The Songbird's Seduction Read online

  Also by Connie Brockway

  HISTORICALS

  Promise Me Heaven

  Anything for Love

  A Dangerous Man

  As You Desire

  All Through the Night

  My Dearest Enemy

  McClairen’s Isle: The Passionate One

  McClairen’s Isle: The Reckless One

  McClairen’s Isle: The Ravishing One

  The Bridal Season

  Once Upon a Pillow, with Christina Dodd

  Bridal Favors

  The Rose Hunters: My Seduction

  The Rose Hunters: My Pleasure

  The Rose Hunters: My Surrender

  So Enchanting

  The Golden Season

  The Lady Most Likely, with Christina Dodd and Eloisa James

  The Other Guy’s Bride

  The Lady Most Willing, with Christina Dodd and Eloisa James

  No Place for a Dame

  CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

  Hot Dish

  Skinny Dipping

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Outlaw Love, “Heaven with a Gun”

  My Scottish Summer, “Lassie, Go Home”

  The True Love Wedding Dress, “Glad Rags”

  Cupid Cats, “Cat Scratch Fever”

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2014 Connie Brockway

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477824894

  ISBN-10: 1477824898

  Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  Illustrated by Dana Ashton France

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014905947

  For Ann Hovde,

  Beloved sister-in-law, fellow loony, best of friends.

  Man, I really fell into it.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Wilfred Martin Whinnywicke expired Tuesday last. Stop. Bernard DuPaul, Junior

  Late September, 1908

  Robin’s Hall, twenty miles northeast of London

  At the base of the faded, moss-softened façade of what had once been a dignified, old stone manor house, a pair of elderly, smock-clad ladies worked industriously, attempting to hold at bay the encroaching woodlands from what they fondly imagined to be—or perhaps, more to the point, remembered as—a tiny formal garden. They were sisters, though no one would guess as much. One was tall, hawk-nosed, and as spindly as a stair rail, her head crowned by a wealth of silvery down. The other was short, soft as fresh butter, and round as a dumpling, her straight hair obstinately refusing to lose the middling brown color that never had been one of her few chief recommendations.

  Both had lived their entire lives, with one notable and short exception, from within the manor’s walls.

  Indeed, they had reached the humble heights of their feminine attractiveness at the same time that the house had enjoyed its own salad days. Alas, the years had piled on far past this zenith, the ladies’ dwindling prospects marching in time with the house’s deterioration, but at so slow and regular a pace that no one really noticed.

  Indeed, it was only when the sisters answered the front door to a stranger on the buckled front entry steps that they recognized in the unknown person’s expression the condition into which they had fallen. This, in part, accounted for their very wise decision not to open the door to strangers at all, the other part being that those same strangers often came in response to unpaid bills. Happily, no one had troubled them for some months now and so they were quite content transplanting tulip bulbs in anticipation of another spring.

  They were nearing the end of this endeavor when a jubilant cry rang out from the second-story window of the house, attracting the attention of the elder sister, Miss Lavinia Litton. She sank back on her bony haunches and looked up just as a young female voice burst into song—and a most engaging voice it was, too—noting that the singer was also waltzing with joyful abandon directly in front of the open window.

  “I say, Bernice,” the older lady fretted, “do you think it quite safe for Lucy to be dancing about so near those open windows?”

  “Dancing, is she? I daresay she’ll be all right,” Bernice said, handing a bulb to Lavinia. “She’s in fine voice this morning, isn’t she? And a merry little tune she’s after, what? Though I can’t quite catch the lyrics.”

  “I believe she’s singing, ‘He’s dead, he’s dead, bless him, he’s dead,’ ” Lavinia explained patiently. Despite her strenuous protestations to the contrary, Bernice was a tad hard of hearing.

  “Oh.” Bernice frowned in puzzlement. “Is she rehearsing for a new role?”

  Lavinia listened a moment longer. “I don’t think so. I believe she’s making it up as she goes.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because that’s all she’s singing and I can’t think a real song would have only four words to it.”

  “Well, whatever she’s singing, it’s nice to hear her sounding so happy.” Bernice commenced digging another hole.

  “Is it?” Lavinia, who had always prided herself on having an elevated sense of propriety, asked a trifle nervously. “Do you think she is referring to an actual event? And if so, do you think she ought to indulge in such an effusive demonstration of her feelings?

  “I mean, what if she is referring to Mr. Gouge?” she went on, naming their small town’s perpetually expiring deacon. “Certainly one could empathize, especially after he alluded to Lucy as a Flora Dora girl in last Christmas’s sermon, but some degree of decorum is always—”

  “Don’t be silly, Lavinia. If Mr. Gouge had died Lucy would simply gloat in silence like any decent person. Obviously whoever ‘he’ is, he deserved to die, and as Lucy is clearly unconcerned that her, er, enthusiasm regarding ‘his’ demise will garner censure—because otherwise she wouldn’t be dancing about and singing, would she?—neither need we. Lucy is generally a prudent girl”—she lowered her voice—“for all that she is in the theatre.” Though Bernice publically and vociferously supported Lucy in her chosen profession, privately it was still a source of some consternation for her.

  “Operetta, second principal,” Lavinia corrected absently. “Y
ou are so sensible, Bernice. And of course, you are right. I am ashamed I doubted her, even for a moment. Still, it begs the question: Who do you think ‘he’ is?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” Bernice replied, companionably patting the dirt around her last tulip. “Probably that tomcat that’s been having his way with Pauline.” Pauline was the sisters’ overindulged Manx tabby. “I haven’t seen him in several days.”

  Bernice nodded. “Or perhaps—”

  “There you are, my darlings!”

  The sisters’ speculation was cut short by the sudden appearance of a young Rapunzel hanging out the window above, her long, cocoa-brown tresses shadowing a pretty gamine face with hazel-colored eyes that reflected back both the gold of the turning aspen leaves above and the lichen below. It was their grandniece, Lucille Eastlake, the only child of their deceased sister’s only child, the last tiny twig on what had once been a proud and robust tree. Lucy had come to them as an orphan when she’d been eleven years old and though nearly a decade had since passed, both sisters still caught their breath at the sight of her, so vibrant and lovely and, well, exuberant.

  And dear.

  But mystifying.

  The preadolescent girl they’d taken into their home and hearts had been an enigma to them and in many ways still was. And while it was often very exciting to live with Lucy, it was sometimes rather bewildering.

  She waved excitedly. “He’s dead!”

  Like now.

  “Yes, dear,” Bernice said, climbing to her feet and beaming up at her great-niece. “So we gathered. Do tell us, who is he?”

  “Why, Wilfred Whinnywicke!”

  “Did she name the tomcat?” Bernice murmured out of the corner of her mouth.

  “She names every creature,” Lavinia whispered back.

  “Aha!” they called up brightly, attempting to muster what they considered suitably sanguine expressions.

  Lucy was not deceived. “Come now. You remember.”

  “No, dear,” Lavinia admitted, grateful to not be required to pretend otherwise. As far as she could tell, Lucy was the only member of the family to carry a Thespian gene. It must have come from her father’s side of the family—the side Bernice preferred not to acknowledge. “I’m afraid we don’t. To whom are you referring?”

  “Not whom, precisely, but what. The tontine thingie with the rubies!”

  “It’s not a true tontine—” Bernice started to correct Lucy but was cut short.

  “I’m referring to the fortune that goes to those left holding the bag, as it were, in India fifty years ago. The horrible Mr. Whinnywicke has died, very probably performing the only considerate—not to mention timely—act of his life, leaving you, Aunt Lavinia, one of only four people left to share the booty.”

  Enlightenment dawned in Lavinia’s blue-gray eyes, once and still her chief attraction. “Oh! That Whinnywicke. Sergeant Whinnywicke. I haven’t thought of him in years. Dead, is he?” She sniffed at some memory. “Well, I’m not surprised. Drank like a fish throughout the entire siege. On the sly, as you young people say, but everyone knew it. Disgraceful. Fate was bound to catch up with him.”

  “Fate riding a hobbled horse,” Lucy replied glibly. “He lived over eighty years.”

  Lavinia ignored this.

  “He was that awful fellow at Patnimba with you?” Bernice said.

  “Yes. Terrible man. One of those small-minded fellows whose lofty opinion of themselves is entirely without basis. It was small wonder the native soldiers despised him. Not the sort of person with whom one wants to wait out a siege.” Her gaze grew pensive as she recalled long-past events.

  Fifty-one years earlier, in an effort to marry off Lavinia after she had failed to “take” the previous two seasons, Lord Litton had shipped his eighteen-year-old daughter off to her godparents in India, Lord and Lady Pictard. They’d assured him that, between the civilian and military population, the pickings there were very good for eligible young ladies. Lavinia had fallen happily in with the plan, more thrilled by the prospect of adventure than that of a husband.

  She did not receive any offers of marriage; she did, however, have an adventure. Though not one she would ever have expected or wanted. While she was visiting a small military hill station called Patnimba with a party of other “young people,” the Sepoy rebellion broke out. Besides herself, the besieged party had been composed of Lady Pictard; a pair of young Englishmen, Lord John Barton and Kimberly Mills; a French banker named Bernard DuPaul and his daughter Arnette; and the eighteen-year-old son of the Portuguese ambassador, Bento Oliveria, along with his school friend, Luis Silva.

  For long months the small garrison of soldiers and their officers held off sporadic attempts to overrun the compound, the roads around being held by rebels.

  “So . . . not the tomcat,” Bernice finally murmured, breaking Lavinia’s reverie.

  Lucy, who’d been leaning on her forearms out the window casement as she patiently waited for her great-aunts to return from wherever their imaginations had transported them, straightened. “Beg pardon?”

  “We’d been speculating on whose demise you were celebrating and Lavinia proposed it might have been that tomcat who’s always bothering Pauline. I confess, for a few seconds I was afraid you might have—what is the theatrical parlance? Oh, yes—done him in yourself.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened in surprised amusement and perhaps, to a lesser degree, chagrin.

  “Better than thinking you might have disposed of the deacon,” Lavinia said.

  The merriment in Lucy’s hazel eyes turned to confusion. “The deacon?”

  “Yes. I considered that you might have been, er, eulogizing the deacon. I hear he’s taken to his bed again.”

  “That’s ridiculous. If the deacon were dead I would gloat silently like any—” She broke off and shook her head as though to clear it. “My darlings, do you understand how close we are to being saved?”

  Bernice leaned slightly toward her sister, a little alarmed. “Were we in danger?”

  “I believe she is referring to our financial circumstances,” Lavinia said, “not what you and I would call danger. Lucy undoubtedly has a different understanding of the term.”

  “You think she is being dramatic?”

  “Of course, dear,” Lavinia replied. “She is an actress.”

  “Did you hear me?” Lucy called down.

  “Yes, dear. And we are most gratified!” Bernice called back up to her, happy, as always, to humor Lucy.

  “I shall be down forthwith to explain.”

  “That would be lovely,” Lavinia said, sinking gingerly back down to her knees. They tended to ache these days. “I’ve only a few more tulips to plant and I should hate to stop now.”

  Lucy, in the process of lowering the casement window, abruptly stopped. A spark of devilry appeared in her eye. “Great-Aunt Lavinia?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “You know that notion you had about my having a part in the disappearance of that awful tomcat? Not that he has disappeared,” she added, “only that if he were to have disappeared and I should want to dispose of the, er, evidence, I should . . . well, you’re not going to plant anything near the rhododendron, are you?”

  The two ladies froze.

  Lucy let them suffer a full ten seconds before bursting into laughter. “Sometimes, my darlings, given your rather odd ideas about me, I really do wonder that you ever let me in the front door. I am teasing!”

  She shook her head and closed the window, leaving her great-aunts to stare after her with the same bemusement that they had worn to one degree or another ever since Lucille Rose Eastlake had arrived on their doorstep.

  “Lady Pictard was the first casualty from our little party, the victim of indiscriminate gunfire, but alas, not the last. Kimberly Mills followed closely after, then Arnette DuPaul.”

  They were sitting around a small wrought iron table in the conservatory overlooking the back garden. It used to be a very nice back garden but, as with
the rest of Robin’s Hall, time had been quick to take back what two full-time gardeners had once kept at bay. Weeds had sprung between the flagstones and the boxwood hedge had grown into wall that obscured any view of the marble fountain at the bottom of a once-manicured lawn, now an overgrown jungle of vegetation.

  At Lucy’s behest, Lavinia was relating the story of the siege of Patnimba. It was a tale Lucy knew by heart but never tired of hearing. Her great-aunt paused and Lucy took up the narrative. “There were only seventeen of you left in the little hill station fortress, five civilians and a dozen soldiers, by the time the lookout saw a rider approaching on horseback.” She lashed imaginary reins over an imaginary horse’s withers.

  “He came thundering up the road, shouting for the gates to open. For a few minutes it looked like he might make it, but forty yards from the compound his horse was struck and killed and the rider pinned beneath the carcass.”

  Lavinia nodded. “I thought he was lost but then without any thought to their own safety, Lord John Barton and Lt. Burns rode out beneath the cover of our soldiers’ gunfire and somehow managed to drag him to safety.” Her eyes shone with admiration for the bravery of the young men and, Lucy guessed, one young man in particular.

  “The rider proved to be very young, more a lad than a man, and though he gave his name as Robert Smith, what with his skin being the color of tea and his strangely accented voice, his ethnicity was indiscernible.

  “Within a day, he had recovered sufficiently to insist on leaving, emphatic that he had information that was imperative be delivered. There was no stopping him. And so, an hour before daybreak the next morning, he prepared to leave.”

  Lucy had often imagined the scene, flickering torchlight illuminating a small circle of people surrounding the lad: the pair of Portuguese lads, a middle-aged banker, a young English lord, and a brave girl standing alongside those few soldiers not manning the stockade.

  “What happened next?” Lucy prompted, though she knew.

  “While Mr. Smith was packing supplies into his saddlebag, he dislodged a pouch. His expression grew tight, as though recalling something he’d as soon have forgotten. He hesitated a moment then handed the bag to Monsieur DuPaul.”