss. Don’t we, Lucy?”

“Yes, we are expected,” she agreed. “So, if you’ll just give us our share of last night’s take and point us in the right direction, we’ll pop off to the nearest train station and be on our way.”

The little troupe leader held up one finger. “First, the nearest train station is in Lamergeaux, which is thirty miles from here.

“Second, there is no ‘your share.’ That was not the deal we struck. The deal, as mademoiselle and monsieur will recall, was that we would give you a ride and
la petit fille
Gypsy would sing in our evening performance. He lifted his hands. “Well, you rode; she sang. The contract is fulfilled.”

“But that’s not fair!” Lucy exclaimed. “You must have made two hundred francs last night, just from what people threw at us!”

“Two hundred forty-three,” he said. “And life,
mon cher
, is not fair. Now, if you would like to negotiate, perhaps we can come to some accord,
n’cest pas?
”

“I told you, I am not singing again. What is it with you people?” she burst out. “First those greedy people on Sark, then Mr. Navarre, and now
you
! Threatening to abandon us on the road unless I agree to do something I do not want to do!”

“Lucy, I don’t think it’s quite that—”

“Please, Archie. Let me have my say.” She held up a hand and closed her eyes and marshaled her acting ability. When she opened her eyes again she treated the impresario to a prime representation of Affronted Virtue. At least, that was what she was going for. “I have dreamt of visiting France my whole life—and don’t even bother, Archie! I know you know I’ve never been here before. Bully for you!—and now, finally, when I am here, what do I find? It’s filled with the grasping, pinch-penny opportunists!”

At this assault on his national pride the impresario’s hand flew to his chest as though he’d been mortally struck. He drew himself up, striving for as much dignity as his meager height allowed. “Mademoiselle, I beg to differ. We . . . French are nothing like
les Anglais
.”

She sniffed. “It doesn’t look that way from where I’m sitting.”

The impresario looked to Archie for a translation. “What does she mean ‘from where she is sitting’? She is not sitting anywhere . . . Oh. I see. She is making an irony. She has no place to sit.”

Archie opened his mouth to correct him then closed it again, shook his head, and sighed, clearly having decided it was not worth the effort of an explanation.

“Mademoiselle.” The Frenchman returned his attention to her. “I said we negotiate, not for
what
we negotiate. Even though a deal is a deal and you said you would sing but now refuse, yet still,” he stabbed a finger at her, “
still
, I will not leave you marooned on the side of road. Because I am a gentleman. A
superior
gentleman. I only meant we could negotiate the possibility of your next performance while we rode.”

The liar. He’d been all set to abandon them until his pride had been pricked. He lifted his nose, playing the injured party to the fullest.

“That’s awfully decent of you,” Archie said, quickly grabbing Lucy’s elbow and spinning her around to face him, his gaze drilling into her. “I say, isn’t that awfully decent, Lucy?”

“Yeah. Just swell.”

Archie was fairly certain Luca was purposely driving over every rut in the road as punishment for their having snatched an anticipated windfall out from under his nose. He and Lucy sat side by side on the lowered back gate, facing backward, their legs dangling, while Lucy alternately gnawed on the chicken leg she’d kept from lunch and kept up a bright, inconsequential prattle. While not precisely odd, Lucy being the unchallenged queen of tale-telling, this was unusual in scope. She didn’t stop talking once. It was almost as though
he
disconcerted
her
.

And perhaps he did. God knew he’d probably scared the girl silly with that kiss. He’d practically forced himself on her. No, he
had
forced himself on her. And she hadn’t done a thing to stop him, which meant either she’d been too shocked to do so or she hadn’t wanted him to stop.

He couldn’t decide which was worse.

Every minute he spent with her turned him into the sort of man he had been trained to despise: inconstant and false, without
dignity or honor. A man reacting to life on the most visceral level, passionately, impulsively.
Cornelia expected him to ask for her hand!
Why couldn’t he hold that thought at least until . . . until . . . He nearly groaned, but years of schooling came to his aid, helping him keep his expression impassive. He could not excuse his actions.