The Songbird's Seduction Read Free Page B

long time,” Lucy said decisively. It had been touch and go with Lavinia this past spring and while the doctor had assured Lucy that her great-aunt had made a full recovery, she remembered all too vividly her great-aunt’s awful helplessness and the despair in Bernice’s square face.
    “Yes, dear, but when we are, I should very much dislike Polly to be startled by the revelation that perhaps she is better suited to some other line of work.”
    “I’ll encourage her to keep up with her typing lessons,” Lucy promised.
    Lavinia sighed gratefully. “Thank you.” She reached over for the teapot. “I thought we’d sold all the silver.”
    “Most of it.” Lucy raised the lid on the teapot, releasing a cloud of oolong-scented steam. She peered inside. “I couldn’t bear to part with great-grandmother’s tea service.”
    She saw no reason to tell her great-aunts that the decision not to sell had less to do with sentiment than pride. The silver dealer had made an insultingly low offer for the set and she’d already been forced to accept mere pittances for many of the things her great-aunts considered priceless. She simply couldn’t stand to part with one more thing they valued, let alone give it away.
    Lavinia and Bernice Litton had taken Lucy in when she’d had nowhere left to go. Having been orphaned by her parents’ death in a train accident when she was seven, Lucy had spent the next four years being shunted from one distant relation to another, each having less obligation, or interest, in taking her than the last. The Litton ladies, her mother’s long-estranged aunts, had been the last possible way station on what seemed an inevitable journey to the orphanage.
    Despite their own poverty, Lucy’s youth, their advancing years, and their complete lack of experience with children, especially the children of “artistic types,” they had not hesitated for an instant before taking her in.
    “Soon we shall all be able to afford as much sentiment as we care to indulge,” Lucy said now, pouring out the tea. “We shall be able to put Robin’s Hall to rights, make all the repairs, buy new furniture, and,” she paused, her hazel eyes sparkling, “
hire gardeners
.”
    Of all the trappings of a formerly gracious lifestyle, Lucy knew that the dereliction of the garden, even more than that of the house, weighed most heavily on the Litton sisters. And with Lavinia’s prolonged illness this past spring, even the small plot they’d managed to maintain in some semblance of its former glory had shrunk to tablecloth size.
    “Oh, I
do
hope you’re not overestimating the value of those stones,” Bernice said.
    “From your description I should think not,” Lucy reassured them. “Besides, you recall that Monsieur DuPaul had an appraisal done in Paris the last time one of your compatriots was,” she floundered for a nice euphemism to make amends for the spontaneous vulgarity of having sung the news of Mr. Whinnywicke’s demise, “taken from us.”
    Lavinia nodded. “Vaguely.”
    “They were worth nearly a quarter of a million pounds at the time. Undoubtedly, they are worth more now. And now that good old Whinnywicke has had the courtesy to withdraw from the proceedings—”
    “Lucy!”
    Lucy wrinkled her nose in a manner Bernice had always found both vulgar and adorable. “I am sorry. Don’t mean to sound callous, but one can’t fault his timing, can one? Especially with the anniversary just a few weeks away, leaving you in the envious position of being one of only four now left to split up the loot.”
    “Don’t call it loot, dear,” said Bernice. “It’s common.”
    Lucy waved down this criticism. “All the bright young things speak this way. I daresay you would have too, had you been born in the same year as I, Aunt Bernice.”
    “Never,” she said primly but Lucy thought she seemed secretly pleased.
    As a girl, Lavinia had been considered the “spirited” Litton sister, always up for a spot of