The Songbird's Seduction (4 page)

“The money will allow us those little niceties that make life pleasant,” she equivocated.
Like food
. “I really,
really
think we ought to go.”

“I realize that, my dear,” Lavinia said. “It’s just that we haven’t been away from Robin’s Hall in a very long time.”

“Not since Papa was alive,” Bernice put in.

“The world has changed so much since then,” Lavinia murmured, “and so have I.”

Lucy suddenly understood. The last time Lavinia had left Robin’s Hall she had been in a siege, fallen in love, witnessed death and sacrifice and courage. Since then she had lived, if not a reclusive life, a much confined one. Now she faced the prospect of once again meeting the only man she had ever loved.

It would be daunting for even the bravest of women to wonder if she would see reflected in his eyes the wasting effects of time and age. Especially since he had not found even in her glowing youth enough favor to marry her.

Lucy could not find it in herself to press her great-aunt into going if she did not want to. She simply would not ask it of her. They would make do. Things always had a way of working out.

“No,” Lavinia suddenly said, her tone taking on an unexpected edge of firmness. “No. Of course, we shall go. Bernice and I have always felt terrible that you forsook your Calling to come and live with us last winter, and just when you were on the cusp of achieving Greatness.”

“You had
pneumonia
,” Lucy said, “and I was hardly on the cusp of achieving great—”

Lavinia held up her hand, cutting off Lucy’s protest. “Nonsense. What you do is Art.
You
are Collectible.”

Last fall Lucy had made the mistake of mentioning that her picture had been included in a set of cigarette cards of “Rising Stars of the Musical Stage.” Confronted by her great-aunts’ shock that she would allow her picture to be “manhandled by strange young men,” she had blurted out: “It’s not like that. It’s a
collectible
card. Very respectable. Like stamp collecting. It’s quite an honor, really.”

Her great-aunts had not only bought into this minor fabrication, they had decided to embrace it as a symbol of Lucy’s success.
Lucy simply hadn’t the heart to point out that Kumquat the Boxing Kangaroo was also a Collectible.

For all that they’d never seen her perform, Bernice and Lavinia were her greatest fans. They had a scrapbook stuffed with newspaper and magazine clippings that included any mention of Miss Lucille Eastlake, any of which was proof enough that she was simply a secondary singer in lightweight, popular productions. But because they were gentlewomen, and she was a gentleman’s great-granddaughter, they would never believe her capable of doing anything common. Which by default meant what she did was Art.

What she really did was sing light opera. Very light opera.

She winced inwardly.

“Well, I don’t know that I’d call it
art
precisely, a few runs in the upper octaves and little swag and hop if you—”

“But it is,” Bernice broke in determinedly. “
Art
. We know how you have been pining to once more enter into the service of your Muse. Just as we also know you won’t be able to give yourself completely to your Muse if you are worrying over finances.”

“I haven’t been pining,” Lucy went on. “Really. I’ve been quite content pottering about Robin’s Hall, though I admit it will be fun to be back in the old limelight.”

“We should like to see you on the stage someday, Lucy,” Lavinia said. “Perhaps this season when you once again take your rightful place amongst opera’s luminaries.”

“
Operetta
. And I’m more of a lightning bug than a star.”

They totally ignored this. “We won’t be content until we do. And neither shall we be content until you are back where you belong, accepting the accolades of your adoring public.”

“Adoring” was patently overstating the case, but one look at her great-aunts’ faces and Lucy realized this was a battle she would not win. They would put down any protestation on her part as modesty.

“Are you sure, Aunt Lavinia?” she asked gently, holding her great-aunt’s gaze.

Lavinia answered with a tender smile. “Entirely. Now then, you go into town tomorrow and make whatever arrangements you deem necessary.”

“I shall probably stay over the night. Some of my old theatre pals are getting up a little party at the Savoy to wish a bon voyage to a friend. They have invited me to join them. I thought I might, if you can spare me?”

They could.

Lucy did not enter the Savoy’s American Bar at once. Instead she stood to the side by the doorway, drinking in the sounds and sights of London society at play. As always, it was crowded, every table occupied and the bar at the far end of the room nearly concealed by the gentlemen standing three-deep before it, all dressed in standard evening attire: black coattails, white waistcoats, and ties. Their well-groomed heads gleamed with pomade, the younger ones clean-shaven while those in their middle years sported carefully trimmed moustaches.

The music being played in the adjacent dining room filtered in through the open archway and mixed with the busy hum of conversation, punctuated by the tinkle of glass and the occasional laugh.

Ladies decorated the room like single stems of multicolored flowers, full-blown blooms of silk, lawn, and organdy trimmed with lace and beading and flounces. Deeply cut bodices exposed creamy bosoms and swanlike necks, unbowed by mounds of hair teased and piled to amazing heights and further augmented by enormous feathers and flowers.

The women were heavy-lidded and languid, animated by no more than the lift of a perfectly styled brow or the slight turn of a tiny smile, their voices well modulated and discreet. Lucy might have been among their numbers (except for the creamy skin part; she had a distressing tendency to freckle) but a certain maestro in a certain seaside town eloping with Lucy’s mother before she had even officially debuted had forever changed his descendants’ social status.

Truthfully, Lucy wouldn’t have traded her lot for any of those around her. She enjoyed life far too much to learn to smile with her lips closed. Besides, even though her dress was not expensive—having been salvaged from the costume shop—it was at the very cutting edge of fashion, reworked by the magical fingers of Lucy’s friend, a theatrical wardrobe mistress, into a facsimile of Mr. Poiret’s latest creation, a “robe de Eugenie” of midnight-blue crepe de chine. It eschewed a pigeon-breasted bodice, having instead a low neckline embroidered with gold threads; a higher, more natural waist; and a tighter silhouette around her hips and thighs.

“Ah, there’s our girl!” A clear tenor voice rose above the mob’s buzzing. “What are you doing playing Shrinking Violet over there, Luce? Come here!”

Shrinking Violet? Not likely
. Lucy threaded her way through the crowd toward where Margery—the only performer in the London music halls to be universally recognized by one name—sat on a stool at the end of the polished mahogany bar holding court over a half a dozen of his fellow actors and twice as many fans.

He was a middling man of middling years, his features even but unremarkable except for the brilliance of his light blue eyes, his ginger hair starting to recede even as his belly started to advance. One would scarce credit it, but for nearly twenty years Margery, born Jasper Martin, had reigned over London’s vaudeville theatres. Later this week he was leaving on a much ballyhooed tour
of France, “starting in the outlying towns and culminating in a command performance at the Moulin Rouge.”

Lucy had met him the year she’d made her stage debut. It had been Margery who’d insisted she had far too lovely a voice to waste in music halls and had introduced her to the impresario who’d cast her in her first operetta. Though Margery and she had never again performed on the same stage, they’d remained close friends.

“Here, ducks, make way for our prodigal child,” Margery said, shooing several people back so she could slip onto the barstool next to his. He waggled a playful finger. “Now, you wait here while I go see a man about a bottle of bubbly. We’re celebrating, eh? I’ll be right back.”

In all likelihood the man was the maître d’hotel and Margery was going to put the pinch on him. Margery’s presence in the American Bar at the Savoy was good for business, and Margery, who had been raised poor and never forgot the feeling, never paid for what he could get gratis.

“A pretty drink for a pretty girl.” Jack Darling pressed a cut-glass tumbler into her hand. He was a slight, handsome man who, despite approaching middle years, still managed to secure all the plum second juvenile roles. Only when you stood close and under the unforgiving light of full day did you realize his blond hair was dyed and he was nearer forty than twenty.

She took a sip of her drink. Her eyes widened. “Say, what is this?”

“A new cocktail Ada made up called the Hanky-Panky. Like it?”

Ada was the Savoy’s female bartender, an institution in her own right. The drink she’d concocted was sweet as a stolen kiss and went down easily. Maybe too easily. Like cherry phosphate. A soft little buzz tickled Lucy’s senses. “Pretty potent stuff for a young lass like me.”

“A couple more seasons treading the boards and you’ll grow up fast enough. Would you rather something else?”

It
was
strong, but as this was a homecoming of sorts and she was thirsty and it was tasty, she decided to keep it. “No. It’s swell.”

“Is it true that you’re going to audition for Mr. Davenport?”

“That’s the plan. Whether he gives me the job is another thing. Keep your fingers crossed for me, will you? Cheers.” She tipped her glass back and finished off the sweet concoction.

“I will. There now, your glass is empty! Can’t have that.” Before she could reply, he’d relieved her of the empty glass and replaced it with a fresh one from the tray sitting at his elbow. “There you go, kiddo. Bottoms up!”

He clinked his glass to hers and lifted it in a toast.

She raised the glass to her lips.

He frowned. “Wait. Something’s missing . . .” He snapped his fingers. “Ada forgot to put a cherry in it. It ain’t a proper Hanky-Panky without a cherry.”

“Really, Jack, I don’t—”

“Wait here. I’ll be back in a jiff,” he said, elbowing his way into the throng near the center of the bar.

She smiled after him. She had forgotten how much she enjoyed the camaraderie of actors and actresses, their energy and enthusiasm, quick wit and easy—all right, sometimes
too
easy—manners. But if actors tended to live only on the peaks or in the valleys, and sometimes ran the entire gambit of moods in between all in the course of a single conversation, they never criticized a person, only his performance. Which for many, she conceded, was one and the same thing.

It was small wonder she felt comfortable with them. She’d been acting since her parents’ deaths, performing whatever role her father’s far-flung family required of her, hoping against hope she’d be kept on for an extended run. First there’d been Uncle Mikhail, the music hall magician who’d always wanted a son and for whom she’d become a tomboy. Then came Cousin Caroline, who fancied herself a musician, so Lucy had taken up singing. And there’d been
old Jonas Neubaum, whose relationship to her she never had figured out, but who loathed coarseness in any form, and for whom she’d learned etiquette. And in between there had been others, all wanting something else.
Someone
else.

None of them had kept her for more than a few months. She didn’t blame them. Mikhail had been forced to move into a single-room apartment where there was simply no place for a girl. Cousin Caroline had been hauled off to an asylum. And Jonas Neubaum had accepted an acting job with a touring company. None of her father’s many, if always auxiliary, relatives were affluent enough to keep her for long. Then it was off to the next household, the next county, the next audition.

Until she’d flat run out of relatives on her father’s side and been forced to apply to her mother’s family who, though much better bred, were no better off. By the time she’d arrived at Robin’s Hall, only two Littons were left, a pair of spinster great-aunts. Truth be told, she hadn’t expected to be allowed past the threshold, anticipating they had been cut from the same cloth as their mother, a woman who’d disowned her granddaughter and died never having spoken to her again.

Instead, she’d been welcomed and loved, if not always, well,
understood
.

She took another drink, enjoying an unaccustomed but pleasant lightheadedness. She really ought to have eaten before coming.

“Here you go.” Jack arrived back at her side carrying a single cherry skewered on a toothpick. He dropped it unceremoniously into her drink, then, satisfied, leaned against the bar. “Now, tell me all about it, kid.”

“There’s nothing much to tell. I’ve been on vacation. Taking the waters.”

“Sure, you have. Where have you really—oops!” He suddenly ducked his head, half turning away from her. “Say, Lucy, be a sport and move over here, right in front of me, will you?”

“And why am I moving here?” she asked as she obliged.