The Songbird's Seduction

by Connie Brockway

  “No, you won’t.” He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt because all his assurance was based on anecdotal information, which he now kindly shared. “I’m told the trick is to keep yourself distracted and your eye on the horizon.”

  “You’re told?” she echoed. “I’m afraid that’s not enough to persuade me.”

  “Don’t be unreasonable.”

  Rather than encourage reasonableness, his words seemed to have the reverse effect. Her lips tightened. “You’re right. I probably could get in that boat.”

  He released a gusty sigh of relief. “I knew you’d—”

  “But I won’t.”

  “Hoy! You there!” one of the fishermen bellowed. “You staying or coming?”

  “Coming!”

  “Staying!”

  “Look, Lucy,” Archie said. “I understand your concern, but there really is no choice.”

  “I’m getting queasy just looking at it. I’m sorry, Archie.”

  “It’s only twenty-some miles to France, Lucy. We’ll be on dry land in an hour. Or so.”

  She looked away, shaking her head.

  “What do you intend to do? Stay here forever?” He threw up his free hand in exasperation.

  “Just until the seas are calmer.” She peeked up at him worriedly. “They do get calmer, don’t they? I mean, eventually?”

  “I don’t know and I’m not staying to find out.”

  She looked sharply at that, her eyes widening with hurt. He fought down the nearly overwhelming urge to reassure her. “You’re not?”

  “No. And neither are you. How can you? Where will you stay? Are you going to appeal to Mrs. Beaufort’s sense of charity? Because I don’t think you’ll have much luck finding it and I daresay the other islanders aren’t going to be any more sympathetic once you run out of funds which, at the going rate, won’t be long.

  “And before you ask, I’m nearly tapped out. I left England in a hurry, without stopping at a bank, assuming I would wire for money once in France, so don’t look to me for a loan.” This flawlessly practical argument had no visible effect. If anything the set of her chin grew more stubborn.

  “I know.” He snapped his fingers. “Maybe you can find work with the Beauforts? I’m sure Mrs. Beaufort could find something for you to do. Maybe she’ll teach you to make oatcakes.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, that was low, Archie.”

  “Low it might be, but true. You have no money to spare, no place to stay, and no reason to stay.”

  The sailor beside the dory waved his arm. “Hoy! Ferry’s fetching to leave!”

  The stubborn line of her jaw softened. Her expression became pleading. “I know this must seem fantastically impractical to you but—”

  “Oh, hell.” He grabbed her wrist, pulled her to her feet, and then dipped down and chucked her over his shoulder again. He had no choice. He wasn’t about to be marooned here.

  “Put me down!”

  He ignored her screech, picking up his valise in his free hand.

  “What is it with you? Is it only me you feel compelled to treat like a sack of potatoes or is it every girl?”

  “Just you.”

  He strode down the pier to where the dory waited, tossed his bag down atop the plank seat, and in one economical motion swung Lucy off his shoulder and into the waiting arms of the grizzled old seaman. Then he jumped in after her.

  “Get going! Before she dives over the side and swims to shore,” he advised.

  One look at Lucy’s belligerent, desperate face and the fishermen on either side of the dory clambered in, shedding water like drenched spaniels as they scrambled into place and heaved back on their oars, sending the boat shooting out over the waves and toward where the ferry waited.

  “Ohhh!” A low whimper escaped Lucy’s lips. Archie patted her hand. She snatched it back and glared at him.

  “Won’t be long,” a fisherman assured her.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched the gunnel. It only took a short while before they pulled up next to the ferry. Archie stood up and, leaving her no chance to object, plucked Lucy from her seat, lifting her above his head. “Take her!” A pair of sailors leaned over the side of the ferry and, each clasping an arm, pulled her up and over the edge as she squealed in protest.

  A seaman on deck threw down a rope ladder. One of the dory’s other passengers, a fat man in a tight checkered coat, heaved his portmanteau over his head and into the crewmembers’ waiting hands before ponderously struggling onto the first rung. He’d made it to the second when a comely female leg appeared over the gunnel followed by an even shapelier female posterior draped in a dingy skirt. The foot began groping for a toehold.

  By God, she was trying to jump ship.

  “Don’t let her get on the ladder!” Archie shouted. If she got back into the dory, they’d never get her out. She’d burrow in like a tick and the captain of the ferry wouldn’t wait for him to dislodge her.

  He grabbed the side of the ladder and started up the outside of it one-handed, fettered by his valise as he tried to climb past the fat man staring in frank appreciation at Lucy’s flailing leg.

  “Catch my bag!” he shouted up to a red-haired lad.

  “Lemme go!” he heard Lucy squeal from above.

  “Don’t let her go!” he yelled. “Here! Catch my valise!” With a grunt, he swung the heavy bag out and heaved it upward, sending it sailing through the air and into the lad’s outstretched arms . . .

  . . . and out again.

  The valise bobbled against the gunnel as the boy’s eyes grew round in his face and his mouth formed a silent “o” of surprise that turned into a gasped, “Oops.”

  Archie arched back, nearly dislodging the fat man from his perch as he grabbed at the bag plummeting inches past his outstretched fingertips.

  It hit the water and sank like a dead weight.

  For a second everyone froze. Then, in quick succession, the fat man dropped back into the dory, the red-haired lad disappeared, and Lucy’s posterior and leg withdrew from sight with politic swiftness.

  “You go ahead of me,” the fat man said, edging away from the fury in Archie’s expression.

  “Thank you.”

  He was up the ladder and on the deck in seconds. The deckhand was nowhere in sight. But Lucy was. She’d backed away from the side of the ferry and was smiling nervously, her hands twisting together at her waist.

  “I suppose all your things were in there,” she said.

  “Um-hm.”

  “I suppose you somehow hold me to blame.”

  “Um-hm.”

  “You shouldn’t. You mustn’t. Not in all fairness. Because really, you have only yourself to blame. If you hadn’t manhandled me . . .” At this point some deep-buried scintilla of prudence wiggled to life and she trailed off. “I daresay you will be able to replace your things once we are in France.”

  “Oh. So, you’ve decided to go to France now, have you?”

  “Why, yes.” She smiled with noble fortitude then, realizing he wasn’t going to commend her, her smile faltered. “You don’t seem too happy about it.”

  “Don’t I?” he asked, his voice deceptively mild. “Perhaps that’s because I was thinking how nice it would have been had you made the same decision, say, oh, five minutes ago. Before every article of clothing I’d brought with me had sunk to the bottom of the English Channel.

  “Selfish of me, no doubt, to be dwelling on something so banal when you have so graciously decided to do what you really had no option but to do in the first place.”

  She stared. Swallowed. Stared some more as her eyes welled up with tears. Real tears. He could tell they were real because her nose was going pink and she was sniffing in a truly off-putting manner and her lower lip was wobbling treacherously. For the first time since he’d clapped eyes on her, Lucy looked massively unappealing and yet, conversely, every fiber in his body yearned to take her in his arms and—

  Good Lord! What was he thinking? He
going to ask—to ask—why couldn’t he recall her name? Not that it mattered, he was going to get engaged!

  She sniffed again, blinked, and now the tears overran her lower lids and spilled down her cheeks. He watched in horror, rising panic obliterating every ounce of his former anger. He’d never made a woman cry before. He’d never even seen a woman cry before. It was terrible! It filled him with the most awful sensation, one he would do anything to rid himself of.

  “Stop. Please. Stop,” he said, taking a step toward her.

  “I . . . I . . . I can’t!” she blubbered. Her eyes had turned red and puffy and her nose was dripping.

  He reached out and gave her shoulder an awkward pat. “Of course you can. Just stop.” He patted her shoulder again. “Now.”

  She shook her head, snuffling miserably. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his handkerchief, snapped it open, and handed it to her.

  She took it and loudly blew her nose. “Thank you,” she sniffled.

  “There, see? Isn’t that better?” he asked, relieved that she’d gotten hold of herself.

  Apparently it was the wrong thing to say for as soon as he’d uttered the word better the tears welled up again in her gold-green eyes. “No!”

  “Oh.” He looked around desperately for help, but every man in the vicinity was pointedly looking elsewhere and the only woman in the area glared at him as though he were craven. He turned back to Lucy. She was weeping with a closed mouth now, her face screwed up and her chest moving in spasms with each stifled sob.

  With a weird sense of inevitability he put his arm around her shoulders and led her to one of the benches lining the exterior wall of the salon. He sat, pulling her down alongside him. She came without resistance, turning at once and burrowing her face into his shoulder.

  “There, there. Everything will be all right.” An easy enough promise since he had no idea what was wrong. Not really. True, he’d been somewhat acerbic in his comments, but she didn’t strike him as the sort to be overly sensitive to a little verbal scrimmage. In fact, he would have guessed she’d enjoy it. “You’ll see.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  “Now, why would you say that?”

  “Because I am responsible for you losing your valise—”

  “Strictly speaking, I didn’t lose it. It was—”

  “Semantics,” she cut in, lifting her head from his shoulder to gaze earnestly up at him. “The point is, Archie, if I hadn’t tried to escape—”

  “Escape?” he echoed. “Don’t you think that a rather dramatic misrepresentation of the situation?”

  “Not at all, but that’s irrelevant. What is relevant, Archie”—her fingers curled around the edges of his lapels in her effort to impress him with her sincerity—“is that if I hadn’t tried to escape, you never would have thrown your valise into the ocean and—please don’t interrupt me again, Archie, I am trying to accept culpability here—and lost all your lovely things, though I am being generous here because you don’t really dress all that spiffily except when you were at the Savoy in your tuxedo. You really were most strikingly turned out that evening.”

  “Thank you,” he murmured. He remembered one of the only fantasy novels he’d read as a child, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This must have been how Alice had felt when she’d tumbled down the rabbit hole. He regarded Lucy in mild bewilderment; he was getting unaccountably used to being bewildered and it no longer disconcerted him as it had when . . . was it only a few days ago that they’d met?

  “You’re welcome. Anyways. Now, Archie, it is quite clear that you regret having agreed to your grandfather’s request to accompany my great-aunts because that has stuck you with me. And now . . . and now . . .”

  A fresh lot of tears fell from her eyes and coursed down her cheeks. He reached up and swept them away with his thumb. Her skin was like satin. “And now?”

  “You don’t like me!”

  “What?” he asked, taken completely off guard. “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t like me!”

  “Yes, I do,” he said in desperation.

  She shook her head violently. “No, you don’t. You’re just saying that because you’re . . you’re . . . you’re being . . . kind!” The last word erupted from her lips as if it were the worst possible condemnation she could utter.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m not! I’m not! Truly.” He grabbed her by the shoulders. “See? I’m smiling at you, aren’t I? I wouldn’t smile at you if I didn’t like you, would I?”

  “Yes, you would.”

  “No, I wouldn’t!” He’d pulled her closer to him, trying to make her see that he was telling the simple truth. “I wouldn’t know how. I don’t have those skills.”

  She regarded him doubtfully. “You don’t?”

  “No.” He pulled back just far enough to cross his heart.

  “And you do like me?” she asked hopefully.

  “Yes. I do. In fact, under normal circumstances, I would find you oddly engaging.”

  “You would?” Her face lit up and she leaned closer, peering up at him intently, but smiling now. She had a deuced pretty smile.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “Not that there is likely to be any normal circumstances where you are concerned.”

  As soon as he said it, he realized this might not have been the best line to take. But she didn’t bat an eye . . . well, actually, she did.

  Her eyelashes, unexpectedly long and curly, fluttered. A pink stain washed up into her face, turning her cheeks apricot beneath their light dusting of freckles. This close to her he realized the gold flecks in her hazel eyes were actually more copper and what he’d thought simple green was actually a deeper, mossier hue.

  “Pshaw.” She scoffed softly. “What would you want with normal circumstances, Archie?”

  “I don’t know,” he murmured, distracted by the way the light caught on the curve of her sharp cheekbones and molded itself to the soft, warm line of her lower lip.

  “That’s what I thought.” She looked very wise and very young and very serious, staring up at him.

  With a sense of something akin to despair, he realized that no woman had ever looked at him like Lucy Eastlake was looking at him now and he strongly, very strongly, feared he’d never looked at any woman before the way he was looking back.

  “Oh, Archie,” she whispered, tipping her head back just enough that he could feel the soft heat of her breath against his mouth.

  He bent his head—just in order to catch her words, only because she was speaking so softly—and his lips brushed within a feather’s width of touching hers . . .

  An electric current danced and arced between their mouths. Oh, maybe it wasn’t actual electricity, but it was something just as potent, lightning hovering in the air on the flashpoint of striking, just as imminent, just as dangerous, and every nerve in his lips shivered, agitated by her proximity.

  He jerked back. What the hell was he thinking? He wasn’t thinking. He was reacting. To her. She was like some sort of experimental drug, a clearly dangerous one.

  Startled by his abrupt retreat, her eyes widened.

  He cleared his throat, scowling as he pulled away and hastily doffed his jacket.

  “Here.” He put it over her shoulders, taking too-elaborate care in settling it there so he wouldn’t have to meet her eyes again. He was very much afraid of what would happen if he did.

  She didn’t say a word, for which he was profoundly grateful. By the time he’d finished, he felt more himself again, or as near as he could remember what “himself” felt like. Nothing seemed familiar these past few days and yet, conversely, everything felt natural.

  He eased away from her, hoping against hope that she would continue to be quiet. Somehow he had to put things back in order, though in his deepest core he realized things had already moved far beyond a place where he could easily turn back. He needed to think. He needed to keep a cool head,
not a hot—he needed to keep a cool head and above all, he needed Lucy not to distract him.

  “Archie?”

  He supposed he might as well have wished for the tides to stay put.

  Reluctantly, he turned to her. “Please, Lucy. I need to think and I can’t do that when you’re talking. Or looking at me. So, please be quiet.”

  “Oh,” she said, a mournful little sound.

  My God, what a bungle he’d made of things—he shot a sideways glance at Lucy’s profile—not that it wasn’t a fair ways mucked up already.

  He couldn’t be late returning to London, where he’d promised to attend a small dinner Cornelia’s father was hosting. What Cornelia called “influential people,” including Lord Blidderphenk, were also on the guest list. It was a chance to impress the man. Desperately, he reminded himself how important such a position as the Blidderphenk professorship could be to his career. He’d be able to pretty much write his own check for infrequent future expeditions.

  Infrequent.

  He was never happier than when he was working in the field, interviewing people, learning their stories, their traditions, their histories, connecting the dots through time and distance. It had been too long since he’d been on a research expedition. The hours he and Lucy had spent with Michel Bolay had reminded him of how much he loved it.

  But Cornelia was right. One couldn’t go gallivanting about the world if one was the Blidderphenk professor. It was too bad he’d never been comfortable with all the glad-handing that went along with an academic career. It was an objection Cornelia dismissed as dangerously naïve and sentimental. He supposed she was right.

  He closed his eyes.

  Cornelia. What did she look like? Taller than Lucy. Eyes . . . Eyes? He only knew they were not hazel.

  “You were correct, you know.”

  “Was I?” He opened his eyes. “About what?” He had to get off this boat, get to a telegraph office, and wire Cornelia.

  “About the distraction.”

  “Oh? That’s good.” There was bound to be an office near the docks.

  “Was.” She rose to her feet, swallowing hard.

  “What’s that?”

  “Was good. You’re not distracting me anymore,” she said and promptly lunged for the rail.