The Songbird's Seduction Read Free

standing in front of him, faltered.
    “ ‘Die?’ Robert Smith shrugged. ‘So be it. If I do, divvy them up between the lot of you. You saved my life. God willing, you’ll have saved a good many more if I can reach my destination.’ ”
    “But Lord John pressed him to give you some name that you might contact in the eventuality of his death,” Lucy said.
    “Yes,” Lavinia said. “Lord John was always scrupulous about doing the right thing, though he got no pleasure in having to remind the lad that his chances of making his destination were slight.
    “It didn’t seem to bother Smith. He swung up into the saddle and declared with an almost savage pride, ‘I haven’t got a family.’ ”
    “But then the banker spoke up,” Lucy said. “ ‘And just how long are we to wait for you to come fetch these . . . whatever they are?’ he demanded angrily.”
    “I think his anger was more for the situation than the lad,” Lavinia explained. “ ‘What are we to do with them if you don’t return? The fact is that none of us might make it out of here alive.’
    “I felt my flesh grow cold at his words. I knew our chances of survival grew worse with each passing day but until that morning I had never allowed myself to appreciate what might befall me.
    “I fear I must have looked faint. But then, I felt a hand brace my elbow and an arm reach around to support me and I heard John say, ‘We will,’ and his calm confidence restored my courage.” Lavinia’s gaze had grown distant but then she came to a sense of her surroundings with a start, a soft blush rising in her papery thin cheeks.
    “Over the weeks of enforced intimacy, we had become close friends,” she said in a hushed voice.
    More than friends; Lavinia had fallen in love with the young Englishman.
    “Anyway,” Lavinia hurried on, “Monsieur DuPaul kept insisting Robert Smith say how long we should hold on to the purse until finally the young man threw up his arms and blurted out a time. ‘Fifty years,’ he said. And then he spurred his horse through the narrow gap of the gate.
    “I watched until he disappeared, silently praying I would not hear gunfire and offering a word of thanks when I did not. But then I heard someone emit a low whistle of astonishment. I turned to find the Portuguese boys staring at a mound of colored stones in Monsieur DuPaul’s palm.
    “ ‘There’s a fortune in rubies here,’ Luis Silva said. Then, ‘What should we do with them?’ ”
    “And so you made a pact!” Bernice burst in excitedly.
    “Indeed,” Lavinia said. “It was Lord John who suggested it, more as a way to bolster our courage than of any thought of future rewards. We decided we would honor Mr. Smith’s request and when he returned, we would have a celebration, give him his rubies, and demand the story of how he had come by them.”
    “And if he
didn’t
return?” Lucy prompted, though she already knew the answer.
    “If he had not returned by the time we were rescued, Monsieur DuPaul was to take them back to France; with all the nationalities represented it seemed the most central location. He would enter them into an account at his bank, registering all our names—civilians, officers, and soldiers alike—as co-owners. And if Mr. Smith did not claim them sometime during the next fifty years, we agreed to meet in in Saint-Girons and divide them up amongst those still living. Like a tontine.
    “Two of our number did not live to see the end of the siege and several others died of wounds sustained there. But then a rescue expedition arrived and managed to evacuate the rest of us. We dispersed, each going back to the lives we’d led before.” She sighed and it seemed to Lucy a sigh from a place deep within her, from her soul. “I heard some years later that Lord John had married the daughter of an earl,” she finished in a softly musing voice.
    “Why didn’t you write to him afterward?” Lucy blurted out and at once regretted