She tried to shake him off, but he would not let her go. Still she refused to panic; there were a dozen people just a few short yards away. As an ambush, it was preposterous. She didn’t want to scream, to make any kind of fuss, but she easily could if matters grew desperate. ‘Mr Englishby, I know you heard what Mr Severin said, before you fled so precipitately. And so you are well aware that he was only there because my mother sent him to fetch me discreetly back inside, and save me from the consequences of my thoughtlessness, and yours.’
He scoffed, and shook her a little, though she made her body stiff, planted her feet firmly along the leaf litter and refused to let him handle her as though she were a rag doll with no power toresist. ‘I didn’t believe that then and I don’t believe it now. He’s hardly the sort of man a careful mama or any other chaperon would call on to rescue her innocent daughter – not with his stained reputation. And your mother doesn’t strike me as the trusting type.’
Unfortunately, this was all too true. ‘She certainly doesn’t trustyou.’
‘She’s right not to, the old harridan. I’m not like Milton; my intentions are thoroughly dishonourable.’ He leered at her like some pantomime villain, and she felt strongly tempted to laugh in his face.
‘All I have to do is scream, or call out. Those ladies nearby are sure to hear me.’
He tried to pull her closer, and she resisted. ‘If you do that, I’ll tell them what you are.’
‘What am I, then?’ Her heart was beating fast, and the cheerful sounds – the thwack of leather on willow, shouts of triumph or mock-despair, polite feminine laughter, scattered applause – all faded, leaving them alone as in a wilderness. Her heart was beating uncomfortably fast now, but she would not let him suspect it.
His tone was low but vicious. ‘A whore, and an imposter. Milton wouldn’t marry you, if he knew. Nobody would. Nor any of your sisters. You’d be outcasts.’
‘That’s melodramatic nonsense,’ she said with a creditable show of calm. She had not the least idea what he meant, though she had a sinking feeling he was about to tell her.
‘Is it, now? I think you have been sneaking around with Severin, allowing him God knows what liberties that you wouldn’t allow me, though you will now, you can be certain of it. I saw him whispering to you in a very intimate fashion a few nights ago, no doubt making some assignation. And that doesn’t evenmatter, in truth, because I know your family – your Italian family – isn’t what you claim it is. You are not sprung from the nobility, but just the opposite. You’re trash off the streets. Your grandfather is a ragged beggar, and your mother was a common drab from the Covent Garden gutter before your father lost his senses and married her. But she can never be respectable. Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.’ He dragged her closer yet, his hot, rank breath on her cheek. ‘I canruinyou, Miss Constantine. Your whole misbegotten family. And I will, if you don’t give me what I want.’
‘And what is that?’ She would make him say it in so many words, make him own his villainy, even though she doubted he was capable of shame. Allegra was proud of her ability to sound reasonably calm, even if her head was spinning and she felt oddly removed from herself and from this sordid little scene.
‘You, in my bed – or no, up against a wall in some alley, as you deserve. When I say, as often as I say, in any way I choose. Or I will tell the world what I know.’
‘And you still could. Even if I gave you all you wanted, I’d only be presenting you with more ammunition for my destruction.’
He grinned at her, his face flushed with triumph, and his hot breath made her gag afresh. ‘That’s right. Clever girl. And yet there is nothing you can do about it. You are at my mercy. How does it feel?’
‘Unpleasant, you’ll be glad to know. I presume you don’t intend we start directly? That would seem… unwise.’ She only had a very little power, and she must use it cleverly. It was imperative she escape from him now, and only then would she be able to puzzle out what she should do. Submission was not an option – apart from anything else, apart from her revulsion, as she had just told him, it would by no means guarantee her safety.
‘No,’ he said with a show of reluctance. ‘No, you are safe fornow. But be sure that I will claim my prize, at a time that suits me. You won’t know when. The next ball, perhaps – I will take you outside again, and this time we will not be interrupted.’ He pinched her chin painfully hard, and then turned on his heel and swaggered away from her. But then he stopped and turned, and said gloatingly, ‘Don’t think for a moment that you can escape me, or that if you tell someone what I have said to you anyone can help you. I have powerful friends,criminals, people more dangerous than a silly chit like you can imagine in the narrow little world of the ton you want so desperately to be part of. I could have you killed with a click of my fingers, once I’m done with you. And I will, if you fail to please me.’ And he left her.
27
Allegra was quiet on the journey home from Richmond, and pleaded a headache when Lord Milton asked if she was quite well. He said that he did not wonder at it, the afternoon was so disagreeably hot, and maintained a considerate silence for the rest of the journey. Her lie was the truth by the time they reached Bloomsbury, and once home she went straight upstairs to lie on her bed without speaking more than a few words to anybody. She must overcome her pounding head andthink.
Her options were few – this seemed to be an unavoidable feature of her life. There weren’t so many of them that she needed to make a list.
She could tell her mother, of course – come straight out and ask her if what Englishby said could possibly be true. But she wasn’t by any means sure if she wanted to, or should.
It would be easy to dismiss his taunting words as a mere slur with no basis in reality, but Allegra and her older sisters had always wondered if Leontina had made exaggerated claims of noble birth to secure her position in London society, gambling that nobody would have the will or the ability to check.
It wasn’t as though Allegra gave a fig if she was or wasn’t the granddaughter of a count. Her Italian background, perhaps because it was barely spoken of, had always seemed a species of fairy tale in any case, too distant to have any significance or solidity. Other people would care excessively, though, she knew, if the calumny proved to be true. The ton would care. The whole family would be made to suffer for the deception. Sabrina and Viola might shrug it off, though Edward probably wouldn’t like it much; the rest of them would be in far worse case, exposed as imposters.
But whether she was a noblewoman or a peasant fraud as Englishby had said, Leontina was sharp. Allegra and her sisters had tried before to prise more details from their mother; they’d always failed. If she now insisted on knowing the truth rather than the vague story they’d been given, she’d have to tell Mrs Constantine why. And there’d be no point giving her half a tale – Englishby’s leering mention of her own recent activities would have to come out too. That was not a pleasant prospect. She could hardly accuse her mother of keeping the truth from her and endangering her wellbeing when she had been doing exactly the same through her illicit, perilous meetings with Max Severin.
And that wasn’t the whole of it. She hadn’t noticed it at the time, but later she had realised with a chill that Englishby had spoken of her grandfather in the present tense. Not, he was a beggar, but heis. That was a thought that almost overwhelmed her. If her mother’s father was alive, was actually present in this city where they lived, must not Leontina know it, since a stranger did? It seemed quite possible that Allegra’s whole life, and her sisters’, had been based on an elaborate construction of lies. And could she deal with that knowledge just now, along with everything else? What more might there be to learn?
She had a notion that if what she’d been told was indeed true,her mother’s ruthless idea of a solution might well be for her to marry Lord Milton as quickly as possible – to seize hold of the prize before it slipped out of her grasp forever. But she couldn’t do that. She still didn’t know how to answer him, wasn’t sure if she could accept the sort of half-marriage and half-life he offered her, and adding deception to the mix when he had been so honest with her did not sit well on her conscience. That was before she even contemplated how his appallingly proud and disagreeable mother, who had so keenly interrogated her about her Italian origins, would react if she heard that all she’d been told was false. His Lordship too had made more than one remark in her hearing about bad blood and children from the gutter. It would be more than reckless to tie herself irrevocably to a man who didn’t love her and might at any moment recoil from her in disgust and regret that he had ever set eyes on her. Their passionless union would be difficult enough without that added complication. And it seemed madness to be forced into Sir Harry’s arms on the dubious basis that he was too easy-going to care where she came from. Apart from anything else, that wouldn’t help her younger sisters at all.
Her only other option, it seemed, was to seek Mr Severin’s help, though she didn’t know if it was sensible even to contemplate this path. It was possible to argue that he deserved to be told, because he was implicated already by Englishby’s suspicions. But was she only telling herself that because she desperately wanted to believe it?
One thing she knew: he wouldn’t care if her grandfather was a beggar, and all the rest.Hewould not shun her. She didn’t think this was just because his own origins were obscure – instead she believed instinctively that he was not a man to judge others for matters that were entirely outside their own control. But perhaps that too was wishful thinking. Perhaps the bare truth was that sheyearned to see him again, to feel his arms about her, for comfort as much as physical pleasure, and this was just a convenient excuse to seek him out. No doubt she was looking for reassurance, as well she might, but in sober truth it seemed most unlikely that she would find it with him.
He’d offered her a promise of assistance, but had he meant it? And even if he had, it seemed profoundly unlikely that he would in fact be able to help her. What she ought to do was to rescue herself; to find her own way out of this hideous situation. But try as she might, she could think of nothing.
The only thing she had known straight away, and knew still with a fierce intensity, was that submission was not an option. If she was to be ruined, if her family was to be destroyed too – which seemed almost inevitable at the moment – she and they would be ruined by gossip that they could not prevent, not by putting herself at Englishby’s mercy and giving him irrefutable proof of her degradation that he could share with the world whenever he chose. There had to be another way.
28
