The Songbird's Seduction (12 page)

“It’s all right, dears. I’ll just go fetch it now. Wait here.”

“But—”

“If I’m not back before the boarding we’ll figure something else out. But I’ll be back,” she promised with a great deal more conviction than she felt. “Wait here for me.”

And with that she picked up her skirts and fled down the wharf toward the street, hoping against hope that a hansom cab would be standing there with fresh horses dancing in their traces.

A hansom cab
was
there. It stood at the curb while an enormous load of luggage was being handed down piece by piece from the top racks, the driver working at a snail’s pace. Lucy looked around. There was no other conveyance in sight. She peered closer at the cab and made out the silhouette of the man still inside. Perhaps if she appealed to the luggage’s owner?

She went to the side and rapped on the window. “Look here, my good fellow, could you ask the driver to hurry up? I have an emergency—”

“Don’t we all?” drawled a silky, familiar voice as the door swung open and a well-polished boot appeared.

“Margery!”

“In the flesh and ready to embark upon my triumphant tour of France’s many quaint but sadly entertainment-deprived towns.”
He emerged from the carriage, swinging an ebony-handled cane and beaming with avuncular affection.

“I thought you were going to Paris?”

“My darling girl. One does not
start
a tour in Paris, one concludes it triumphantly there. I start in . . .” He frowned, pulled a face, and shook his head. “Oh, who can remember French towns? I’ll look it up when I arrive.

“Now, what is this emergency? I do hope it doesn’t involve money. You know I never carry cash upon my person; it only encourages people in the misguided assumption that I intend to pay for something.”

She shook her head, miserably regarding Margery’s luggage. The driver hadn’t even unloaded a third of it. Drat. Drat, drat, drat! The sense of urgency left her like air seeping from a punctured balloon. It was too late.

Reading the disappointment in her expression, Margery took her elbow and propelled her across the street and beneath the awning of a café. “Tell me,” he said.

The words spilled out in a brief, succinct flurry. When she was finished, Margery tipped his head and smiled with preening self-satisfaction.

“What?” she asked.

“But, my darling one, it is so simple.
I
shall accompany the dear old tabbies on the ferry crossing.”

Lord, she adored the man. He had an enormous, trusting, and egalitarian heart.

If only her aunts had been cut from the same cloth. But they weren’t. They would
never
allow themselves to become obligated to a strange man.

“If only you could.” She smiled regretfully.

“But why could I not?”

“My great-aunts would never agree to being under a debt of gratitude to you.”

Margery’s ginger brows flew up.

“It just isn’t done amongst their generation. A gentleman simply does not impose upon a lady by placing her in a position of indebtedness.”

“That is
so
odd,” Margery muttered, unoffended but mystified. His own antecedents were far from genteel. Though he’d polished a bright veneer of refinement about himself, it was only a veneer and he, at least, never mistook it for something more.

“Ain’t it, though?” Lucy agreed disconsolately.

“Truly? They won’t accept me as an escort even though you will vouch for my character?”

She shook her head. It was ridiculous and narrow-minded that a letter of introduction from a man Lavinia had known more than fifty years ago endorsing a grandson they had never set eyes on could make that grandson acceptable, while Margery, whom Lucy had known as a friend for years, was relegated to the ranks of “suspicious” due to his working-class roots. But there would be no arguing with them.

“The only men with whom I could possibly be acquainted and whom they do not also know could only be a fellow performer. I strongly suspect Bernice would actually prefer to die rather than be escorted anywhere by a male entertainer.”

Margery didn’t argue. He puzzled a moment, his perfectly manicured nails tapping the head of his ebony walking stick. His face cleared. “I know what to do.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Now, you return to your aunties and I shall be with you anon. Say not a word until I join you.”

“But—”

“Never fear, my dear. All is in hand.” And with that, he strode back to where the carriage driver was still unloading his trunks and started gesticulating urgently.

Lucy did as he instructed, retracing her route back along the wharf. She didn’t see that she had anything to lose.

Her great-aunts greeted her with surprised consternation. “You couldn’t have made it to the hotel and back already?”

“Ah . . . no, but everything is taken care of. Don’t worry.”

She sat down between the pair of them, contriving to look confident. They peered at her in concern. Lucy remained mute, crippled by ignorance and worried that whatever she said would somehow prove detrimental to Margery’s plan. But her uncharacteristic silence only made them more fretful.

“Now, Lucy . . .” Lavinia finally began.

“Don’t harass Lucy, Livie,” Bernice hushed her. “If she says everything is taken care of then I am sure that everything is taken care of. She has never failed us yet.”

She looked expectantly at Lucy.
Very
expectantly. “Of course, one might wonder what evolved during Lucy’s brief absence that has allowed her to state so confidently that everything has been attended to. It would be unnatural not to be curious.”

The expectant look became an insistent one. Lucy felt her resolve to remain silent begin to crumble.

“Because whatever she has decided not only affects her but intimately involves us.”

Ah.
Guilt
. Lucy had been wondering when that bit of ammunition would be brought to bear.

“Which I am sure she is well aware of—”

“Luuuucccy!”

Startled by the rich contralto voice trilling Lucy’s name, the three women swiveled on the bench. A female figure swept toward them, awash in a sea of billowing pink feathers, trailing a raft of fuchsia-colored
lace. A huge Merry Widow hat dripping with cabbage roses and lilac sprays perched atop her a blancmange of pale gold curls.

She bore down on them like an ambulatory wedding cake, arriving to grab Lucy by the shoulders, haul her to her feet, clasp her to her bosom, and bus her smartly on the cheek before pushing her back down onto the bench. She beamed at Lavinia and Bernice.

“And are these the darlings whose company I am to be privileged to share on the crossing?” asked Margery, the World’s Premiere Impersonator of Female Characterizations.

Lucy studied “Mrs. Marjorie Martin” with frank admiration. Fully immersed in his female persona, Margery was charm incarnate, cooing about how he’d known “darling Lucy ever since her triumphant debut on the same musical stage as I.” He then revealed his surprise at spying “dear Lucy” whilst disembarking from his carriage and subsequent distress over finding the girl in abject misery over some possession or other left behind at some hotel, unable to reconcile herself to risking her aunts’ discomfort by taking a later ferry crossing, yet equally unhappy at the prospect of having them go on without her.

“So, of course,” Margery said, “at once I thought how wonderful it would be if
I
might join you. I realize that a strange woman,” here he had the temerity to actually wink at her, “of a certain age is a poor substitute for a beloved niece, but I would be so grateful if you would allow me the pleasure of your company. These European tours can be so lonely.”

The adroit manner in which he set the bait proved irresistible.

“Tours?” Bernice asked.

“Yes. Didn’t Lucy tell you? Naughty girl.” He dimpled at her. “I am touring the French countryside, bringing a bit of culture to the smaller cities before proceeding on to Paris where I will perform at the . . . Grand Opera House.”

Liar.

Lavinia gnawed her lip, wavering between being impressed or scandalized. Bernice had no such a quandary.

“You are someone famous!” she said, wide-eyed. “Are you Collectible? Lucy is a Collectible, you know.”

Happily, Margery, who adorned many cards, all of which took salacious pleasure in revealing his true gender, sidestepped the one question by answering the other. “I did know! And a lovely thing it is, too. Not as lovely as the original, of course.”

Bernice beamed.

“
Do
say I might join your little party,” Margery implored. “I am convinced we shall get on splendidly.”

The sisters convened a quick confabulation a discreet distance away from the charming Mrs. Marjorie Martin. As might have been expected, Lavinia initially balked: Mrs. Martin’s ensemble was simply too flamboyant for a gentlewoman’s.

But then Bernice pointed out that though somewhat ostentatious in dress, Mrs. Martin’s superior breeding and good taste was clear in her admiration of Lucy. Besides, the Litton sisters hadn’t been in society for decades. What did they know about what ladies wore these days? Except for Lucy, of course, and she was a
young
lady.

Mrs. Martin could hardly be expected to wear the same sort of gowns as a girl. Not that she was old, but she was definitely mature and, as with many beautiful women who spy the advance of age before they expect it, had discreetly remedied a few of time’s little indignities with the judicious use of cosmetic fixatives. One could not argue with the results, and if her gowns were a tad
closefitting, well, Bernice generously opined, it would be unnatural not to want to show off so well-maintained a figure.

Loath to be thought stodgy compared to her sister—especially as everyone had always considered Bernice the more conservative one—Lavinia reversed direction and was soon championing their would-be fellow traveler as if she’d never looked askance at her boas and lace. Though she could not entirely approve of Mrs. Martin’s use of powder and paint, at least she was honest enough to concede that if powder and paint could do as much for her own features as they did for Mrs. Martin’s she might be tempted to employ them, too.

And so within five minutes the matter was settled.

“We’ll take all the luggage with us, Lucy, so you won’t have to deal with it,” Margery said after thanks and reassurances and courtesies and compliments had been traded. “Then your great-aunts and I shall find a nice cozy corner in which to tuck ourselves for a spot of tea and a chat, shall we?” She leaned toward the sisters and twinkled. “I always carry my own special mixture in a thermos when I travel. Along with a few sundry delicacies of which I am eager to see if you approve.”

The sisters nodded in pleased unison.

Margery turned to Lucy, a three-pointed cat’s smile on his face. “We shall see you in Saint-Malo this evening.” He turned toward the ladies, one arm open in an encompassing gesture. “Come along, my dears. We will want a good seat.”

Hurriedly, her great-aunts bid Lucy adieu and then, without a hint of reluctance, followed their new friend across the gangway and onto the ferry like ducklings after their mother. And why not? Mrs. Martin had the air of a seasoned traveler and was clearly a woman of the world and, while they would never question Lucy’s abilities, they were all well aware that she had never been out of Great Britain.

“Be off with you, Lucy!” Margery called, taking a position next to the rail and making a shooing gesture with his lace-gloved hands. “We will be fine.”

And then the sailors hauled the gangway up onto the boat and threw off the heavy cables. Margery linked arms with her great-aunts and led them toward the first-class salon as the ferry churned slowly out to sea.

The hansom cab Margery had used was long gone by the time she returned to the street so Lucy ended up walking to the hotel. There it took seemingly forever before the desk clerk was able to locate the manager, who held the only key to the hotel’s safe. He was finally found taking a nap in one of the hotel’s unreserved rooms.

By the time Lucy had the jewelry case
and
Lord Barton’s all-important letter in her possession, ate a leisurely lunch at the hotel restaurant (because there wasn’t much else to do while she waited for the next packet) and walked back to the wharf, nearly three hours had passed.