The Songbird's Seduction (33 page)

“Yes. I see. Thank you,” Archie broke in and thrust some francs into the man’s hand. “
Merci
.”

Archie turned to Lucy, his expression grave. “Lucy, as soon as we are settled we need to talk.”

He was entirely too somber. She tried giving him a gamin grin. “We’re talking right now.”

It wouldn’t wash. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

Yes. She did. The jig, as the Americans said, was up. And in more ways than one. Soon he would meet Margery and realize just to whom she’d entrusted her great-aunts’ care. “All right, Archie.”

He picked up his kit and inclined his head toward the brick building the cabbie had indicated. “Shall we?”

They’d walked a short distance when Archie realized he’d left his hat in the carriage. Saying there was no need for her to wait in the cold while he hunted it up, he bid her go on ahead of him. She was halfway across the street when she noted a trio of uniformed men hurrying into the hotel, their batons in hand.

What would require three gendarmes to make use of their weapons in a small countryside hotel? Clearly they had been dispatched to deal with a problem.

The unpleasant possibility occurred to her that France might not be as forward thinking about men dressing up as women as they were England. Perhaps Margery stood in imminent danger of, if not arrest, deportation.

With this thought in mind, she sped up, arriving in the hotel lobby to find the gendarmes had taken up posts, one each on either side of the door and the other near the front desk. They held their batons at ready, their eyes flinty and their mouths grim.

Lucy’s gaze flew about the lobby, looking for Margery. She had to warn him. It hadn’t been that long ago that Oscar Wilde had been imprisoned for gross indecency and while Margery’s proclivities
off of the stage—which she did not, in fact, know—had always been a matter of unimportance to her, who knew what constituted indecency in France?

She hurried up to the reception desk where a fat, glistening-faced bald man stood nervously watching the door. The policeman next to the desk had adopted the attitude of a dog guarding a bone.

“Monsieur, please, do you speak English?” she asked the gendarme. He glanced at her, shook his head, and went back to staring fixedly at the front door.

She turned to the desk manager. “
Please
say you speak English.”

“You should not be here, mademoiselle,” he told her. “Come back later.”

“What are those police doing there?”

“They are here to arrest a criminal,” the fat man said, mopping his face with a delicate lawn handkerchief. His gaze narrowed on her accusingly. “An Englishman. It would be best if you came back here with me where you will be safe.”

This man thought they needed protection from Margery? She could not imagine anything more absurd. “Where is he?”

“He will be coming through the door at any second. Please, mademoiselle. Behind the desk. We do not know of what this man is capable.”

“He is
capable
of a stellar mezzo soprano. You are making a terrible mistake. He wouldn’t do anything illegal. Unless it’s illegal for a man to wear skirts in France.”

“He wears skirts to facilitate his crimes?” The man’s eyes widened. “Deplorable!”

“I am trying to tell you he would not commit a crime!”

The man shook his head sadly. “You carry national loyalty too far, mademoiselle. He already has. We have a telegram from his last victim, alerting us to his purpose.”

“Victim? His
purpose
?”

“
Oui
, to take advantage of poor country innkeepers. Unless in your country it is legal to leave bills in excess of two hundred francs unpaid and sneak out in the middle of the night?”

Realization dawned with the speed of a lightning strike.
Oh, dear
.

The door opened and there stood Archie, his hat on his head, his mouth on the brink of a smile. “Did you find your great-aunts, Lucy?”

“
Run!
”

Of course, Archie didn’t run; he frowned at her.

“Run? Of course, I’m not going to—hey! What’s going on?” he demanded as the gendarme on either side of the door grabbed an arm. “Let go of me.” He jerked free of one, a middle-aged man who looked more concerned than confident.

The possibility that Archie might get angry and exacerbate an already very fragile situation prompted her to shout, “Don’t hit him, Archie. Whatever you do, do not hit him!”

The gendarme next to her grabbed her and pulled her back, not to restrain her so much as to keep her safe from big bad Archie. She had to concede he did look rather dangerous, with his two-day’s growth of beard, tousled black hair, and collarless, stained shirt beneath the rumpled tweed jacket.

Archie froze, staring at her in astonishment. “
Hit
him? What on earth are you talking about, Lucy. I have no intention of hitting anyone. I just want to know . . .” His black eyes narrowed on her from behind their thicket of long black lashes.

“Lucy. What have you done?” He turned to address the younger, grimmer policeman. “Whatever she’s done, I swear she didn’t mean any harm.”

“Nothing! I swear . . . well, I
have,
technically, but nothing these men know about. They’re arresting
you
, Archie.”

His expression grew even more dangerous. “So it would appear.” The way he said it, so vehemently calm, made her shrink back a little. Apparently believing she was no longer likely to run pell-mell toward danger, the gendarme let her go.

“The question,” Archie continued, “is why?”

“I’m not
exactly
certain. But I believe it is, maybe, for running out on the hotel bill in Saint-Malo.” She racked her brain. There had to be some way out of this mess that would not endanger what she’d worked so hard to achieve. She couldn’t think of one, not straight off. She needed time to think, plan.
Plot
.

The dangerous expression evaporated from Archie’s face. He unleashed a torrent of French at the young policeman. From his intonations, Lucy could tell he was asking questions. From the inflections in the policeman’s voice, he apparently took a grim, official pleasure in his replies.

When Archie had finished, he simply shook his head, his brow furrowed, as though puzzled about something. In the meantime, the officer nearest her was in close conversation with the hotel manager.

“Archie?” she asked tentatively.

“Hm?” He sounded distracted.

“What did he say?”

He looked up at her, his dark eyes searching her face as if looking for answers there. “It’s just as you surmised.”

“If you are arrested, I should be, too,” she said staunchly. She still hadn’t figured a way out of this mess. But if she shared his difficulty, he might forgive her. Maybe. Hopefully.

“Lucy, don’t,” Archie said, sounding tired. “You weren’t the one who promised Navarre full payment. I was. They won’t arrest you.”

She turned to the gendarme. “Monsieur, I insist you arrest me, too!” He spared her a quick, exasperated glance before asking the hotel manager a question. At the reply, he gave a snort and let fly a rapid stream of French. Oh,
why
hadn’t she actually learned the dratted language?

“But you didn’t steal anything!” she protested, her sense of doom increasing by the second.

“Technically, I did. They’re right, I stand guilty as accused. I . . . I can’t quite believe this—no,” he said, firmly, “I can. What I
can’t
believe is that I didn’t foresee this would happen. Of course Navarre would wire ahead to the authorities. He knew where we were going. Why wouldn’t I have thought of that?”

“Because you intended to pay him as soon as circumstances allowed.”

“That may be true, but it’s no excuse,” he said. “As for why I didn’t think things through clearly, well, the answer to that is obvious. I haven’t thought clearly since I embarked on this . . . this madness.

“You have a way, Lucy, of making whatever comes out of your mouth sound reasonable, even when it’s not. Maybe even
especially
when it’s not. Or maybe it’s not you, but me?” The idea seemed to find some merit with him for he nodded sadly. “There’s some part of my thought process that is broken where you are concerned.”

The officer by the desk, apparently the man in charge, had finished talking to the hotel manager. He spoke to the other two uniformed men, gesturing for them to take Archie elsewhere.

She couldn’t let them arrest Archie.

But there was only one way to stop them. “No, let him go. Please!”

The gendarmes on either side of Archie hesitated, deferring to their commander.

Lucy swiveled, seizing the fat manager’s hand and wringing it. He stared at her, aghast. “
Please
. Please tell them this is all my fault!”

Archie shook his head. “Lucy, it’s not—”

She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “Yes, it is, Archie,” she said, keeping her back to him because she knew she couldn’t face him and say it. She tried to blink away the tears that sprang to her eyes, tears of remorse. And of fear. What would he do? What would he
say
?

“Mademoiselle, if you would kindly release my hand?” the manager said, pulling at it until she let go. “Now, what would you have me say?”

“Tell them it’s all a mistake,” she said. “Tell them we will repay the bill.”

“Mademoiselle,” the innkeeper said not unkindly, “you miss the point. Even if you could afford—”

“I can!” she said desperately and, fumbling deep down into her skirt’s pocket, pulled out the wallet.

Archie’s wallet.

A terrible silence met this revelation. No one moved. No one breathed. It was as if time itself had stopped. She closed her eyes in misery, waiting to hear Archie say something, say
anything,
to break the awful silence.

And when he didn’t and she could stand it no longer, she gathered her courage and turned around to face him.

It was so much worse than she could ever have anticipated.

He looked lost, utterly betrayed, his expression dazed and uncomprehending.

“Archie, please.”

“You had it all along,” he said wonderingly. “All this time.”

“Yes. I—”

“Found it?” His eyes were bleak, his tone unhopeful.

She swallowed. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t lie to him. “No. I took it.”

He closed his eyes briefly, as if the mere sight of her was painful, but she plowed ahead, unwilling to let anything remain undisclosed. “At the restaurant, when I excused myself at the end of dinner. I picked your pocket when I bumped into you.”

At the look on his face, she began trembling and once she started she could not stop. She hadn’t realized . . . She’d never meant . . .
Oh, no. No. No. No. Please, no
.

She raised a shaking hand toward him in entreaty, pain and panic racing headlong through her, lancing straight to her heart.

“I see,” he said, then, “I hadn’t realized your talents extended that far.”

“Archie . . .” She took a step toward him but he was already turning away, murmuring something to the officers. Then, without another word to her, he let them lead him away.

The town hall had just three cells, each occupied by a prisoner guilty of a felony of some degree or other. At the end of the corridor that accessed them, a door swung open. The guard who’d opened it stepped aside, allowing Lucy to enter.

Archie rose slowly to his feet from the narrow bed that was the only furnishing in the cell. “What is she doing here?” he demanded in French. “Get her out.”

The guard shrugged. “She has the commander’s permission. Also, she paid.”

“It must be true that all Englishmen are mad,” said the prisoner in the next cell, an unclean antique of a man with the bulbous, red-mapped nose of the perpetual drunkard.

“Obviously,” concurred the youth occupying the far end cell, a good-looking lad with overlong hair whose socialist ideals had
led him to leaving a flaming pile of excrement on the mayor’s doorstep. “Why else would he want her to leave? She’s beautiful.”

Archie ignored them. The last thing in the world he wanted right now was a solicitous call from Lucy Eastlake. “I don’t care whose permission she has or what she’s paid,” he told the guard, “I do not want to see her. Don’t prisoners in your country have any rights?”