‘They are a pair of young fools,’ he responded easily. ‘They have used up all the sense they possess in deciding to admire you, and have none left for anything else. And I’m aware that you don’t in the least require my instruction in this rather tedious sport, but would much rather sit comfortably in the shade and take some cooling refreshment. Shall we…?’
She must be absolutely scarlet in the face, and visibly perspiring in a most unladylike fashion. He was high-handed, but he was also perfectly correct on this occasion, even if he might with advantage have intervened five minutes earlier. Allegra murmured further thanks, and allowed herself to be led away to a table where her mother sat fanning herself and chatting with a dowager friend in a desultory fashion, all the while observing the scene with that enigmatic dark gaze that missed nothing. Lord Milton bowed punctiliously to the ladies, and went off in search of ices for all three of them; Miss Constantine watched him leave in abstracted silence.
He was taller and broader than most (if not quite all) of the other gentlemen in the garden, and cut a fine figure in his superbly tailored long-tailed coat, top boots and breeches. His golden blond hair was immaculate as ever, and if she’d been able to see his face at present she’d have noted that his jaw was firm, his cheekbones agreeably chiselled, his mouth well-shaped and pleasingly ironic.
There was no denying that he was handsome by anyone’s standards, and markedly less irritating than her younger admirers. He wasn’t all that old, either – perhaps two and thirty, a dozen or so years her senior. His manners were polished, and there was an attractive little spark of humour in those level grey eyes. She had to presume he was attracted to her, since he was paying court, albeit in a leisurely fashion, and she could see plainly that she amused him well enough.
For her part, she liked him. But somehow she couldn’t imagine loving him, or having any great desire to spend the rest of her life with him. He was always so cool, so entirely in command of himself, that she could not picture him losing control or betraying a hint of human fallibility. Her mother, of course, would scoff and say,What of it? Would you rather he threwplates at you, and cursed you?And no doubt Leontina would go on to add that love wasn’t necessary, or even desirable, when one contemplated the serious matter of marriage. Love, in Mrs Constantine’s mind, was nothing more than a weakness – a weakness and an indulgence Allegra, even more than most young ladies, could not afford.
2
The band still played light airs, conversation hummed around her, but Allegra Constantine frowned darkly. Even that was a small act of rebellion – showing unacceptable emotion in public. Her mama had told her many times that her countenance became off-putting – ‘unnecessarily unattractive’ – when she was not making a conscious effort to appear cheerful. But she didn’t feel at all like making such an effort at the moment, even if her mother scolded her for it, as no doubt she would later when they were alone. If she was indeed scowling and looking unfriendly, even intimidating, this was a perfect reflection of how she felt. She was vexed, and she did not care who knew it. In fact, she’d rather people did. This was alsounladylike,ofcourse, and ill-befitting her rather lowly situation in life, hence the rebellion.
Her mother, the terrifying Mrs Constantine, had a few years ago become celebrated in society for her skill as a matchmaker, since she had somehow found a good husband for her first child and a stellar one – a duke! – for her second. No doubt the polite world was watching and waiting with avid interest to see how shedid with her more intractable third daughter. Both the older Constantine girls had married at the end of their first Season, and this was Allegra’s second, so the clock was ticking in a very public fashion.
Mrs Constantine’s previous success had been providential, since she had given birth to six daughters and no sons. As if this misplaced fecundity wasn’t bad enough, her husband’s modest estate was entailed in the male line, and would therefore pass to a cousin when he died. This cousin had selfishly married young to a lady of his own choosing, which meant he couldn’t even be bullied into wedding one of the family’s many surplus daughters, very likely Allegra herself, to keep the property – their home – in the family. Perhaps that was why he’d done it. It was a brave man who could contemplate Leontina Constantine as a mother-in-law without flinching. The thought of having her live with you for the remainder of her days (and she was not yet five and forty and in excellent health), in a house that had for many years been hers, and in her mind no doubt always would be, was altogether too much for any sensible person to consider. Allegra, for one, couldn’t blame her cousin John in the least for taking steps to protect himself and ensure a tranquil future; she only wished she might do the same.
She was the Constantines’ middle child, and it was lonely in the middle. Her two older sisters had been inseparable as they grew up, excluding her even from their fights, and her three younger sisters were a barely distinguishable mass of shrill, annoying scrubs, now fifteen, twelve, and nine. Obviously, she could not be expected to make friends of any of them; they were far too immature and silly. As a result, she’d always felt something of an outsider in the family, and now it was worse. Sabrina and Viola had babies to occupy them, and the girls were still inthe schoolroom, thinking themselves terribly ill-used because they were forced to labour over their books and practise daily at the pianoforte, but really without a care in the world, if they but knew it. She’d been desperate to escape their company, to be taken seriously as a grown-up, but now she was, she’d realised adulthood had its drawbacks. Only she, currently, was out in the world and the focus of Leontina’s relentless matrimonial plans. And she loathed it. It wasn’t the dancing and the parties and the fine new clothes she disliked – she was only human. It was the underlying purpose of the whole exercise, which induced in her a sense of panic that sometimes threatened to overwhelm her.
She had suitors, three of them, and they were all here today, so that she might compare them if she wished. She’d alwayswantedsuitors – the mere word had thrilled her when she too was young and foolish and desperate to escape the schoolroom – but the experience was nowhere near as agreeable as it had been in prospect. Partly this was Viola’s fault, and partly, of course, it was the fault of the suitors.
Three years ago, when Viola, Duchess of Winterflood, had found herself in a delicate condition after eighteen months of marriage, all her unmarried sisters, her mother, and Miss Naismith, the then governess, had gone to stay with her at her husband’s country mansion. They’d spent several months there, supporting Viola through the early stages of her pregnancy, and when Mrs Constantine and the rest had been obliged at last to return home, Allegra had stayed behind to keep her sister company. Nobody had consulted her – she’d been left like an unwanted parcel. And as a grumpy sixteen-year-old who was always very quick to take offence, she had been disposed to resent it, and to sulk, until she’d realised with an unwelcome flash of insight that it would have been pure cruelty to leave Viola alonewith Edward. The Duke had quite evidently cared a great deal for the prospective heir in her growing belly but very little for the wife who carried that child. She was a vessel, not a person, in his eyes. He was thirty years his wife’s senior; they had nothing to say to each other and less than nothing in common. Viola had confessed as much, in the first serious conversation the sisters had ever shared.I don’t think anyone should marry at seventeen, she’d said, and her words had struck home.It might be possible for you to wait, and look about you, and one day, when you are ready, choose for yourself.
Allegra had been struck forcibly by her words. She had avoided Viola’s fate by putting up a strenuous if passive resistance to her mother’s plans for her over the past year, since her debut last Season, but it seemed to her that Mama was now losing patience with her delaying tactics, and had no inclination to let her look about any longer. When she pointed out in casual conversation this lady or that lady who lived an independent life and seemed excessively content doing so, her mother would reply with heavy emphasis that Lady Louisa, or whoever might currently be under discussion, was an earl’s daughter with a fortune of her own, and thus was able to live exactly as she pleased when less fortunate females – the great majority, in which the Constantine women were most definitely included – could not.
Even in her confusion and anger, Allegra was obliged to admit that none of this was her mama’s fault. It would be childish to blame her when the truth was that the way the world was organised did her family no particular favours. Mr Constantine was not a wealthy or a robust man, and when he died his unmarried daughters would have very little to live on apart from what their married sisters gave them. Her own future, she was therefore forced to recognise, held very few options.
These were:
1. Marriage. A simple word for a complicated situation, full of unknown perils – look at Viola, and she was a duchess, for heaven’s sake. If her happiness could not be guaranteed, whose could?
2. Spinsterhood and a life with her mother. Forever. Too hideous a fate to be dwelt on.
3. Spinsterhood again, but as a dependant on Sabrina or Viola. She would be one of those rapidly ageing women who ran upstairs to fetch the shawl, sat in the carriage facing backwards, and always, always could be placed next to the most boring guest at dinner, because she was of no consequence. She would very soon becomepoorAllegra.
4. Life as a lady’s companion, which was much the same, but in a stranger’s house as a sort of servant, and paid a pittance for her trouble.
5. Going as a governess. Not a realistic prospect for someone who had simultaneously no great interest in other people’s children and surprisingly few solid accomplishments to her name, given her extensive education.
6. An early death from some unpleasant disease (at which, naturally, everybody would be very sorry, apart possibly from Beatrice, who as the next oldest sister would inherit her clothes and bedchamber, both of which she had always coveted).
When she had cried passionately that there simplymustbe other possibilities, she had been invited by her fond mama to list them, and had fallen silent because she couldn’t think of any. Some ladies wrote novels or painted, and scraped a living that way, but she knew herself well enough to realise that she had neither the inclination nor the aptitude. To follow such an unconventional path required a passion and commitment she simply didn’t possess. If it was true that everyone was good at something and everyone had a place in the world, as kind MissNaismith had always told them, she hadn’t yet found out what her special talent was. Perhaps she, uniquely, hadn’t got one. Certainly it wasn’t archery. Or flirting.
But she was very clear that she didn’t want to remain with her mother for a moment longer than she was obliged to, and her pride rebelled at being a sad and lifelong hanger-on to Sabrina or Viola, even if they said they didn’t mind.Sheminded. It was disturbing that the list had started dubiously and yet still managed to deteriorate as it went on. Allegra was shrewd enough to see that any elderly lady who employed her as companion would likely be just as bad as Leontina or even worse, and use her as the merest dogsbody; she would make a spectacularly dreadful governess even if she could persuade any poor deluded fool to employ her; and she couldn’t believe that death was a serious suggestion even from a woman who plainly had far too many daughters to support.
Her mother, exasperated, had then added that those, of course, were the respectable choices, presuming death to be respectable, which was debatable. The others were:
7. The stage. (For which she had no reason to believe she had the least aptitude.)
8. Prostitution. (Ditto, if that could be thought to matter.)
9. Making a bare living in some other menial and no doubt deeply disagreeable fashion, for instance as a chambermaid.
10. Some combination of the two above, culminating in death from typhus, consumption, or another low and lingering ailment.
Therefore, Mrs Constantine said, unanswerably, she really should start looking at the suitors in a more serious fashion – given the nature of the alternatives. Hence her current vexation, for she could not bring herself to declare the slightest preference for any one of them.
And yet Viola had pointed out, and Allegra was obliged toagree, that their mother always made the best choices she could with the material at hand. Even she could not summon gentlemen out of thin air and ensure that they were wealthy, amiable, of high rank, kind, handsome and young. Merely to contemplate such a list of sparkling qualities was to acknowledge how unlikely it was that one man should combine them all, and should also be possessed with a convenient desire to marry the latest Miss Constantine to enter into society – a woman of no fortune and mediocre birth. And that was before one began pining for the moon and dreaming of such inessential but desirable traits as intelligence, wit, honesty, or even a full set of teeth. And as for such an elusive thing as mutual passion – a thing she’d heard whispered about but never experienced – there was no point even dwelling upon it for a second, as far as she could see. She probably wouldn’t even know it if she saw it.
