He raised his head and smiled, with some perceptible effort. ‘Miss Constantine,’ he murmured.
This was going to be as agonising as any tooth extraction, she feared. ‘Won’t you be seated, sir?’
‘Thank you.’
An uncomfortable little silence fell, and Allegra was determined not to break it. If he really intended to offer for her, he’d have to say so in explicit words. She could hardly do this for him, and presumably he’d managed to speak coherently to her mother, or she wouldn’t have been summonedurgently.
‘Your mother has been good enough to give me permission to address you,’ he said formally.
This was beyond awkward. ‘Yes?’ she said in what she hoped was a reasonably encouraging tone. She was smiling, or something like it; even she could tell it must look remarkably artificial. Just now, she felt as though she’d say yes as soon as he asked, assuming he ever did, purely in order to make him go away and put an end to this hideously embarrassing situation. Then she’d run upstairs, bury her face in her pillow and scream very loudly. That didn’t seem right. It certainly wasn’t a long-term solution to anything.
‘Miss Constantine, will you do the honour of accepting my hand in marriage?’
‘Why?’ she blurted out, surprising herself almost as much as him.
‘Why…?’ he echoed.
Allegra supposed itwasan odd thing to say, even in reaction to what was surely the polite world’s least enthusiastic marriage proposal to date. She took a deep breath. ‘I haven’t been enjoying my Season all that much, nor the previous one. I feel… uncomfortable, as if I were an object for sale in a shop that nobody seems all that keen to buy. So I thought I should try to work out why my three suitors had singled me out. But in your case, I can’t. Your mother didn’t seem to know either.’
‘My dear, I have the greatest respect for you…’
Enough of this. ‘Respect? That doesn’t seem nearly enough. I know you’re not in love with me – that’s fine. I’m glad you’re not pretending to be. But – as your mother didn’t hesitate to remind me – you could look much higher than me for a bride. It’s perfectly true; there’s no need to make polite noises of denial, sir. I have no fortune, beauty, or high rank to my name. My father is a gentleman of no particular standing. You don’t seem to me to be the sort of man who’d choose a woman just because her sister married a duke, and even if you were, there’s others you could woo in a similar situation with far greater advantages than me. And I don’t think you… desire me. You don’t seem to.’ She knew now what that looked like, how it felt and tasted, and she was sure he didn’t, just as securely as she knew she did not desire him, despite his handsome face and fine figure and all his other more worldly advantages.
‘Your mother implied that it would be a marriage of convenience, and that you need an heir. I understand that, but I still don’t see why it should be me of all women. And I have a feeling – maybe I’m wrong – that if I knew the answer, it wouldn’t be terribly flattering.’
Lord Milton was silent for a moment. ‘I do admire your frankness, and your courage,’ he said at last. ‘You practise no artifice, in a world composed of little else. It scares me slightly, but it’s admirable. Perhaps that’s what…’
He shook his head and went on doggedly, ‘If I tell you why I have offered for you, as well as I am able, and if you choose not to take me once you know it – which I would certainly understand – I’ll have to ask you on your honour to reveal to nobody what I’ve shared with you. Ever. I believe I can trust you – perhaps I’m mad, because I barely know you and I’m taking a grave risk doing so. But the idea of deceiving you, or any woman I might marry, doesnot sit easily with my conscience. And yet in the past I’ve looked at debutantes and imagined myself telling them what I have to tell you… and my courage has failed me. I pictured their faces, the change in their expressions, the disdain… I couldn’t do it. But with you, somehow, I think I might. There are things we could offer each other, and maybe honesty is chief among them. That’s something, I hope you will agree.’
‘You have a secret,’ Allegra said softly. She remembered Mr Severin’s words. ‘Perhaps most men do, and it is not as great a matter as you think it.’
‘Possibly Sir Harry Eager does not, but otherwise yes, it may be so,’ he said with a brief, wintry gleam of humour that swiftly vanished. ‘But there are different kinds of secrets, you must know. Ones that are discreditable, and ones that are actually dangerous. Many men are addicted to gambling, or have mistresses and illegitimate offspring, or even an embarrassing ailment that might be communicated to an innocent woman they married.’ He saw her face and hastened to add, ‘It’s none of those things. I do have a lover, I have had a lover for many years, and so my heart is no longer in my keeping and I cannot give it to you, but… not a mistress, no natural children. Never that.’
She did not understand what he was saying to her for a moment. And then everything fell into place. ‘Not a woman.’
Whatever he saw in her face, it prompted him to continue with a little more confidence. ‘No. Not a woman, Allegra. And it’s true, I do need an heir to carry on my name, or so I’m told. I wouldn’t care so much myself – I’m only a baron, it’s a recent title from the last century, I’m not the Holy Roman Emperor or heir to some ancient dukedom. But my mother feels differently, and says I owe her that much.’ He was speaking more naturally than she had ever heard him, and now he made a helpless sort of a gesture. His mother, indeed.
‘She knows.’ That explained so much about the woman’s manner last night.
‘We’ve never talked about it openly, not in so many words, but she does. To match your frankness, Miss Constantine, I think that’s why she’s willing to accept you when otherwise she might not. She covers it well in public, but I am the gravest possible disappointment to her.’ His mouth quirked in bitter self-mockery. ‘Her only child. Look at me, a pattern-card of the man of fashion. I appear so much like the son she feels she deserved, and the whole world – or most of it – thinks I am all of that, and yet, I am not. I never can be. She feels it very deeply, and never neglects an opportunity to make me aware of her extreme dissatisfaction.’
‘So a woman of my obscure origins will do for her?’ she said bluntly.
‘I’m afraid that’s about the measure of it. Her pride of birth wars with her disgust at me, and this is the result.’ Now he had begun to share his feelings, he did not seem able to stop.
‘I imagine some part of her thinks that when one day I bring disgrace upon the family and mire her neck-deep in scandal, at least she will not face harsh reproaches from my wife’s noble family. Obviously, she believes that such a downfall is inevitable, because in her mind I spend my every evening drinking pints of gin in some molly house in Covent Garden with a costermonger’s boy in my lap, before coming home to promiscuously fondle the better-looking footmen. I assure you I do none of these things, and never have, but that is of no matter to her. She doesn’t much care, I daresay, what any number of Constantines think of her or me, if everything should come crashing down on us one day because of my… proclivities. It is a very particular sort of pride she has, and indeed not very flattering, to me, to you, or to your kin – I am sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ she said. ‘That must be dreadful for you, livingwith such a pressure upon you, and such hurtful knowledge of her feelings.’
He shrugged with casual elegance. She saw the veneer of the cool man of the world creeping back over him like a film of ice over a pond, concealing the genuine emotion he had so briefly allowed her to see, and her heart ached for him. And for herself.
‘I promise that’s not why I have chosen you, even if my mother thinks it is. But Allegra, I would not make excessive demands on you,’ he said. ‘Though if we were to have a child, or children, obviously that would mean…’
‘Obviously.’
‘You would be free to live as you pleased, afterwards. The London house would be yours for life, and our marriage settlement would be most generous. I have a hunting box in Leicestershire; I would prefer to spend most of my time there, for reasons I imagine I need not say aloud. My mother lives on my estate in Wiltshire, and rules it with a rod of iron, but I understand that you might not…’
‘No. I should think she might not, as well. Half an hour in her company convinced me that we could never live under the same roof.’
