The Songbird's Seduction (17 page)

He stood up and turned. She came trotting toward him, her unbuttoned coat flashing open to reveal the disastrous outfit beneath. Compliments of Mrs. Beaufort, he’d guess, though, upon closer consideration, there’d probably been no compliments about it. She looked like a beggar.

“Right then,” she said a little breathlessly upon gaining his side. “We’re off.”

This was not a good idea. Interviewing indigenous people was an art. Under optimum circumstances one would beg an introduction from an intermediary; spend time establishing first rapport and then,
hopefully, trust; and finally, carefully, ask a few precisely calibrated questions. There wasn’t time for any of that here. Even a trained interviewer such as himself could only hope for a few bits and pieces and only if he asked the right questions in a circumspect manner.

“Do you understand the meaning of the word
circumspect
?”

“Yes. Why?”

“What does it mean?”

She set her hands on her hips. She looked ridiculous, her skirt all bunched at the waist and held in place by some sort of rope, her hair bound by a bit of cord, and a soft hat pulled low on her brow. At least her coat fit.

“It means to stash it and keep a glim eye.”

He didn’t understand a word she said and she knew it. She was having him on, teaching him a lesson for patronizing her. He probably deserved it.

“English, please.”

“You don’t want me to muck up your pow-wow with the locals.”

Pow-wow
he understood. “Exactly.”

“I won’t. I promise. You won’t even notice me.”

Which was patently impossible, but he didn’t see what he could do about it so he started walking. She fell easily into step at his side, reaching into her coat pocket and producing one of Mrs. Beaufort’s oatcakes wrapped up in a bit of brown paper.

“I didn’t have time to sit down to breakfast,” she explained, taking a bite. She grimaced and swallowed with evident difficulty. “Good Lord, that’s awful.”

“It’s an ancient recipe.”

She gave a little snort. “The Beaufort family tree would have been better served if they’d buried it along with the malicious ancestress who thought it up. No wonder Mrs. Beaufort looks so constipated. Did you actually eat those things?” She tossed the cake to the side of the road.

He shrugged. “It’s an interesting relic.”

“I’m all for relics as long as one is not obliged to eat them.”

He hadn’t thought that much about it at the time, as he was far more interested in its history than its flavor, but now that she’d pointed it out he noticed a rather unpleasant aftertaste in his mouth.

Lucy nodded. “I’ll bet she used sheep tallow. And curdled milk.”

He was saved from having to think further about the ingredients in Mrs. Beaufort’s oatcakes by the appearance of a middling-sized black-and-white dog that slunk from under a patch of low-growing junipers and darted across to where Lucy had pitched the cake. With a toss of his head, he gobbled up the snack and then began following behind them, hoping, no doubt, for another treat.

“I shall feel dreadful if that dog falls over dead,” Lucy said.

The dog’s head drooped between his shoulder blades, ears flattening to his head. He lifted his lips in a silent snarl.

“From his demeanor, I’d say he’s no stranger to Mrs. Beaufort’s cooking.”

Lucy laughed, looking thoroughly entertained. Cornelia found humor vulgar. But why was he comparing the two women anyway?

“I bet our friend here belongs there.” She pointed at a squat, irregularly shaped croft hard against a rocky knoll. Grass carpeted the roof and a tin chimney protruded from the corner, burping little commas of white smoke into the air.

Archie’s steps quickened with familiar anticipation, the thrill of possible discovery, of finding something unexpected and unique. Lucy trotted to keep up with his longer stride. “How are we going to talk our way in?”

“
We
aren’t going to. I am. You are going to remain circumspectly quiet, remember?”

“I promised to be circumspect. I didn’t say anything about being quiet.”

“Lucy . . .”

“Fine. I’ll be quiet.” Her voice dropped. “Ish.”

“I mean it,” he said severely. “You can’t just blurt out questions. It makes people wary. You have to make them comfortable first so they become loquacious.”

“In my experience the only thing most people need to become loquacious is an opening.”

“Please. Just let me handle things.”

They’d arrived at the croft. Archie knocked on the door, then stepped back.

A moment later, the door opened to reveal a small, humpbacked, and very old man. He was the color of teak, his face craggy, his nose migrating toward a collapsing adit of a mouth. Tufts of white hair sprouted from a knotted, jutting chin and from beneath a foul knit cap. Milky blue eyes scraped over Archie and landed on Lucy.

“What ye want?”

“Good day to you, sir. I was hoping for a cup of water for my . . . for . . .” He stopped, confounded by his inability to catalogue just what Lucy was in reference to him. She stood demurely a few feet back and to his side, her hands folded neatly at her waist, looking absurdly young in her oversized clothing, a long pennant of hair dancing behind her.

“What’s that?”

He turned back around with a start. “Oh. Yes. What I was saying is that we were walking and have grown quite thirsty.” Lucy swallowed audibly, doing her part to add verisimilitude to the claim. “If you could oblige us we would be most grateful.”

“Well’s out back. Dipper in the bucket.” The old man’s clouded eyes narrowed. “Sixpence.” He held out a hand every bit as gnarled as his face.

Lucy gasped. Immediately Archie recognized the danger implicit in that gasp. He stepped in front of her, blocking her from view of the old man and digging in his pocket for some coins.

He didn’t have any.

“Do you have any money on you?” he said to Lucy.

“Not to buy water, I don’t,” she said furiously, standing on her tiptoes to glare over his shoulder at the old man studiously ignoring her.

“Please, Lucy,” Archie said in a low voice. At this rate, he was never going to talk his way into the house, let alone get the old man to start spinning yarns. “The islanders clearly have developed something of a cottage industry that centers around tending to the needs of marooned ferry passengers.”

“By soaking every penny out of them that they can get their hands on?” She made no effort to keep her voice down.

He fervently hoped the old man was hard of hearing.

He wasn’t. “What’s that yer wife said about soaking? Tain’t rained yet today.”

“She’s not my wife,” he answered.

“She ain’t?” The man’s face knotted like a fist. “Then what were ye doin’ carryin’ her into Marie Beaufort’s house and then setting outside her bedroom all night like a dog guarding a bone?”

Apparently, the island’s communication network had been operating overtime. But how? They’d arrived after dark and he’d risen before dawn. Fascinating. He’d experienced something similar in other small enclaves where each member was uniquely dependent on others for information and aid. There’d been a tribe in Angola—

“We’re eloping.”

He spun around, mouth agape.

Lucy stepped briskly to his side and hooked her arm possessively through his. The wind played with the hem of her skirt and teased color into her cheeks. She looked fresh and young and bold as brass, eyes bright, head cocked.

“What do you mean ‘elope?’ Do yer folks know?” the old man demanded.

“You know
exactly
what I mean,” Lucy said in a bizarre accent, a
weird amalgamation of precise diction and broad Devonshire consonants. She gave her head an imperious toss. “For weeks Archie here has been hounding me, saying as how he’ll die if he doesn’t make me his. So
I
says, ‘I’ll be yours all right, as soon as I’m wearing your ring.’ ”

She paused here and actually had the nerve to wink at the old man. Amazingly, he chuckled and then cleared his throat, abashed at having been lulled into amusement at such improper goings-on.

“Problem is,
his
father don’t think I’m good enough for him.” Lucy jerked her chin in his direction. “I don’t know about you, Granddad—I can call you ‘Granddad,’ can’t I? You put me in mind of my own dear paw-paw. He had just such a canny look to him as you. Anyway, as I was saying, I don’t know about you, Granddad, but
I
come from a long line of”—her gaze flicked through the open door into the room behind—“fishermen, who taught me that whilst I wasn’t ever to think I was better than anyone else, I should always keep in mind that I was just as good.”

“And so you are,” the old man said, his glare accusing Archie of rank elitism.

Archie stared, riveted by equal parts awe and horror that Lucy actually thought she could pass him off as lecherous womanizer and herself as—well, he wasn’t exactly sure what role she was writing for herself but it seemed to have found favor with the old man.

“I need not tell you, Granddad, that I wouldn’t budge an inch.” She sniffed. “Nor unbutton a button.”

Archie choked back a groan.

“No, sir, I know my value.” She was embracing the role of innocence triumphant in the face of debauchery to the fullest. She’d set her fists on her hips and now angled her chin to the sky, her eyes flashing with moral righteousness.

“Well,
finally
, Archie here says we’ll have to elope to France. Which is fine by me. I always fancied seeing France. But then the ferry ended up here and we at Mrs. Beaufort’s who, by the way, will
swear on a stack of Bibles that I kept the door barred against him all night long.”
Dear God.
“And if she doesn’t, she’ll be condemned for eternity as a liar.”

“She won’t be the only one,” Archie muttered. She pretended not to hear.

“But now with day come and everyone going about their business and it looking like it’ll be nightfall at least before the ferry can be under way again, we’re left to our own devices. Archie thought we might take a peek in at some abandoned crofts.” She gave a snort of derision. “Like I’m so green I don’t know where he thinks
that
will lead.”

He didn’t even attempt to protest. He stood silently by and wondered if it were possible to simply drop dead from incredulity before he glumly concluded it wasn’t.

“So
I
suggested we go for a walk. A nice
long
walk.
Vigorous
, if you catch my drift. The kind to wear a bloke out,” she confided in a tone rife with outrageous self-satisfaction. “But we’ve been tromping since sunrise now and my feet are near to failing me. I reckon it would be best to park them in a place where there’s other people to keep us company because, well, Archie’s getting a mite impatient and”—her gaze dropped, her lashes fluttered, and he didn’t know how she did it but she actually seemed to blush—“he can be very persuasive.” She glanced up. “If you take my meaning.”

For what seemed an eternity but was in fact probably no more than ten seconds, the old man stared at Lucy while Archie waited for him to sic the dog on them. She couldn’t really expect to talk them into the old man’s home by pretending she was a runaway bride who was trying to keep her would-be lover’s overly ardent advances at bay by basically asking the old man to act as her chaperone? It was the most ludicrous, transparent, obviously fallacious bit of tripe ever—

“Come in, then.” The old man opened the door wider and beckoned them inside.

“And then the Moon Boy took the axe that had been sunk deep into his own forehead and wrenched it out and fell upon his brother, chopping off first his arms and then his legs and finally cleaving his head from his trunk.” The old fellow stopped, taking particular relish in the gruesome story.

It was their second day in his company, the first having extended long into the evening, during which time Michel Bolay, their host, had put together a surprisingly appetizing soup of salt cod, potatoes, and cream. After feeding them he had insisted on escorting them—or rather, Lucy—back to the Beaufort place.

There, he’d informed Archie that he intended to stand outside until he saw a light in “Kate Beaufort’s old room” and a single—with a pronounced emphasis on the word “single”—silhouette on the curtain before leaving. Archie had been preparing to refute the old man’s veiled indictment when Lucy had jumped into the breech, sniffing virtuously and saying, “He’ll not spend another moment with me this night!” before sailing into the house.

Though he’d followed close on her heels, true to her word, he hadn’t seen her for the rest of the night. But early that morning, she’d been waiting for him by the stile, announcing that she’d already washed her clothes, hung them to dry, eaten breakfast and was asking whether he always slept in late. The dimple in her right cheek teased him as much as the light in her eyes, drawing him like a moth to a flame.

The light had stayed all through the morning, during which they’d once more been privileged to share Michel Bolay’s table. The man could cook as well as spin a tale.

“And then what happened?” Lucy now prompted, evincing an unnerving predilection for the more bloodthirsty tales.