The Songbird's Seduction

by Connie Brockway

  Lavinia blew out a soft sigh of relief, satisfied. Marjorie was right; Lucy was an exceptionally capable young woman.

  “Good,” said Bernice. “The only question now is whether to accept Marjorie’s generous offer to accompany us. While of course we would delight in her company, we mustn’t be selfish and interfere with her scheduled performances.”

  “Of course not!” Lavinia exclaimed, turning to Marjorie. “We would never allow you to disappoint your public for our sake.”

  “Never!” Bernice added.

  “My dears,” Marjorie said, smiling munificently. “If I may? After tomorrow I have no performances until next week. You are to meet in Saint-Girons on Monday, which leaves plenty of time for me to travel from there to Toulouse where I am next scheduled to appear.

  “And really, I am being utterly sincere when I say I would be delighted to go with you. The thespian in me is enthralled!” She surged to her feet. “It’s a story tailor-made for the stage, darlings! A valiant and doomed boy hero arrives with a saddlebag full of mysterious rubies—”

  “It was only a pouch, not a saddlebag.”

  Marjorie’s mouth puckered with disappointment but then she rallied. “Pouch, you say? All right.” She clasped one hand to her bosom, lifting her other arm as though sighting along it and peering dreamily into the past. “He arrives with a pouch of mysterious rubies which he then cavalierly leaves behind with the entrenched and desperate survivors of a siege.

  “Thus ensues the tale of a fifty-year-old pact, ill-starred lovers”—at this Bernice shot a startled glace at Lavinia, who pinked up—Marjorie was such a sympathetic listener—“their unexpected and dramatic rescue, and the would-be lovers’ final parting. Then, years later, the unexpected bequest from the Englishman to the valiant lady he once obviously admired. Monday will provide the final act.” She sighed rapturously before her gaze snapped to Lavinia and Bernice. “Please. You really must allow me to come with you!”

  “This is, how they say, the end of the line,” Luca told Lucy flatly while around them the rest of the caravan watched with oblique interest. “Even though you have not paid me a sou, out of the generosity of my heart I have fed you lunch, I have driven you and your whatever he is—clearly not your lover, a lover would not walk five miles when he could be with you—all the way to Lamergeaux. Again, out of the generosity of my heart and with no hope of recompense. Why? Because I am a French gentleman.” He turned to his troupe, inviting their appreciation.

  “You’re Romani.”

  Luca did not deny it. Instead, his chin notched even higher. “Ah. But French Romani. You cannot say you were ill-served at my hands.” He stared at her.

  “No. I could not and would not.”

  “Good, then we are finished.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, hoping to spy Archie. Revelers and merrymakers, peddlers, food vendors, and entertainers crowded the little market town’s central square, all come to partake of the annual harvest festival. Archie was nowhere to be seen.

  She’d spotted him earlier when they’d first stopped but since then he’d disappeared. She didn’t worry that he’d abandoned her; his having sprouted wings and flown away was more likely. He simply wasn’t the sort of man who could leave a woman stranded on her own, no matter how much he might want to.

  Something painful twisted in the vicinity of her heart. She might well deserve it if he did. She blew out a quick, steadying breath. No use crying over spilt milk. What was done, was done.

  “Au revoir.”

  “No!” She came back to the present with a start. “Please. We’re still miles from Châtellerault.”

  Luca could not have looked more bored. “And this is my problem how?”

  “It’s not but—”

  “Exactement! Not. My. Problem. If you want to go Châtellerault I suggest you buy a train ticket. One comes through town daily. In fact, the train from Châtellerault is due soon. Not that that will help you. You have missed today’s outgoing train.”

  “We don’t have any money.”

  His smile became suave. “I offered you a remedy for that problem, too, but you refused. However, I might be persuaded to reconsider. There’s a good crowd here. It will be a fine evening. We could all benefit from another performance.”

  Archie would never go for it. She shook her head.

  “Then I wish you bon voyage, mademoiselle.” He swung around and stomped off with imperial disdain.

  “Here, little Gypsy.” The fiddler slipped a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper into her hand, winked, and was gone.

  She looked at the oily package, shrugged, opened it, and took a bite as she started to wend her way through the fairgoers. The fair was taking place in a huge field that divided the town proper from the railroad tracks. Booths selling cakes and pastries, meat pies and cheese wheels, ribbons, hats, leather goods, and toys lined the perimeter. Mothers held tight to the hands of children straining to drag them to the puppet show, while men ruminated over displays of tobacco pouches and pipes.

  The far end of the field served as a venue for various contests being held, one for the largest aubergine, and another for the ripest cheese. There were prizes for the fattest duck, the biggest bull, the wooliest sheep. A number of competitions designed to test the local male population’s strength and athleticism were starting, men queuing up to try their hands at hammer throws and skeet shooting.

  Under other circumstances Lucy would have enjoyed the spectacle tremendously, intrigued by the similarities and differences she noted between such an event in England and France. But she wished Archie was with her to share her pleasure. The scent of caramel, cinnamon, and wine perfumed the air, while hawkers vied to be heard over the shouts and screeches of riotous children, and all around the press and motion of people at play infused the blood with the spirit of carnival.

  She’d wound her way to the competition field, still munching on her sandwich when she saw a man standing atop a raised podium. He was waving a heavy-looking pouch over his head and extolling a quickly swelling crowd to do who knew what.

  Curious, Lucy moved closer. “What’s happening?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.

  To her surprise the stout, matronly looking lady beside her answered in heavily accented English. “It’s the annual prizefight. The festival board issues a challenge to any and all comers to fight our local champion for three rounds, the winner to take the purse.”

  Lucy had absolutely no interest in blood sports, but since the lady had been generous enough to answer her, she felt it only courteous to evince a little polite curiosity. “Is he any good?”

  “Our champion? Mais oui. He is most robust. Most virile.” The woman fluttered her hand at her face, leaving little doubt as to her feelings on the subject. “No challenger stands a chance. For three years now he is undefeated.”

  “Oh.” Having felt she’d observed the rules of etiquette, Lucy nodded at the woman and started back the way she’d come when her eye was caught by a man in a white shirt, climbing unceremoniously to join the emcee on the podium.

  She peered closer. And froze.

  It was Archie.

  He said something. The woman beside her crowed delightedly. “Aha! Here is a challenger!”

  At once, Lucy started shoving her way to the front of the crowd. She had to stop Archie before he got killed!

  Now that a sacrificial lamb had appeared, the local population was showing up in droves to see what self-deluded idiot had volunteered for the slaughter. Undeterred, Lucy ruthlessly elbowed her way through the thick of the crowd, finally making it to the front where a rope cordoned off the makeshift ring set up beneath the podium. She lifted the rope and was about to dash across the arena when two pairs of strong arms grabbed her and hauled her back. She jerked around to find herself facing a pair of stalwart-looking members of the local constabulary, the older of whom promptly launched into what Lucy recognized as a lecture. Odd how the spirit of a thing came through even when one couldn
’t understand more than a few words.

  “Mille pardon. Non parle Frances.” She batted her eyes winsomely.

  The younger constable’s severe expression melted; the older one’s mouth flattened as he shot a disgusted glance at his colleague. Immediately, the boy cleared his throat as he recovered his missing authoritative glower.

  The older man pointed at her, pointed at the rope, and then stuck his finger under her nose and shook it. Well, that was clear enough. In the meantime, up on the podium, Archie was listening to a series of instructions being given by a pair of official-looking men. She had to put a stop to this before he got hurt.

  She glanced left and right, but the place was packed now, jammed full of people, making it almost impossible to move, certainly not quickly enough to make it to another area where she might slip under the rope without being stopped. And, drat it all, the older constable wasn’t going anywhere either.

  She gnawed her lip. Archie was fit. He was also strong. He’d carried her easily enough. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, after all. Perhaps he might even—

  A man suddenly appeared beneath the podium. Lucy’s jaw dropped. He was enormous, a monster of a man at least six and a half feet tall. Making a great show of it, he stripped down to his undershirt, revealing shoulders as broad across as most ponies’, capped with muscles that looked like ham epaulets. Hairy ham epaulets, since his whole upper torso, including his back, arms, and neck seemed to be covered in a black pelt. His chest was round as a rain barrel. His blunt, square face sat atop a neck as thick as a beer keg, while the thighs straining the fabric of his pants were round as hogsheads.

  “Archie!”

  Archie, still in the process of agreeing to his own murder, looked around at the sound of her screech. He spied her and frowned, lifting his hands in the universal gesture that asked, “What?”

  Frantically, she pointed at the monster lumbering up the podium steps, each riser sagging under his weight. He gave the man a quick assessing glance, looked back to her, and shrugged.

  “You’ll be killed!” she wailed. She bolted and the horrible old constable, as though waiting for just such a move, snatched her back. “Ar-chie!”

  Looking unreservedly disgruntled, Archie said something to one of the officials, then turned and stomped down the steps, sparing no more than a nod to the monster still lumbering up the stairs. His opponent, clearly unused to such an obvious lack of appreciation—or maybe terror—vacillated a few seconds before following Archie back down. The two officials on the podium traded confused looks, then shrugged and fell into line.

  “Lucy, please stop shouting at me. It’s unnerving,” Archie said as he strode across the ring toward her. The constables, seeing that there was no longer any threat of her running into the arena, withdrew.

  “You’re unnerved! You’re not the one being asked to witness the terrible end of someone you—of someone.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. No one is going to meet a terrible end. Don’t worry.”

  “Have you lost your mind? Look at him!” She raised her hand and pointed at the local champion, unsuccessfully pretending not to be eavesdropping a few yards away.

  Archie looked. He didn’t appear in the least bit impressed. Maybe something was wrong with him. She’d heard that intellectual types’ brains sometimes overheated, resulting in brainstorms where they lost touch with reality. It seemed a viable explanation.

  “Yes?” Archie said, turning back. “He’s very large.”

  “Large? He’s enormous. He’s a veritable minotaur!”

  “Exactly. Which is why I—”

  She grabbed his hand across the rope. “Please, Archie. If anything happened to you I couldn’t forgive myself and it’s not necessary, Archie—”

  “Qu’est-ce que signifie ‘minotaur’?” the giant asked. No one answered.

  “Look,” Archie said, giving her hand an awkward pat, “Two train tickets will stand us eighty francs and then we’ll need to pay the hotel because, despite what you think, we can’t keep skipping out on our bills and—”

  “But that’s just it, Archie. I have—”

  “Quelle es minotaur?” the Minotaur interrupted loudly, now beginning to look seriously aggrieved.

  Archie spun around. “Do you mind? I am trying to have a conversation with the lady.”

  “Il est une créature mythologique, mi-homme, mi-taureau.” Apparently the giant’s number one fan, the same lady who’d apprised Lucy of just who, or rather what, Archie was going up against, had followed in Lucy’s wake and was now explaining something to the man.

  The boxing champion fairly blew smoke out of his flaring nostrils and spat something to the lady, then jerked his head in Lucy’s direction.

  “Oh, dear,” the lady said.

  “What?” demanded Lucy.

  “He says he will give the young man here a drubbing worthy of mythology.”

  “Oh, dear,” Lucy echoed, looking pleadingly at Archie. “Now look what I’ve done. Please Archie, if you’d just let me explain—”

  “Oh, no!” he said, backing away and shaking his head. “Oh no, you don’t. Every time you explain something I end up thinking it sounds reasonable right until the time I regret it. No.”

  The crowd, clearly having had enough of these blatant delaying tactics, began making catcalls. The officials, attuned to their audience’s impatience, took hold of Archie, one on either side, and dragged him a little distance to finish their instruction.

  “Do you have children?” the middle-aged lady asked in deceptively mild tones.

  “No,” said Lucy, her eyes still on Archie. If she could just have two uninterrupted minutes, she could put an end to this nonsense.

  “Whew!” The woman expelled a relieved sigh and crossed herself. “Well, that is a mercy. Your children will not have to see their father—”

  “What? Oh, we’re not married.”

  “Non?” The woman surveyed Lucy sympathetically. “Perhaps it is for the best. You are young. There will be others.”

  “No, there won’t. He’s the only one,” Lucy said, her gaze still on Archie.

  He nodded as he listened intently, then casually shed his white shirt. Even through her worry, Lucy could not help inhaling with appreciation. If the champion was a minotaur, Archie was Theseus, superbly muscled and perfectly proportioned. When he moved, his broad back rippled beneath his close-fitting undershirt, the short sleeves riding above the bulge of biceps. He lifted his arms over his head, bent from side to side, stretching and revealing the play of hard muscle slipping beneath smooth, clear skin.

  He looked so capable, so virile. Perhaps he could . . . But then she recalled how Charlie Cheddar had laid him out with one blow. And not only had Charlie been drunk, he was at least three inches shorter than Archie.

  Archie was doomed.

  If Charlie could knock him out with just one—her eyes widened on sudden hope and inspiration. It seemed likely to her that Archie would fold up like an accordion with the first blow. And if it wasn’t too hard a blow, just enough to—

  She waved madly at the local champion who was strutting around the perimeter of the ring, extolling his fans and beating at his chest.

  “S’il vous plaît! Monsieur! S’il vous plaît!”

  The monster stopped strutting and turned to eye her. His gaze grew appreciative as he sauntered over. “Oui?”

  “Don’t hit him too hard. Please. Just knock him out and call it a day.”

  The huge man looked over her to her middle-aged companion and said something. “He wants to know what you want,” she said.

  Lucy told her.

  The woman quickly translated. When she’d finished, the champion threw back his head and roared with laughter. Then, spreading his arms wide, he made a slow circle, hollering to the crowd, clearly encouraging them to join in his hilarity. Archie, too, had turned. He stared at her in stunned incredulity.

  Oh, dear. “He’s telling everyone what I said, isn’t he?” she asked
the lady at her side in a small voice.

  “Oui,” the matron answered sympathetically.

  Having finished amusing the crowd, the champion completed his previctory lap back to where Lucy stood. He winked at her and said something in tones so universally smarmy she didn’t need a translation. Then he reached across the rope and chucked her under her chin.

  The matron tittered. “He says he will not hurt your boyfriend too badly if you promise to kiss him when he wins.”

  Lucy tried not to grimace. The brute’s hair was oily—all his hair, including the shoulder tufts—and stains darkened his undershirt beneath his arms. But to save Archie? She smiled weakly. “Oui.”

  “What?”

  Her head snapped around to see Archie stalking towards her. The sun kissed his blue-black hair and his jaw had a hard and angry set to it. Behind him hurried the two harassed-looking officials and behind them a train came into view, hiccupping smoke and whistling a mournful warning.

  She racked her brain for something to assuage his vanity. Men were such touchy creatures. She’d wounded his masculine pride and now he was going to sulk. A man who stood in peril of being beaten to death couldn’t afford the luxury of sulking.

  “Well, thank you very much,” he said. “Nothing like a vote of confidence to buoy a fellow’s spirits.”

  “Now, Archie. It isn’t like that.”

  One of the officials tapped Archie on the arm.

  Impatiently, Archie swung on him. “You again. Look, can’t you see I’m having a private conversation with this young lady?”

  The poor little official shrank at his whiplash tone. “But . . . how can it be private? We are surrounded by more than two hundred people, monsieur,” he gingerly pointed out.

  “That’s beside the point. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  The other official, clearly made of sterner stuff, stepped forward. “In one minute, whether or not you have finished your oh-so-private conversation, this match begins!”

  “Fine,” Archie said tightly. “Now, if you don’t mind?”