“I don’t suppose it much matters,” said Lavinia, looking from one to the other of her fellow siege survivors.
“Not really. But I should like to see if my memory holds up to the reality,” Señor Silva said. Oliveria nodded.
Lucy nudged Margery in the ribs. “Wake up. It’s the final act.”
Margery shifted upright in his seat as DuPaul carefully untied the leather pouch and then, with an unexpected touch of showmanship, upended it. Beneath the soft illumination of old-fashioned gaslight dozens of rubies spilled out in a glimmering cascade, a crimson Milky Way winking and sparkling across the deep blue baize-lined table.
“Voila!”
The only sounds were hushed gasps followed by a long moment of silence.
“Yes,” Señor Silva said. “That’s pretty much how I remembered them.” He rose heavily to his feet, aided by a quick helping hand from a grandson who jumped forward from his chair, and looked around. “Mesdames et Messieurs, let us adjoin to the tavern. The drinks are on me!”
Light, excited laughter and agreement answered his invitation as all those in attendance, including Bernice and Margery, rose and followed Señor Silva. Bernard DuPaul began carefully counting the rubies into piles of ten with a flat silver wand. Lavinia was the last to get up, her gaze soft in reflection. Lucy waited for her near the curtains.
As he saw Lavinia rise, DuPaul paused. “But, Miss Litton, surely you’ll want the letter.”
She regarded him quizzically. “Letter? What letter?”
“I thought you knew. There’s a letter in here, too, addressed to you.”
She sat back down. “From whom?”
“I don’t know. The letter is sealed.” He reached into the leather pouch and withdrew a small envelope, the excellent quality paper turned ivory with age. “I supposed you would know.”
He turned it over. A strong but elegant hand had written Miss Lavinia Litton across the center. He rose and brought it to her, bowing as he retreated.
The color rose and fled her face in quick succession. Her hand fluttered at the base of her throat.
“What is it, Aunt Lavinia?” Lucy asked in concern.
“I’m not sure.”
Having finished counting the rubies, DuPaul swept the gems back into the leather pouch. “I will leave you to your memories, Miss Litton.” He nodded at Lucy. “Miss Eastlake.”
Lucy waited until he was gone before taking the chair next to Lavinia. “Do you know who wrote it?”
“I believe I do. Yes.”
“Would you rather just burn it?” Lucy asked. She heard the curtain move, the clerks coming to clear the dishes, no doubt. “Please wait,” she called to them. “We’ll just be a few minutes.”
She softly touched the back of her great-aunt’s hand. “Lavinia?”
Lavinia shook her head. “No. No. It’s all long ago now and I’m curious.” She reached for the wand DuPaul had left behind and slid it beneath the sealed flap, slicing it neatly open, and blew into the envelope. She turned it upside down. A single sheet of paper glided out. She eyed it as though it might turn into a snake and bite her. Then, taking a deep breath, she picked it up and opened it. Her gaze fell to the signature.
“I was right,” she murmured. She scanned the contents quickly, a frown furrowing the space between her brows, and then she abruptly held it out toward Lucy. “I’m afraid my eyesight is not what it used to be and the light in here is fading. Would you be so kind as to read it to me?”
Doubtfully, Lucy took it. “Are you sure? It might be of a personal nature.”
“It assuredly is,” Lavinia replied with a gentle smile. “But it also references two very young people who no longer exist. Whatever was said to Lavinia Litton, age eighteen, no longer matters except as a point of historic interest. Rather like the geological record.”
By heaven, Lucy believed her great-aunt Lavinia had just made a joke. At Lucy’s expression Lavinia’s smiled broadened. “There. That was just the thing. I feel quite up to hearing whatever it is that letter contains. Read on, Lucy.”
So Lucy read.
My dear Miss Litton, my own Lavinia,
You cannot imagine such pleasure as I take in writing what I cannot say: that in my heart, you are and will ever be my own, my dearest, my beloved Lavinia. I write these words in the fragile hope that someday you will read them and that in the coming years I will be able to take some comfort in imagining that in one respect at least I was able to speak my heart and that perhaps you heard me.
I am pledged to marry another. Craven though I know myself to be, the longer I knew you the more reluctant I was to tell you. For a short time I wanted to pretend that I was free and so I did but now I must return to the future others planned for me. Ours will be a marriage arranged by our parents at our births. I cannot recall a time when I was not aware of the identity of my future bride. She is a fine, intelligent girl, also raised to expect and accept our eventual marriage and, though there was never a question of this being a love match, I never had cause to oppose our union.
That is, until I met you.
“What a caddish thing to do!” Lucy exclaimed.
“Not necessarily,” Lavinia murmured. Her attention was fixed upon her hands, folded together atop the blue baize table covering. “Remember, I never gave him any reason to believe my heart had been engaged. He would not want to presume. Go on.”
My darling, compassionate, brave, and valiant Lavinia, how was I to know that amidst the brutal carnage of this God-awful rebellion I would encounter a heart that beat so close in unison with my own, a mind that so easily understood and reflected my own best self, a spirit so sublime? But I did.
How many nights have I lain awake trying desperately to find some way out of this hellish predicament? You will never know how close I have come, not once but a dozen times, to asking you if you could love me and, should you say yes, of begging you to elope. But I dared not ask you, fearing the answer. Either answer. The one would break my heart and the other would make us pariahs. For how could an honorable man ask you to turn your back on all you know, the people you love and who love you?
It is only this that keeps me mute, the knowledge that loving me would reduce you—though never in my eyes!—in the eyes of the world. What sort of man would I be if I asked the woman I love to sacrifice her good name for me?
“Oh, how could he?” Lucy exclaimed.
“He was doing what he thought was best. Honorable.”
“But he didn’t love her.”
“He’d made a promise.”
“How can you defend him?”
“I’m not. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand. It was a different time, Lucy. A different world. We saw things very much as black and white. One’s honor was inviolable.” Lavinia sounded so composed, so calm. Would Lucy be so relaxed about Archie someday?
No. Never.
She read on.
So I am left with nothing but to wish you happiness, my darling, to hope that any hurt I engendered healed quickly, that someone worthy of you won your heart and made you happy. If I were a better man I would hope that you forgot me. But I am not. I hope you remembered me, infrequently but kindly, because I know every day for the rest of my life I will have thought of you.
And now, at last and forever, let me write the words I cannot say: I love you. I love you. I love you.
Lucy’s head jerked up. She could have sworn that as she read his last declaration, she heard another voice softly echoing her own.
“Aunt Lavinia?” Her great-aunt had risen to her feet and was staring behind Lucy, her hands twisting before her.
She swung around. A handsome elderly man with a thick head of silvered hair and a still-firm cleft chin stood leaning heavily on a silver-headed cane. All his attention was focused on Lavinia, his expression tense but resolute.
“Lavinia?”
“Hello, John.”
She was older—but then, so was he. She wore age well, with a grace and sure
ness he should have expected. She’d never been a beauty, but time and experience had revealed something far more appealing: her character.
“What are you doing here, John?”
“I could not help myself. I tried . . .” He trailed off in despair before straightening his spine. “I came to see if . . . if there was any hope.”
She tipped her head. “Hope of what?” He would swear there was warmth in her blue-gray eyes, but was it merely the warmth of a fond recollection? Or dare he look for something more?
He took a deep breath. “A future.”
“Oh, John,” she murmured and sank down heavily. “Now, after all these years of silence?”
The girl, Lucy, rushed to her side, glaring at him like a young tigress prepared to eviscerate her foe.
“I have loved you for fifty years, Lavinia. I never stopped loving you. But I was married. How could I communicate with you when every word I said, no matter how mundane or trivial, would be a betrayal of my vows, for no other reason than they were spoken to you? How could I bear to see you? My love would be apparent to anyone. My wife deserved better. You deserved better.
“And after she died, I waited the requisite year before making my plans. I had left you to satisfy honor and though I could never love her, I could at least give her memory its due respect. But now I am here and what I feel for you has not changed. It has never changed.”
“So you came to discover if I had feelings for you?” Lavinia asked quietly.
“Yes.” Hope hushed his voice.
“Yes, John, I did.”
“Did.”
She smiled oddly. “We hardly know one another now, do we? We are, both of us, so much changed from the people who took refuge together in that fortress.”
No. This could not be. He had anticipated this moment for so long. “Do you think people really change so much?” he asked. “Don’t you still love the color pink?”
“Not really. Lavender is more flattering to a more mature woman.”
He smiled at that. “But you still like Wagner.”
“I like Gilbert and Sullivan better.”
“Really?” the girl piped in, coloring when Lavinia shot her a quelling glance.
He held his hand out. “Why are you so determined to show yourself to be different than the girl I fell in love with?”
“Because I am different.”
He regarded her steadily, refusing to believe there was no hope. He had spent fifty years imagining this moment and it was not at all what he’d envisioned. Poignant, tragic, passionate, ecstatic, filled with recrimination, denunciation, or declarations; they were all scenes he’d envisioned at one time or another. But not this: quieter, but richer and far more complicated.
She smiled softly and added, “As are you.”
He gazed helplessly at Lavinia, uncertain where to go from here, or how. She returned his regard with complete equanimity, reminding him sharply of the girl who’d lived through five months of siege without ever losing her hope or nerve. A girl with courage and resolve, who had been sent to India because she hadn’t taken with British society, but who somehow had never undervalued herself. She’d been exceptional then; she was magnificent now.
And as simply as that he understood.
“You’re right. I am,” he agreed. “So let us see, my darling, if these two different people we’ve become can fall in love. Let us build on the past. Not to re-create it, but to make something new. Please.”
He held out his hand.
She took it.
She’d been right.
What she had just witnessed turned her sad little plan on its ear and put to rest all the nonsense she’d been thinking for the last two days. Furiously, Lucy shoved her few bits of clothing into the rucksack she’d bought on the way back from the bank. Her pulse beat in time to an inner resolve.
Lord Barton had married a woman he didn’t love and spent fifty years pining after the one he did. Where was the sense in that? Who’d won in that little trade? Honor? And as for Lavinia, Lucy wasn’t sure if she would fare better or worse in accepting Lord Barton’s long-postponed proposal.
Lucy didn’t have an answer for Lavinia but she sure as shambles had one for herself. She would have been furious. Lord Barton should have told Lavinia about his fiancée and then he should have told Lavinia he loved her. He should have given her a choice in her future instead deciding for her. To hell with stiff upper lips! And to hell with maidenly dignity! Had Lucy been Lavinia she would have followed Lord Barton straight to his ancestral home and declared her love.
Which was just what she intended to do with Archie. She’d pay the guard whatever bribe he required and then she’d sit outside Archie’s cell door and drone on and on and on about how much she loved him and why she had done what she had and how he must forgive her because they belonged together, damn it, and she was not waiting fifty years for Miss Litchfield to die in order to be with him.
So, she was right back where she had started, though having come about it from a different direction. She was not going to give Archie up without a fight. And a bloody good one, too.
Indeed, she could hardly believe she’d left Châtellerault in the first place. And why? Simply because Archie had told her to? When had she ever done anything simply because she’d been told to? Never. She’d always followed her own sound judgment and if it sometimes led her on circuitous routes, it had never yet failed to get her to her desired destination, and that place first and foremost, now and forever, would be Archie.
She set her hands on her hips and looked around the room, spied her hairbrush, and shoved it in the pack. Then she latched the satchel shut and jammed her arms through her much-abused coat then headed out the door. She looked both ways in the hall, and seeing no one who’d require an explanation, darted down the stairs and past the tavern pub where the celebration was still going strong, aided by the presence of the reunited lovers.
At the front desk, she paid her bill and asked the clerk to give her great-aunts the letter she’d written explaining where she’d gone. After one final peek into the tavern where Bernice was singing her heart out alongside fifty strangers led by Margery, and Lavinia was fluttering as she pretended not to notice Lord Barton’s rapt gaze, she struck out.
Though the train station was set at the far end of town, it didn’t take her ten minutes to make it there. She bought a ticket from the drowsy-looking clerk, who informed her that the train would be arriving in a quarter hour give or take, and thanked him. Outside the office, she took a seat on the bench and settled in to wait.
And wait.
And wait.
After half an hour she got up and approached the clerk who was playing a solitary card game. “Where’s the train?”
He shook his head. “It’s a mystery.”
She went back to her seat.
And waited another half hour.
It was going on twilight. In the distance, the mountainsides were blistered by extravagant shades of magenta and salmon, and a dark blue canopy was spreading overhead. A fog seeped up from the lower valleys, blanketing the road into town in swirling effervescence.
She caught the clerk’s eye. He shrugged again and went back to his card game. Exasperated, she got up and started pacing back and forth along the platform, craning her neck to peer down to where the train tracks curved into a copse of pine trees, a thready-looking footpath running alongside them.
“Where is the train?” she asked again.
The ticket agent sighed and put down his cards, regarding her dolefully. “Sometime there is problems with the engine, or a flock of sheep on the track, or a tree falls across . . .” He shrugged.
She made an exasperated sound. She didn’t have time for this; Archie was in jail, waiting for her. Even if he didn’t realize he was waiting for her.
Finally, unable to stand the waiting any longer, she set off along the footpath, intent on finding out what had happened to the blasted train that should have been taking her to A
rchie’s side by now. At once, with the simple act of doing something, she felt better. She smiled into the gloaming.
The air was still warm and soft, the scent of autumn rising underfoot from a cushion of fallen leaves and moist, flinty ground. The fog was growing thicker, a shifting curtain on a phantom play, while ghost birds wept and trilled from a barely discernible forest’s shelter. An owl passed overhead, sifting the air on silent wings so low she could have reached up and brushed it with her fingertips.
And then a figure materialized on the path ahead of her, striding out of the fog like a pirate coming up from the churning sea. It was a man, his coattails swinging at his sides, his collarless white shirt open at the throat, head bare and black curls gleaming with condensation.
Archie.
Lucy froze, unable to believe her eyes, certain she had conjured him through sheer longing.
She couldn’t tell if he saw her; he came on towards her without a check in his stride, without the slightest change in his speed, inexorably, like the tide pulled by the moon, until he was right in front of her and his hands rose to cup her face, and his head was bending down and his mouth found hers in a kiss so tender, so filled with yearning, and so passionately restrained that her eyes filled with tears.
Her eyelids squeezed shut and she threw her arms around his neck, kissing him back, fear and relief and love and hunger all jumbled together in her passionate response. And finally, when she felt certain she would swoon, he broke off the kiss and set his forehead against hers, breathing heavily, his hands still bracketing her face.
“I love you, Lucy. I’ve been such a fool but you have to forgive. You have to because I love you and I know you love me, God knows why, but I’m sure as hell not going to question it. I’m simply going to do my damnedest to make sure you never stop.”
She started to smile but then recalled a very good reason not to smile. “Miss Litchfield.”
He shook his head. “She’s not you. How could I . . . ? If I’m a cad then so be it. But at least I’m not the sort of cad who would marry one woman when I’m in love with another.”
The Songbird's Seduction Page 27