The Songbird's Seduction Read Free Page A

it.
    She had never asked aloud the question that had always vexed her. She had always thought that someday Lord John Barton would appear at Robin’s Hall and explain himself. Because Lavinia was not a woman given to flights of fantasy and if she reckoned she and Lord John Barton were friends, then they were. Even if he hadn’t loved her as she did him, surely he should have kept in touch with her?
    But the years had come and gone and Lord John Barton had never appeared. Time had not diluted the emotion Lucy heard in Lavinia’s voice every time she spoke of the man but if Lavinia had loved him so much, why hadn’t she put forth an effort to win his heart?
    “I’m sorry, Aunt Lavinia. I had no right to ask that,” she said when Lavinia did not reply.
    Lavinia only smiled, a little sadly. “My dear, the relationships one forms during times of crisis are at best suspect. Everything isheightened. Everything seems more precious, more vital.” She glanced at Bernice for support. But Bernice had never left Robin’s Hall except in the company of their parents and knew little of the world and even less of the sort of experiences Lavinia had encountered. Lucy had always considered her timid for all her blustery ways.
    “Besides, I was only eighteen,” Lavinia went on when no help was forthcoming from that quarter. “Everything seems doubly tragic when you are eighteen. And afterwards . . . Well, I never was a beautiful woman and our family, while genteel, is not titled and I had no fortune. In short, I had nothing to recommend me to a man who would inherit an earldom. And, of course, I never presumed a relationship born amidst blood and fear. I never considered it. A lady didn’t.”
    I would have, Lucy thought. I would have fought tooth and nail for him.
    But then, I am no lady.

“—and if what I suspect is true, we shall have more than enough money to repair Robin’s Hall to its past glory and better!” A quarter hour later, guilty over any pain her inquisitiveness might have caused, Lucy had turned the conversation from the past to speculation about the future.
    “Bit of a hand here!” a voice called from outside the conservatory doors.
    Lucy leapt up and opened the door, stepping aside for their raw-boned, fourteen-year-old maid-of-all-work—and never was an appellation more appropriate—Polly. The girl huffed past under the weight of a crowded silver tray, setting it down on the table before removing a plate of sandwiches. She deposited it proudly in front of the sisters.
    “There’s cucumber and butter or deviled egg.” She stepped back, awaiting the sisters’ approval. She didn’t even bother looking at Lucy, who she considered only half a step above her in the social hierarchy.
    “Look, Bernice,” Lavinia said, helping herself to a thinly sliced triangle. “Polly has cut off all the crust. Isn’t that nice?”
    “Very nice, Polly. Quite like those our old cook used to serve.” For some reason, Polly had undertaken as her personal mission the re-creation of an era that she had never known, nor, for that matter, had her mother or grandmother. She considered any comparison of her efforts to those of her long, long dead predecessors to be the highest form of compliment.
    She pinked up, pleased, and hooked a strand of frizzed red hair behind a protruding ear. “Mind, don’t you go ruining your dinner with too many of them now, Miss Bernice.” Alas, the verisimilitude of Polly’s re-creation did not extend to the deference those pantry ghosts had shown their betters. “I’ll be back shortly,” she announced and trudged back into the house.
    “I do hope Polly is continuing with her typewriting lessons,” Lavinia fretted, lowering her sandwich down toward the waiting maw of their omnivorous feline, Pauline. “I hate encouraging her illusions about her culinary prowess, but I should hate even more to hurt her feelings. But I am afraid once we are gone—”
    “You won’t be gone for a long,