Allegra and Mrs Constantine left the party soon after the interview with Lady Milton. There was no dancing and little refreshment on offer in the chilly grey rooms, and they both felt that they had had enough of the place and of their stuffy fellow guests, who looked at them down their long noses and showed no great desire to speak to them.
She had a brief encounter with her host immediately after her return to the main salon, which made it clear to her that he’d known beforehand that his mother had intended to ambush her, and, presumably, why. ‘Are you well, Miss Constantine?’ he said, smiling in a significant manner. He’d already greeted her on her arrival an hour or so ago, so if her health had deteriorated in the intervening time, there could only be one reason for it: a sudden sharp attack of Lady Miltonitis.
‘I think so,’ she replied frankly. ‘I am… physically unscathed, at least.’
‘And mentally?’
‘Ask me again tomorrow.’
‘I believe I will, at that,’ he said with a bow, then left her. Hisgrey eyes were kind, as always, but she couldn’t begin to guess what he might be thinking.
Was she wrong to read significance into his words? And if he was really going to offer for her at last, did she want him to? At present she was still so stunned by the effects of spending half an hour closeted with his mother that she couldn’t say.
She recounted everything that had passed as soon as she was alone with Leontina in the safety of the carriage. Her mother made no comment until she was done, and then said thoughtfully, ‘She said she would think on the matter, no more than that?’
‘I can’t imagine her saying anything else even if she did give grudging approval to the match. She’s hardly likely to embrace me and shed tears of joy. You saw what kind of woman she was, Mama. She hasn’t smiled this century. And doesn’t it seem odd to you that a man of his age and position should seem to require her approval? I can understand that he’d want to tell her, out of courtesy. But this is more than that.’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Constantine said slowly. ‘He does not give the impression of being a man who lives under the cat’s foot and must go running to his mama for permission. And yet it seems almost as though she has come to London on purpose to look you over. There is no point in denying that she must wish him to seek a bride from her own level of society. It is undeniably all a little odd. We shall see, I suppose, if he calls on us tomorrow, as he implied he would. He will seek me out first, since your papa is not here, if he means to make an offer for you. I am sure that he is not a man who will ignore all notions of decorum and ask you directly first. He is always the perfect gentleman. He has never attempted to engineer any sort of meeting alone with you, has he?’
Allegra agreed that he had not, and tried not to think about the man who had done that and more. Max Severin: handsome,outrageous, enigmatic and endlessly seductive. Ifheshould feel inclined to offer for her hand, she could be certain that no rules of propriety would be obeyed. He wouldn’t treat her as though she were her father’s possession, even if in law she was. But she knew he never would contemplate marrying her, or anybody. He’d told her so in plain words. It was the height of folly to dwell on such an impossibility.
It struck her that Leontina did not sound at all triumphant, as she easily might have done now that her plan appeared to be coming to fruition. Lady Milton might disapprove, but if her disapproval was overborne by her son, Lord Milton would be a great feather in Mrs Constantine’s cap. Another one. Allegra might have expected her to express her normal steely certainty that all would happen as she had arranged; that he would offer tomorrow, and be accepted, and another daughter’s future would be secure at last. But she had said nothing of the sort.
‘Are you unwell, Mama?’ she asked as silence thickened in the shabby vehicle.
‘Just a little fatigued,’ Leontina said. This was an unprecedented admission of weakness, and Allegra blinked in the darkness and wondered what could possibly be amiss. Perhaps her mother was sickening for something; she hoped not. Leontina was never ill. ‘We are almost home, my dear; I will go directly to bed, I think.’
21
Mrs Constantine waited until the tired little maid had left her chamber before she opened the curtains the girl had carefully pulled closed a short while ago. She was wrapped in her sober dressing gown and sensible nightcap: just another middle-aged woman who had trouble sleeping. She set her candlestick down on the ledge and stood looking out for a moment. The sliver of moon was hidden by clouds and the street below was fairly dark; no grand town houses set about with dozens of expensive lanterns here, no link-boys lighting the Quality home from glittering parties, since Bloomsbury was emphatically not a fashionable part of town, even if it had been once, long ago. Newfangled gas lamps were just starting to appear to make the London streets brighter and safer, but not here, not yet.
The British Museum was close by, and once it had been Montagu House, one of the finest mansions in the old city, but it wasn’t a private residence any more, and it was unlit as any hovel at this hour. She took a second to imagine the pale Greek and Egyptian statues, stuffed giraffes and South Sea curiosities, standing sightless and wordless in the shadows, and the thoughtmade her shudder unaccountably. You wouldn’t want to be alone in there… If you turned away from them then turned quickly back, could you be perfectly sure they hadn’t moved a little closer to you in the meantime? She wasn’t a superstitious or a fanciful woman, she couldn’t afford to be, yet somehow tonight felt different.
But the night’s obscurity meant that the candle in the bedchamber window would show at some distance, which was why it had been chosen as a discreet signal many years past. She couldn’t see anyone in the street below, apart from a rickety carriage rumbling slowly by, and perhaps there was nobody there just now, but sooner or later some ragged urchin, some weary woman of the town or tipsy late-night wanderer would see the light, and pass the message. In two nights, at the same hour, he would come. He’d been here earlier, standing in the street to see them in their finery going off to Lord Milton’s house, but no one else had noticed him, of course. They never did, unless he happened to be playing music for pennies, and then it was the catchy tunes they recalled, not him; he was just a shabby old man, a nobody.
Leontina had been in two minds as she sat with Allegra earlier on their way home, answering her more or less at hazard during the latter part of the journey as she wondered what she should do: summon him, or not? It was undeniable that a meeting now would be dangerous for both of them, and it was also unnecessary, in the sense that she had made her bed long ago and now must lie in it. There was nothing she or he or anyone else could do that would change matters at this late date. But she felt a sudden fierce longing for company. Just occasionally, she tired of being strong for everyone else. Who was strong for her? Not her husband, who was a kind, gentle and loving man but fatally weak, not her daughters, who were young andheedless, even the married ones. Only one person: her father. The man who was supposed to have been dead these forty years, but who would soon come to see her in secret and hear her pour out her worries in the language they shared, even if he could do nothing to soothe them.
22
Lord Milton did indeed call the next day, at an early hour that made it plain that his visit was not purely social. Allegra knew this within a moment or two of his arrival because, at the sound of the doorknocker, Beatrice, Cecilia and Bianca rushed into the hall out of pure inquisitiveness, and if her visitor had cared to look up, he would have seen three flushed faces and untidy dark heads hanging over the second-floor banisters in a most unladylike fashion, like so many bats. Probably he did hear them scuffling and whispering, but Allegra could only hope that he was too well-bred to take notice of it. She understood from what his mother had said that he had no siblings of his own, and therefore no nieces or nephews either, so he could not be expected to have the least idea of the chaos young persons could cause; if he married her, of course, he would very likely find out in short order. The thought of an encounter between the stuffy Lady Milton and her younger sisters, which would in those circumstances appear inevitable unless they could be temporarily locked up in a distant (Anglican) convent, made Allegra feel slightly sick.
Once he had been shown into Mrs Constantine’s sitting room, the girls ran to tell Allegra the exciting news; he probably heard that from downstairs too, as no doubt did passers-by in the street, since they made an astonishing amount of noise between them, like a stagecoach being forced along at full tilt by an inebriated driver. ‘He’s here!’ Cecilia announced breathlessly and at no low volume. ‘Lord Milton is here talking to Mama! Surely he must have come to make you an offer!’
‘I suppose he must,’ she said, her throat suddenly dry. Lord Milton was the best of her suitors, wasn’t he? Certainly she could expect no more suitable proposal, and she already knew that not marrying wasn’t an option. The Season had not long to run; the sands of time had almost run out for her. She ought to be pleased he was here today, committing himself at last, not confused and – absurdly – frightened. Could she really accept him? But on the other hand, dare she turn him away and face a horribly uncertain future?
‘He’s quite handsome, considering,’ Bea said grudgingly. ‘And he has all his hair still, despite his age. Edward is going bald on top, you must have observed. Poor Viola. Oldandbald.’
Allegra’s face must have reflected the mix of emotions she was feeling, because Cecilia came over to where she was sitting and, extraordinarily, put a supportive arm around her shoulders and gave her a slightly sweaty but affectionate hug. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t really have a dead bride in a coffin in his house, Allie,’ she said seriously. ‘I’m sorry I put the idea in your head and perhaps scared you. I do understand that it really isn’t very likely, despite what the books would have us believe. He looks most gentlemanly and fashionable, especially for his age, as far as we could see from up here.’
‘I’ve met his mother,’ Allegra replied drily, aware that she wassounding like Mrs Constantine just now. ‘If you told mesheslept in a coffin I might believe you.’
‘Neither Laurence nor Edward has a mama living, so Sabrina and Viola have never had to face a mama-in-law, it’s true,’ Beatrice said thoughtfully. ‘Thoughtheyhave had to face Mama.’
‘Of course they don’t have mothers,’ Bianca chipped in. ‘Edward’s mama would be at least 150 years old. She probably met Henry VIII and was lucky not to get her head chopped off.’
This preposterous statement naturally provoked a squabble, and Allegra was almost relieved when the maid Polly came labouring up the steep, narrow stairs to say that her mama wished to speak to her urgently downstairs. The girls left off teasing and poking at each other for long enough to smile encouragingly at her, and she smoothed out the creases in her blue muslin gown as best she could and made her way slowly down the staircase. She was trembling, she discovered. Had Viola felt like this when she’d known that Edward was about to offer? Probably she had; probably Sabrina in a similar situation had not. That was not a comforting thought.
Mrs Constantine had left the room by the time Allegra entered it, leaving them unchaperoned for his proposal and her response. That was something to be grateful for, at least, she supposed. Lord Milton was standing by the empty fireplace, gazing down at the toes of his shiny hessian boots, his grey eyes hidden and his expression sombre. He didn’t have the mien of a man who had recently made the happiest and most momentous decision of his life. He looked like someone who was waiting to have a painful tooth drawn and had very little confidence in the barber-surgeon.
