The Songbird's Seduction

by Connie Brockway

  “You misunderstand. I wasn’t criticizing you. I was trying to understand your process.”

  “Process?” She laughed. “I don’t have a process. I’m simply interested in people.”

  He frowned. She’d said something similar before. Something about how they did nearly the same thing, how she delved into other people’s lives to be able re-create a facsimile on stage, while he did the same for science. Both of them strove to understand how people connected, how a society is formed of individuals . . . Good Lord.

  “A penny for your thoughts.”

  He looked up. “Lucy, you brilliant girl, you said a person creates society.”

  She stared at him as if he’d gone daft. “What are you talking about?”

  “On Sark, you said that a person not only comes from a place that molds him but that he, in turn, has molded.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. You were explaining to me how you went about developing your characters for the musical stage.”

  “You listened to me that closely?”

  “Of course,” he said, distracted by the idea burgeoning in his mind, something monumental, something extraordinary.

  She shrugged. “What of it?”

  “It’s brilliant.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes,” he said excitedly. “It’s revolutionary, is what it is.”

  “Oh?” She straightened her spine, preening a bit. “How’s that?”

  “It’s generally accepted by the anthropological community that culture’s purpose, the reason it exists, is to meet the needs of the group. Group is the main player, has the starring role, if you will. The individual in that group is secondary.

  “But what you have hypothesized is that the individual shapes as much as is shaped by the society.” The idea had caught fire in his imagination. “If society exists to meet the needs of the individual it fundamentally changes how we see . . . everything. Am I making a bit of sense?”

  She nodded.

  He raked his hair back with both hands and laughed, convinced he’d discovered something important. “It’ll take years of research to prove, of course.”

  “The prospect doesn’t seem to discourage you.”

  “Discourage me? Why would it? It’s exciting!” His thoughts were racing ahead, already formulating new methodologies.

  “You really love it, don’t you?” she asked in an odd voice.

  He turned toward her. “Yes. Yes, I really do. I know most people don’t consider anthropology terribly useful. I don’t make anything, or deliver a service to anyone, and any benefits I provide are only in the most indirect ways, as insights. But I can’t imagine doing anything else.” He gave her an apologetic smile. “I suppose that makes me fatuous.”

  “No,” she said softly. “It makes you lucky. You’re able to do what you love and you’re good at it.” She paused. “At least I assume you’re good at it. I mean, a college wouldn’t just hire any young man who enjoys tromping about the world and chatting up anyone who’ll let him in the door. Really, I’m quite jealous.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “You’re kidding.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m not. Cross my heart.”

  “But why should you be? I could say the same about you. You love what you do and you are better than good at it.”

  Her extraordinary eyes lit with pleasure. “That’s awfully swell of you to say and I do like to sing. But as for the loving it?” She shrugged. “Sure, I enjoy pretending to be someone else for a few hours. It’s sort of fun to try on another life.” She shrugged.

  “Like to sing? Fun? That’s rather damning what you do with faint praise.”

  “Well, then, how about if I say I find it interesting?”

  “No,” he said decisively. “No one could be as good as you are if there weren’t more to it than that. There must be more driving you. What is it?”

  She squirmed a little, clearly unused to being questioned so closely. Or, he thought with sudden intuition, to having anyone insist on delving deeper into her answers, unwilling to accept that whatever she was willing to share was all she had to share.

  “Maybe I’m just not as deep, passionate, and intense as you are,” she suggested blithely. Flags of color had risen to her sharp cheekbones.

  Three days ago he would have left it alone, believing that, as a gentleman, whatever line she drew in the metaphorical sand was one he’d be forced to respect. But three days ago he’d only been intrigued. As a young scholar confronted with something inexplicable, he’d been filled with a passionate need to comprehend. Now he was something far more.

  Now, he wanted to understand Lucy. He needed to understand her.

  She fascinated him, charmed and alarmed him. Even when she made him feel befuddled—which was most of the time—he still had this insane conviction that she made sense. It was only when they were apart that he recognized otherwise.

  It was the very opposite of how he felt about Cornelia. When they were together he felt out of sync; when they were apart they made sense.

  He hadn’t given much thought to his would-be intended in days. Not really thought about her. But then it wasn’t all that unusual. In fact, he rarely did so when they were apart. He’d never once questioned why. But now he did. Because when he was not with Lucy, however briefly, he thought about her all the bloody time.

  It could only end badly. He’d spent his life learning to keep his passions tamped down, under control, out of sight, buried. Passion was the antithesis of reason and reason was civilization’s bulwark against anarchy. He should just stay mute, distance himself from her and everything about her, start the process of tearing out the hooks she’d buried deep in his—no! he would not say heart. Psyche—deep in his psyche.

  So, of course, because this was Lucy and he seemed categorically incapable of doing what made sense where Lucy was concerned, instead he took a deep breath and said, “That’s a lot of rubbish. If you don’t want to tell me about yourself, fine, but don’t put me off with that . . . bunk.”

  She blinked, feigning shock. “Why, Professor, fancy you using slang.”

  “I do have students, you know,” he said. “Occasionally I’m forced to communicate with them. I find both parties are best served if I use the students’ preferred argot. Besides, I’m discovering that linguistics could present a rather intriguing area of study. I’m surprised no one has thought to treat it as a completely separate subspecialty.”

  “You’ve never showed off this talent before.”

  “The slang you employ doesn’t have that many terms in common with the one my students use. I suspect yours is a more dated form.”

  She gave him a slow grin. “I believe you just called me old.”

  Good God, had he? “I . . . No . . . I mean . . . Of course, you’re not old. You’re hardly older than my students. I only meant that the slang you use is perhaps specialized to the traditions of the theatre. And, lest you think differently, your rather heavy-handed attempt to distract me won’t work.”

  “Piffle,” she said.

  “Now, if you please.”

  “Please what?”

  He fixed her with a firm stare. “If it’s not acting and not singing, what is it about the musical theatre that draws you?”

  She made a very unladylike noise. “I suppose if I invented a reason you wouldn’t believe me. It seems to be rather a peculiarity with you.”

  He wasn’t sure why his ability to see through her thin charades should surprise her—it really wasn’t all that hard—but he was always happy to impress her. “Yes.”

  “All right, then. Fine. But it’s a tad embarrassing. I’m afraid you’ll think me terribly shallow.” She strove to sound nonchalant, but the color was back into her cheeks and her gaze kept skittering away from his, telegraphing clear as day she was about to admit the unvarnished truth.

  He waited, uncertain what she thought might lessen her in his eyes. That she liked dressing up in pretty clothes? That
she liked the bouquets given by admirers? He didn’t care.

  “I like the applause,” she blurted out.

  “The applause.”

  “Yes,” she said with a touch of defiance. “The cheers, the whistles, the applause. I like standing in front of the curtain after the last act, when we no longer are in character, and they applaud and I know it is for me. Me. Not the part I played or the songs the composer wrote, but what I did with them.” She broke off suddenly and swallowed, a tremulous smile flickering. “I love that.”

  Her gaze met his and danced away. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and once again strove for a light tone. “I like feeling that I matter, I guess. That I’ve done something people fall in love with, even if it’s just on stage. Because after the curtain, when you’re just standing there and they can finally see you . . . it feels real.”

  Of course, he thought. How many roles had she played, in how many places, long before she’d ever stepped on a stage? She’d told him about a few: the songbird, the tomboy, the obedient niece. But beneath it all she’d wanted to be recognized, to be seen. “It is real,” he said. “And there is nothing shallow about wanting to be seen for who you are, what you are.”

  He saw her.

  Even if he didn’t want to see her. Nothing good could come of his seeing her.

  She smiled at him, a little shy, immensely gratified. “You’re a nice man, Archie.”

  No one had ever called him a nice man. Sometimes Lionel cautioned him that he became too emotionally attached to the subjects he was studying, but he called it “unprofessional,” not “nice.” His pulse quickened and a mad sort of apprehension seized him.

  No. No, no, no.

  He hopped off the back of the wagon.

  “What are you doing?” she called back, startled.

  “God only knows.”

  “You’ve already been far too kind to us,” Lavinia said, determined to resist Marjorie’s all-too-tempting offer. She perched on the end of the settee in her friend’s hotel room as Marjorie carefully packed her extravagant costumes between scented sheets of tissue paper.

  She wished she could have seen Marjorie’s performance at the theatre last night—the manager at the hotel had kissed his fingertips in tribute to their new friend this morning when they’d come down for breakfast—but there had been no last-minute seats available.

  “Kindness, piffle,” Marjorie said, waving the air as though to clear it of something distasteful. “I am being utterly selfish, my dear.”

  “Yes. Just as selfishness prompted you to lend me your beautiful dress after seeing how clumsily I stained my own in Saint-Malo.”

  “First of all, the stain was not your fault and second of all, it is not a loan. It is a gift.” She looked a little taken aback as she spoke, as though she hadn’t intended to say any such thing.

  Still, Lavinia flushed. “I could not accept such generosity.”

  “Once again, you mistake me for a far better . . . person than I am. The dress suits you more than it ever did me. How could I wear it again, knowing it looks better on another woman? My vanity would not stand for it.”

  Lavinia suspected Marjorie was only attempting to persuade her, but secretly, she agreed. The little threads of shimmering graphite shooting through the soft orchid-colored material kept it from being too jeune fille. Instead, the color made her gray hair look silvery and lent her skin a radiant glow. The easy drape of the material concealed the less salubrious effects of time on her figure yet accentuated the posture her parents had so rigorously imposed on their daughters.

  And the hat—oh! that ridiculous, extravagant, silly hat, with the shadow of its wide brim softening the lines time had etched in her face, and the crowning heap of ribbon, net, and feathers that lent her height! While she knew that words like “pretty” or “beautiful” would never truly apply to her looks, in Mrs. Martin’s clothing she thought she might be called handsome.

  And she liked it.

  She liked it very much.

  She was not so humble that she hadn’t noticed the covert expressions of admiration on some men’s faces when she walked by, or the glint of critical appreciation in the eye of certain well-disposed madames . . . She gave up all thoughts of returning the gown or hat.

  “I can’t think what to say other than thank you.”

  Marjorie smiled happily. “You’re welcome. Now all we need is for you to agree to come to Bergerac for me to be happy. Don’t you want to see the town that gave its name to one of theatre’s most memorable lovers?”

  “Cyrano?”

  “The very same.”

  “You must know how much we would like to, but I don’t see how we can. We have to wait here for Lucy.”

  “I understand, my dear. But the fact is, we don’t know where Lucy is.” She sank down next to Lavinia and secured her hands in her large, gloved ones. “The telegrams I have received in reference to my inquiries have been very confusing. We only know that she disembarked from the ferry at Saint-Malo. After that . . .” She shook her head.

  “But she checked into the hotel.”

  “Someone checked into the hotel. It is all most suspicious. However, I strongly suspect that that miserable little innkeeper Navarre is attempting to hold us up for someone else’s unpaid bill.”

  Lavinia started in shock.

  Marjorie nodded grimly. “From what I can piece together from Navarre’s histrionic telegrams, a girl he mistook for Lucy Eastlake came in accompanied by a man. The pair of them proceeded to tally up a sizeable bill, not only at the hotel’s restaurant but elsewhere, then decamped in the middle of the night.”

  “How awful!”

  Marjorie blew out a long, low sigh. Whether she was sighing over Mr. Navarre’s gullibility or the iniquitousness of the young woman posing as Lucy, was impossible to say.

  “But why should this girl pretend to be Lucy? And how would she know to pretend in the first place?” Lavinia asked.

  “I have it all worked out,” Marjorie said going from aggrieved to chipper in the blink of an eye. “I think this girl was an English adventuress. Who knows what duplicitous scheme she originally intended. But when she walked into the hotel Mr. Navarre, recognizing her nationality, jumped to his own conclusion. Very likely, he asked her if she was ‘Miss Eastlake’ for whom he was holding a room.”

  Lavinia’s eyes grew round.

  “The adventuress, seeing an opportunity to dine well at someone else’s expense, went along with his assumption.” Marjorie’s eyes narrowed knowingly. “As did her male companion. Whoever he was. Which is another reason I do not think this young woman could possibly be Lucy. Can you imagine Lucy being squired about France by some strange man?”

  “Good heavens, no!” breathed Lavinia, shocked to her core. “But I can scarce believe an Englishwoman could act so wickedly.”

  “It’s sad but true,” Marjorie said, discreetly adjusting the fit of her bodice, “Girls are simply not what they used to be.”

  “But if what you surmise is true, where is Lucy?”

  “It’s hard to say, but I could well imagine Lucy coming into the hotel at some later point and making inquiries of some person other than Mr. Navarre. Perhaps a night clerk. Upon discovering we were gone and there being no rooms available, she went elsewhere. We simply don’t know.”

  “But then we should go back to Saint-Malo and find her!”

  “My darling, once she realized you were gone, she would have no reason to stay. She would assume that you had gone on to Saint-Girons and be traveling there to meet you, which is just what I suggest we do.”

  “We?” Lavinia asked, hardly daring to believe her ears.

  “Yes. As soon as I have completed my little performance in Bergerac.”

  “Oh, Marjorie!” Lavinia squeezed the broad hand covering hers, touched by this show of kindness.

  “If you say I am too kind once more I shall be forced to propose myself for sainthood, which will interfere greatly with my career,
sainthood and the stage being mutually exclusive. And you shall be responsible for having disappointed the vast unwashed rural population of France. Not to mention Paris.”

  Lavinia smiled at her nonsense. “Dear Marjorie, we couldn’t impose.”

  “Why not?” At the sound of Bernice’s voice, the two ladies looked around to find Bernice standing in the doorway adjoining their two suites. At night Marjorie had courteously kept it closed tight so that when she returned from her performance at the theatre she hadn’t disturbed them.

  “Where have you been?” Lavinia asked.

  Bernice beamed happily. “I was touring the ruins of a thirteenth century abbey just outside of town. Fascinating stuff. Then I popped in to the cathedral. Papist, I know, but still . . . The choir was singing compline. It was transcendent!”

  Somewhere in the last few days, Bernice had emerged as an inveterate sightseer, always ferreting out some obscure museum or local attraction or other, rambling about here and there, returning tired but invigorated by her solitary explorations. Lavinia had never suspected her sister’s interest in travel. As far as she could remember, Bernice had never once suggested she wanted to step foot out of their little town, let alone England.

  Now, stomping the leaves from her feet, she peered around brightly from beneath the unexpectedly jaunty little red toque perched atop her head and said, “I don’t see what good staying here will do us, Lavinia. Marjorie is undoubtedly correct in assuming Lucy will be heading for Saint-Girons. So that is where we must go.”

  “You’re both probably right.”

  “In which case, I suppose we had best take Lucy’s things with us once more.”

  Lavinia nodded. “I don’t see there’s any choice.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Marjorie said. “Though I am sure everything is fine—Lucy is one of the most resourceful young ladies of my acquaintance—just in case she does find her way to Châtellerault, we shall leave a letter for her here at the hotel.”