The Songbird's Seduction

by Connie Brockway

  “You must have liked it.”

  “Yes,” he allowed, more interested in watching her fingers slowly uncurl from around his lapels than his twenty-year-old memories.

  She stepped back. It was just as well. He found having his arms empty of her much more conducive to clear thinking.

  For instance, until now he hadn’t realized that she hadn’t asked him what he was doing here or why. In fact, just like the morning he’d come to Robin’s Hall, she didn’t appear particularly surprised to see him. She was either the sort of come-what-may, come-what-will type of person who simply followed whatever path showed up under her foot or she considered his presence predestined. Neither possibility was reassuring.

  The steam ferry had left the wharf behind, its engines churning mightily as it headed toward the white-capped water beyond the harbor. It was bound to be an uncomfortable crossing. Particularly for the older ladies . . . He’d forgotten all about them. Damn!

  “Are your aunts inside?”

  “Hm?” Lucy was industriously putting to rights his abused coat, smoothing the crumpled material.

  “Your aunts.” Whether she required a reason for his presence or not, he felt compelled to explain himself. “I came because I thought you might . . . they might . . . I couldn’t just let you . . . them . . .”

  “Of course not, Archie.” She agreed with his unfinished statement as if she knew perfectly well what he meant—which was impossible because he wasn’t sure that he knew what he meant.

  “I assume you’ve already tucked your great-aunts into a safe corner in the salon? I hope so because it’s going to be a nasty crossing.” He frowned. “Frankly, I’m surprised the agent even sold you tickets considering the ladies’ advanced years.”

  She finally seemed satisfied with her ministrations, for she gave a short, approving nod. “Oh, he didn’t. Lavinia and Bernice took the morning crossing. They should have docked in France hours ago.”

  “They did?”

  “Yes. Honestly, Archie, what are you thinking? I would never expose them to unnecessary discomfort.”

  “Why aren’t you with them?”

  “Aunt Lavinia left your grandfather’s letter back at the hotel and discovered it was missing just before the ferry was to leave. There wasn’t time to fetch it and still make the earlier crossing. So I sent them on ahead and went back for the letter myself. Good thing I did, too,” she confided. “Because otherwise you wouldn’t have found me. How did you know where to find me, Archie?” She beamed at him.

  He stared. She was twisting things around again. She had a positive talent for it. “I didn’t find you, Luc—Miss Eastlake.”

  “Of course you did.” Her confidence was absolute.

  “I meant I wasn’t looking for you. I was looking for your great-aunts.”

  “But you found me,” she said brightly. “How did you know where to look?”

  “Because the girl at your house, Polly, told me your plans.”

  “And so you followed me here.”

  “I did not follow—” He should just give up. She meant to be deliberately obtuse. “Do you think it was wise to let your great-aunts cross unaccompanied? Of course I trust your judgment, but—”

  “You do?” Her eyes widened with gratification.

  She really did have extraordinarily pretty eyes. But he would not be distracted by them or her pleasure in something as simple as his vote of confidence in her. Which might have been bending the truth since he didn’t actually trust her judgment. In fact, his complete lack of trust in her judgment was the primary reason he was here right now.

  “Ah. Yes.” He might as well add lying to the list of sins he’d already committed since meeting this woman, a list that included wriggling out of a party given by his future father-in-law, foisting Cornelia off on Lionel for the same occasion, and stowing away on this ferry—because he hadn’t actually had time to pay the ticket agent before making his mad dash down the wharf. He must remember to do so when they disembarked.

  “How sweet!” Her smile was meltingly lovely.

  No one had ever called him sweet before and had he been told that someday someone would do so and that he would not take exception to the label, he would have laughed in their face. He cleared his throat. “Ahem. Still, I don’t know that I would be as confident as you in their capabilities to deal with unforeseen difficulties, and unforeseen difficulties always arise on journeys abroad.” He fixed her with a long, penetrating look. “But as a seasoned traveler, I’m sure you already know this.”

  “Of course.” She stared him dead in the eye. “Which is why I was so pleased to discover a friend of mine who just happened to be on the same ferry. He generously offered his escort to them.”

  Well, that was a relief—“He?”

  Her bright gaze slipped to a spot beyond his shoulder. He wasn’t sure what to make of that. He could easily read the not-so-subtle changes in her demeanor that telegraphed she was about to tell a hummer or had just told a hummer: her face cleared like the sun arriving after a cloudy day, her brow smoothed, and her eyes shone with innocent candor. It was as telling as if she wrote on her forehead, “I am having you on.” But this shifting, her slight but unmistakable discomfort, was something else. Something more suspicious.

  “An old family friend?”

  “Not exactly.” She let the words play out slowly, clearly racking her brain over how to answer. “I met him when I sang at a music hall my first season on stage. Before I started singing light opera.”

  Had she sent her great-aunts off with one of her admirers? Something in his chest flinched. He decided it was disapproval. Which was absurd. He had studied without judgment societies whose members shared varied and multiple understandings of moral situations, including sexual interactions. She was a performer, a songstress; undoubtedly she had many admirers. Some of them even apparently importuned her in public bars and asked her to dine. He would do well to remember it. Though why he ought to do so was an open question, because what she did or with whom was no concern of his and . . . And? Oh yes. And he was planning to marry Cornelia. “I see.”

  “I assure you he’ll take very good care of them.” She slid by him, heading toward the rail. He followed.

  They were in open water now, the stinging spray anointing her head while the gusting wind sculpted her billowing coat and skirts against her body.

  She was going to get soaked.

  “You should come into the salon,” he said.

  She pivoted, leaning back on her elbows against the rail. Her hair flew about her face like Medusa’s snakes, though it was a great deal prettier, and the dark sea climbed behind her in growing swells. “Isn’t this exhilarating?” she called over the tearing wind.

  “You’re getting wet!” he shouted back.

  She spun around again, eyes shut as she speared her face into the wind and flung her arms wide. “I’m queen of the sea!”

  “You’re going to be in the sea any second!” he yelled, just as the ferry dipped into the trough of a huge roller. She grabbed at the rails as the stern tucked into the wave’s shoulder, pitching the boat sharply up, the deck canting ominously. Her laughter tattered on the blistering wind, filled with both fear and exhilaration.

  “Come inside!” He wrapped one arm around the column beneath the upper deck, waving her toward him. “Please!”

  She nodded. Then, gauging the next swell that would tip the deck toward him, she let go of the railing and skittered in a run-slide straight into his arms where some deep part of him regretfully acknowledged he’d missed the feel of her ever since he’d relinquished her.

  Four hours later

  “I’m going to die.” A sepulchral whisper issued from the form Archie cradled in his arms. And just as he’d done in answer to the previous twenty such lamentations, he ignored it. One of Lucy’s hands curled limply against the base of his neck, her fingers chill against his warm skin. The other was tucked between them, over his heart.

  He stood
next to the ferry’s boarding gate, his legs spread wide, braced against the pitch and roll of the ferry as it limped painfully into Sark’s small harbor, shuddering as it scraped against the rocks below. It was well into the night, hours since they’d left Weymouth. Bad weather and worse seas had finally forced the captain to sound the emergency horns, alerting the island’s residents to their arrival.

  On shore was a scene from some medieval tribunal. A black sky loomed overhead, the stars blotted out by thick cloud cover. Along the beach scores of torches held aloft by unseen figures flickered luridly.

  Archie shifted his arm beneath Lucy’s knees, moving her higher against his chest. He had never actually carried a woman in his arms before—as a rule, the females of his acquaintance generally didn’t require transporting—and the sensation was unique. Yet it also felt oddly unremarkable. Her warm head dovetailed neatly beneath his chin. Her arm snugged between them as neatly as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  If he believed in reincarnation he would have said he spent a great deal of a former life carrying women—he glanced down, frowned—no, carrying this woman, or whoever Lucy might have been in a former life that had never occurred. Because, of course, reincarnation was nonsense. But, God help him, that’s what it felt like . . .

  The ferry’s engines reversed with a jolt and he clutched her tighter as deckhands jumped into action, preparing to moor. Many of them shared Lucy’s bilious look.

  Lucky for him, he had a cast-iron gut.

  Something Lucy Eastlake did not.

  His gaze lingered on her. She was an altogether unappealing package. Too weak to aid in her own comfort, her legs dangled over his forearm, her head lolled against his chest, and her twisted, tangled tresses of hair dripped in witchy locks down to her breasts. Her sweat-damp skin had taken on the most astonishing greenish hue and her clothing was twisted and crumpled around her small, malodorous person.

  Another wave rolled the ferry and she groaned, turning her face into his shirt and shivering. He might have been more concerned for his clothing if he’d believed she’d anything left to cast up. She didn’t and he ought to know; he’d held her forehead as she bent over a bucket throughout the entire trip.

  She’d made the transition from exuberant joie de vivre to abject misery more slowly than many of the other passengers. It had taken a full twenty minutes on rough seas before her delight had fallen victim to her stomach. But when it had succumbed it had done so with a vengeance.

  “I’m going to die,” the muffled voice reiterated.

  “No, you are not,” he reassured her, watching impatiently as crewmen released the anchor with splash then hurried to tie off the aft lines.

  “You say that as if it’s a good thing,” she said, eyes pressed tightly closed.

  He smiled at the drama. “We’ll be on land in a minute. You’ll start feeling better almost at once.”

  “How do you know?” she asked, cracking open a bleary eye to peer at him accusingly. “You’ve never been seasick, have you?”

  “I’ve seen innumerable men recover from seasickness as soon as they made solid ground. There’s no reason to believe you will be any different.”

  The island’s inhabitants, used to the occasional unplanned arrival of boats that for one reason or another could not reach the isle of Guernsey, let alone France, and anticipating the windfall of revenue that came with paying guests, crowded the small jetty. A score of small boats awaiting passengers bobbed around the ferry like pilot fish around a whale. The ferry’s draft was too deep to moor at the wharf, making it necessary to transport the passengers via fishing boats.

  “One more short trip and you’ll be on dry land,” he said handing her down to the men below. She barely had it in her to protest as she was passed from hand to hand. He jumped down into the boat and immediately Lucy was thrust back in his arms as the men turned to assist more passengers.

  True to his expectation, within a short time the fishermen were hauling the boats onto the beach. At once the island’s women surged forward as their men stood back, holding the heads of horses and ponies hitched to any available conveyance. Clucking sympathetically, the women met each stumbling passenger by wrapping a blanket around their slumping shoulders before whisking them off to a waiting wagon. From there they headed to crofts, taverns, houses, and farms, anywhere there was a spare bed to be let.

  “Ach, the poor dear.” A grim-faced woman of indeterminate age in a heavy shawl appeared beside them as soon as he set Lucy down. She doffed her broad-brimmed hat and held it over Lucy’s face.

  “A biscuit and bit of broth will put the color back in yer darlin’s cheeks.” She darted a quick, assessing gaze at him. “Two quid for bed and board for the pair of you.”

  He hesitated. Two quid was an obscene amount of money for what might well be nothing more than a pair of straw pallets in a barn. He’d slept rough enough times to know.

  She seemed to read his mind. “Beds in the house. Ye’ll not find another sech offer on the island.”

  Already, the beach was clearing. Those either unwilling or unable to pay the exorbitant prices the islanders were demanding for their hospitality were opting instead to find a place back on the ship to bed down. He had a notion Lucy would pay fifty times over what the woman asked not to go back to the ferry.

  “Done,” he said. The woman nodded then led the way to where a small, expressionless man with skin like shoe leather huddled on the hard plank seat of a small dogcart, rain dripping from the brim of his hat. The woman climbed up beside him while Archie gingerly leaned Lucy into the corner of the cart then leapt up and sat down alongside her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes. I feel better already.” She gave him a tentative smile, as much to bolster his spirits, he decided, as her own.

  But then the driver snapped his whip above his horse’s rump and the cart lurched forward, bumping over a rut in the road. Every bit of the reclaimed color vanished from Lucy’s cheeks. Her hand flew to cover her mouth. She twisted, grabbing the side of the cart and leaning over it.

  Apparently her stomach had something left to give after all.

  Bernice set her dessert fork beside her empty plate, until recently occupied by a chocolate bombe, and waited for the others to finish their desserts before broaching the subject foremost in her mind.

  “Do you think something terrible has happened?”

  Drat. Lavinia had beaten her to the mark. Bernice dolefully studied her sister. There was something different about her this evening. She could not quite think what . . . Good heavens, Lavinia was wearing rouge.

  She stared. The rouge made Lavinia look . . . pretty. Or as pretty as Lavinia—who even a very fond and very loving sister, which Bernice most assuredly was, had never called a beauty—could be. And her dress? There was something different about it, too. It looked somehow more stylish.

  “I am sure not, Lavinia,” said their new friend, the fascinatingly worldly Mrs. Martin, who was doubtless the author of Lavinia’s painted cheeks.

  “Then where is Lucy?” Bernice said. “She ought to have arrived by now.”

  Mrs. Martin pursed her lips. “You may be right, Bernie. I may call you, Bernie, mightn’t I? Bernice is simply far too old-fashioned a name for someone as young in spirit as you.”

  Bernice, distracted by this utterly transparent, but nonetheless flattering, appeal to her vanity, sat straighter. “Well, if you don’t think it’s too . . . what is the word Lucy uses? Zippy? You don’t think it zippy, do you? I should hate anyone to think I was attempting to appear younger than my years. I do so dislike a poser.”

  “No one would ever take you for a poser, Bernie,” Mrs. Martin assured her. “As for something having happened to Lucy, you must not think it. I am confident the ferry agents would apprise us if such were the case. But just to put our minds at ease, let me send one of the hotel pages to the ferry’s office and see what he can discover. I’ll be right back.”

  She rose to her
feet, the glitter from the gems around her throat and wrist vying with the jetty beads adorning her elaborate black gown. The sisters watched her go, then, as soon as she’d disappeared, turned and regarded one another with similar expressions of guilt.

  “I feel quite wicked,” Lavinia whispered sotto voce.

  “I know,” Bernice agreed in equally dolorous tones.

  “If anything has happened to Lucy I will never forgive myself for . . . for . . .”

  “For enjoying yourself so much,” Bernice finished.

  “Exactly!” Lavinia breathed, relieved to have her could-be transgression out in the open.

  Bernice nodded. “I know. I admit I was not altogether in favor of leaving Robin’s Hall but now that we have embarked on our adventure, and with so convivial and knowledgeable a guide, I find it quite invigorating.”

  “And we only left England this morning!”

  “Exactly so. Who knows what agreeableness the next days will bring?”

  “Who knows?” Lavinia echoed.

  “And all the while, poor Lucy may be in mortal danger.”

  “Never say so.” Lavinia reached across the table and patted her hand. “I believe, dear sister, that our fear for Lucy is in actuality guilt over not missing her company more.”

  Bernice narrowed her eyes. “You have been reading progressive literature again haven’t you?”

  “Some,” Lavinia admitted.

  Bernice opted not to criticize. “Well, you and your books may be right. I do feel awful admitting it, but I don’t believe I would be nearly as, well, relaxed if Lucy were with us. I would worry about exposing her to some of Mrs. Martin’s more sophisticated conversation.”

  Lavinia leaned across the table. Bernice did likewise. Lavinia glanced right and left and lowered her voice. “Such as her story about the ‘jolly little trout’ in the chorus?”

  “Precisely.”

  “You don’t think Mrs. Martin ever told Lucy that story?”