‘How so?’ he asked, his tone light, showing nothing but mild and casual curiosity.Thisshe distrusted profoundly. Nothing about this man was mild.
‘If you told anyone what had passed between us, even the slightest part of it, I’d be ruined.’
‘And so?’
‘You could blackmail me. Into… doing more.’
He showed his teeth, his extraordinary eyes glittering behind the mask he still wore. ‘I suppose I could at that. But would I need to? Honestly, now?’
She had expected him to declare that he was a gentleman, and would never do such a thing as to use coercion on her – clichéd words she was not certain she’d have believed – not push the question back on her like this. But she refused to show her surprise at his unexpected response, jutting out her chin belligerently and staring at him in silence.
He laughed softly and said, ‘Allegra, if you’d really been scared that I might treat you dishonourably, the last thing you’d have done would have been to mention it to me. No, the truth is, some people are ordinary, I believe, content with ordinary lives, as is their absolute right, and some… like to play games. Blackmail is not a game I’d wish to play with you, but Idoenjoy obliging you to recognise that you, like me, are one of those unusual people. I won’t ever stoop to pretending that anything we do together is done by force – unless you tell me explicitly that you want me so to pretend, and then I will, with pleasure. I could bind you, with your consent, blindfold you… a dozen things. And yes, this is highly dangerous territory, of course it is – and yes, my dear, I know and you should admit that that too excites you, perhaps more than all the rest.’ He added, very low, ‘As it does me, Christ knows.’
He was right in everything he said, though she had no idea how he knew any of it – his own feelings, of course, he might be unusually aware of, but hers too, which must be a puzzle to her and therefore should be to him also. These were murky anduncomfortable facts that should be shocking to any member of the ton, and particularly to a woman in her vulnerable position. Could it be true that despite everything she craved this sort of danger? It must be so, or she would not be in this room alone with this man. She would not have encouraged him to do what he had just done. She would not have loved every minute of it, and now already be longing for more. ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ she said frankly.
‘I’m not sure I do either, not completely. But it would be idle to deny the truth of it. The power, too.’
‘I’m not denying it. I’m not so foolish or dishonest.’
‘I realise you aren’t. You are brave as well as beautiful and infinitely desirable,’ he told her with a wry smile, and his words lit a flame deep inside her that in some mysterious manner seemed even more intense than the physical ecstasy she’d just experienced.
‘What if I am? It doesn’t take us anywhere. Do you intend that we should continue meeting in secret for snatched moments of pleasure?’
‘Of course, if you wish it. Why deny ourselves?’
‘Pleasure without obligation or consequence?’ She shook her head in disbelief, and he grimaced.
‘Everything has consequences, even a stone thrown casually into a lake that may disturb what lurks there, sleeping. I can’t control the world; I can only take ordinary precautions. And as for obligations… I cannot marry you, or any woman; I shall never wed. Believe me when I tell you that I do not say that lightly. And because of that I would not willingly put you at risk of scandal, Allegra – you should leave now.’
She knew that he was right, but she was always one who would push, beyond what was wise – he had seen that in her already and seemed somehow to understand it and to share it.And so she could not resist asking, ‘Which of them would you marry, if you were me?’ She wasn’t certain if she’d said it to provoke him into a fierce denial or some further demonstration of passion, or if it was a genuine though gauche question that expected a serious answer.
He gave a harsh little laugh. ‘There’s no use in me saying,noneofthem, I know that. Very well, madam, since you asked. Never Englishby; I distrust him and so should you, even if I cannot say precisely why. Milton, perhaps, if you can come to terms with what he wants and if he has no dirty little secrets in keeping that will come back to sting you. Most men of his age have accumulated some secrets, but what are his? Don’t look at me like that – how could I know? He is a virtual stranger to me. He’s not the kind of man who’d make a friend of one such as me. Eager, I suppose. I’m sure his life is an open book, with very few words in very large type on each page. That is, if you don’t think you’ll be driven to brain him with a heavy object three days into the honeymoon.’
She’d get no comfort from him, it was plain. This was his version of honesty, and she would see if she could match it. ‘And would you want to be my lover, later, if I married one of them?’
He shrugged. If this fresh question disturbed him or excited him, he would not let her see it, so perhaps it did not do either. ‘Willingly, but it is not so straightforward as all that, I fear. It seems to me, now that I reflect upon the matter further, that Milton would never stand for infidelity from you, my dear, for all his suavity and lack of passion. Least of all infidelity with me, with all the risks that carries. You might be hard put indeed to pass off a bastard of mine as his. Eager by contrast would never suspect a thing, I could be fucking you in his bed while he sat happily over his port in the dining room – but it would be likedeceiving a child, and I don’t think in the end you could bring yourself to do it.’
‘Could you?’
‘Why not? It would be your responsibility, not mine, as long as we did not risk having a child. You’d be the one married, not me. Are you going to slap me again?’
She left before she was tempted beyond what she could resist to do so. She had not the strength tonight to see wherethatmight lead. Into places she could never previously have imagined, she suspected.
14
Allegra lacked any particular enthusiasm for the project she had not long ago set herself, which was to determine, if she could, the motives of her suitors. This seemed sadly irrelevant, when she would rather have been reliving the intoxicating time she had spent alone with Mr Severin, and anticipating more. But he had been quite clear – and she could see for herself – that there was no future in their liaison. He had no intention of marrying anyone, so he could not be counted as a suitor, and she wasn’t even sure if she wanted him to be. What lay between them didn’t seem to have anything to do with marriage, or with ordinary life as she knew it. It was outside all of that.
She hadn’t, as she easily might have done, challenged him with what scraps she now possessed of his personal history, and this had only partly been because they had been very decidedly otherwise occupied. It was cowardly, probably, to say nothing, but he was capable of devastating frankness, as she knew, and she had no desire to be told something that she’d be forced to act upon, if that action meant never seeing him again. Let him keep his secrets, which were no affair of hers.
But he and her mother – two people who could scarcely have less in common otherwise – had both warned her about Mr Englishby, in startlingly similar terms. She no longer had any wish to seek outhisembraces, which must be sadly flat compared to what she had recently experienced with another, and so she was quite happy to avoid him as much as she could, and hope he would take the hint and reciprocate with equal indifference. It wasn’t as if he could be supposed really to care for her, any more than she did for him; his courtship had always been equivocal at best, his interest superficial.
This left her with two prospects only. Sir Harry, as Severin had rather cruelly said, appeared to be no enigma, held no hidden depths, just an abundance of cheerful shallows; Lord Milton was another matter entirely. Weeks had passed since they had first met, the Season would be over soon enough and still he had not sought out her father or her mother to ask for her hand. Despite this he hovered around her with no change in his manner – he was cool, elegant, inscrutable but always there – to Leontina’s intense and growing frustration.
Mrs Constantine was delighted, then, if somewhat surprised, when an invitation arrived one morning to a rout party at Lord Milton’s Mount Street residence. It was not possible for gentlemen, with some few exceptions such as royalty, to host such parties on their own. Nor could it be supposed that they would wish to, masculine amusements being generally of a quite different nature. His Lordship, therefore, must have secured the help of a hostess. And the Constantines had been invited, which must hold some significance. ‘He has a mother, I believe,’ said Leontina pensively. She was surrounded by her daughters in her cluttered sitting room, and had set her needlework aside to view her correspondence. ‘She must be in town, and clearly he hasinstructed her to invite us, since we don’t know her at all. This is encouraging! Perhaps it is important to him that she approves of you, and he has been waiting for that approval to be granted before he can declare himself.’
‘Everyone has a mother,’ Cecilia put in. It was plain that, though she had been quiet up till now, she had been listening avidly for some while to matters that were none of her business.
‘She could be dead,’ Beatrice argued, in a tone that suggested that this might be no bad thing. They were both supposed to be at their books, engaged in preparing some Italian composition, but finding their mother’s grown-up conversation far more interesting.
