The Songbird's Seduction (29 page)

“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?”

The man snapped forward in an angry little bow and withdrew, leaving Archie to turn his black gaze on Lucy. She cringed.

“I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful showing,” she said, praying she sounded sincere.

“Do
not
patronize me.”

“I’m not. Really. It’s just a contingency plan. You know. In case something goes wrong. Like if you trip.”

“You mean while I’m running away?” Archie asked sarcastically.

“No, not at all,” she said in her most pacifying voice, which did not have any visible pacifying effect on Archie at all. In fact, if anything, it only made his swarthy skin go darker. Behind them a bell clanged.

“You know, Lucy, I am—”

She was never to know what Archie was or was not because at that instant a huge arm swung out, aiming straight for Archie’s head.

Lucy’s eyes went round as saucers and Archie ducked.

An enormous arm swept over his head, the breeze ruffling his hair. He started back up just as his opponent’s other arm swung from the opposite direction so he waited an instant before straightening.

This was going to be ridiculously easy.

The behemoth just kept swinging and Archie just kept ducking, letting the Frenchman wear himself out. He was a country brawler; Archie had been trained by some of the best pugilists in England.

True, he caught an occasional glancing blow to his ribs. He would have been spared even these if Lucy hadn’t kept distracting him by shrieking, “Watch out!” “Oh my God!” or some variation thereof. He kept track of her out of the corner of his eye, a manic figure in a bedraggled blouse and shrunken skirt, darting along the rope line, hopping up and down as a pair of dark-uniformed police thwarted her attempts to hurl herself into the ring.

In fact, he was much more worried about her actually breaking free and throwing herself between him and the Frenchman than he was about himself.

Lucy could get hurt.

With this a distinct possibility—because the police were seriously outclassed in the matter of evasion—he set about ending the match. Initially he’d decided to let the man hang in there for all three rounds. There was no sense in needlessly humiliating the local hero. But Lucy’s continued and fervent efforts to save him put an end to that plan. Like many a plan she’d put an end to, he thought as he ducked yet another mighty punch and came up beneath the Frenchman’s unguarded chin with an uppercut designed to take him off his feet.

It didn’t have the desired effect.

The Frenchman’s arms dropped, true, but he only swayed, looking more baffled than injured. There was no help for it; Archie hit him again. The fighter’s eyes rolled back and he toppled over, dropping flat on his back in a little puff of dust.

Stunned silence met his fall and then a rapturously amazed voice called, “Archie! You
won
!”

He turned to see Lucy duck under the rope, hike up her splotchy skirts, and sprint toward him. She skidded to a stop right in front of him, her shining face turned up to his, smiling broadly, her eyes wide with wonder.

“You won!” she reiterated.

“You might at least make
some
attempt not to sound so astounded.”

“But you won!” She pointed at the behemoth climbing painfully to his hands and knees. “Against
him
!”

“I know.” He’d thought he had himself well in hand. But the excitement of the fight must have affected him more than he’d
realized because his heart was still pounding, his muscles still coiled with readiness.

“But
how
?” She patted his chest as if to reassure herself he hadn’t somehow died in the last few minutes and she was seeing a ghost. “Wait. Don’t tell me. The deans at your boy’s school thought fisticuffs would be a bully way to dispel your excess energy.”

“Hm? Oh, I boxed at the ’04 Olympics,” he said, distracted. He was too busy tallying up the freckles on her cheeks, the vibrant flush on her skin, the curl of her gold-tipped lashes. And his pulse, rather than slowing, had quickened as a sort of ebullience, an irrepressible recklessness, filled him.

He remembered this feeling from long ago; it had never boded well. He’d felt like this before accepting Hinny Mickfert’s dare to scale the bell tower, before touching the flame to the methane gas tube in the college laboratory, before diving off that cliff in Abereiddy.

In short, he felt on the cusp of doing something very rash.

“Archie?”

“I won.” He should look away. Walk away.
Be
away, before it was too late. “I won the prize.”

“Yes,” she agreed, nodding happily. “A substantial purse, so I’m told. Well, done, Archie. Well done!”

Too late. “That’s not what I meant.”

“No?” Her extraordinary eyes widened in surprise. “What did you mean?”

“This.”

“I was thinking that perhaps, some time in the future, it would be interesting to tour Italy,” Bernice said, softly so as not to wake Marjorie.

Their friend had secured them the compartment they occupied, but, lulled by the soft sway of the carriage and the unremitting green of the countryside, she had fallen asleep soon after the train had left the Châtellerault station. Bernice and Lavinia shared the seat opposite her, Lavinia taking the place closest to the window to enjoy the view as reading en route made her queasy.

“Baedeker’s says there are very reasonably priced inns catering specifically to English ladies traveling unaccompanied.”

“Italy?” Lavinia echoed, still surprised by her sister’s nascent wanderlust. “I . . . I don’t know. I suppose so. We will certainly be able to afford it.”

“Oh.” Bernice’s round face flamed with embarrassment. “I keep forgetting that you are going to be rich, Livie.”

“
We
are going to be rich, my dear. You know it has always been my intention to settle half of whatever those rubies fetch on you.”

Bernice regarded her sister fretfully. “I know, but I couldn’t feel right accepting—”

“Good heavens, Bernice, don’t be a juggins.”

“A what?” Bernice asked. If Lavinia was surprised by Bernice’s taking to travel, Bernice was equally dumbfounded by her sister’s transformation from frail maiden lady to self-possessed cosmopolitan.

“A juggins. Someone who is unnecessarily circumspect.”

Bernice was a tad offended. She had only meant to make clear that she didn’t expect anything. “Forgive me for not presuming.”

Lavinia smiled. “And now you are being a double juggins. Or perhaps a widgeon.”

Widgeon
, Bernice understood. In many cases, it could be considered a fond term.

“You know very well were the situation reversed you would do the same and insist upon the same. So, let’s speak no more of it, shall we?”

How could she be offended? Lavinia would never purposely hurt her feelings. It was just that she had recently discovered the pleasure of speaking her mind.

She was changing. They were both changing.

How odd that, so late in life, one could begin to . . . well, bloom. But then, even at Robin’s Hall, November roses were not all that rare.

“Now tell me about Italy. Where would we start?”

Bernice flipped to the map at the back of the book, her finger traveling slowly along the coastal towns.

“Good heavens. Do you see that, Bernice?”

“See what, Livie?” Following her sister’s wide-eyed gaze, she leaned forward and peered out of the train window. She jerked back with a thump.

“Oh. Oh,
my
!” Bright pink circles arose on her soft, round cheeks as she fussed with her blouse cuffs. She cleared her throat.
“Now, Lavinia, it is only to be expected that the inhabitants of these small French burgs would have a different notion of decorum than that which we are used to at Robin’s Hall. We mustn’t judge them by our standards, and instead allow for the Frenchmen’s looser moral understanding.”

Now that she’d composed herself and could consider the goings-on objectively, Bernice permitted herself a somewhat longer look back at the couple, still locked in their passionate embrace. Lavinia, who hadn’t so much as blinked, lifted slightly from her seat, allowing herself a clearer view.

A small crowd gathered in a cordoned-off area had surrounded a young man and woman thoroughly wrapped in one another’s arms. A few of the male spectators actually clapped the young man on the back. He didn’t appear to notice, being entirely engaged in . . . well, entirely engaged.

“He looks like a young farm hand, don’t you think?” Bernice asked. He was certainly built like one, or at least as Bernice imagined—not that she’d ever imagined—one would be. Lean and muscular, the young man wore only the top half of his gentleman’s combinations and a pair of dusty looking trousers. As his broad back was turned toward them, all they could see of his head were thick black curls.

Even though the object of his affection faced them, it was impossible to see what the girl looked like due to the young man’s head completely eclipsing her face. But, judging by the slender arms clinging round his neck and the narrow form he held lashed so tightly to himself, she was slight and small. Her poorly made, ill-fitting clothing suggested that she, too, came from a simple background.

“Country sweethearts,” Bernice opined.

The young man suddenly dipped down and plucked the girl right up off the ground and lifted her high against his chest, his
mouth never leaving hers. A pile of tawny brown hair spilled over his forearm as he turned and strode off through the crowd just as their train headed around a curve.

“If this is how they act in France . . .” Lavinia murmured.

“Just think what it must be like in Italy!” Bernice breathed.

He really had to stop grabbing Lucy and kissing her. It was becoming a very bad habit.

The thought flickered, the dim light of reason trying to illuminate his thoughts. But then the feel of her mouth, soft and voluptuous beneath his, and the press of her supple form yielding against him extinguished that sputtering light and ignited a blazing fire instead.