Before she could respond, the solid door with its small barred window swung open. Mrs Constantine, wrapped in a robe with her hair in papers, which made her more rather than lessfearsome, stood behind it with a covered lantern. She was not alone – a tall old man with a long beard was at her shoulder, his eyes flicking from Miss Constantine to Max and back again with concentrated attention. At his side, Allegra stifled a tiny gasp, which sounded unnaturally loud in the tense silence.
Her mother showed no surprise and uttered no words of reproof, yet, though Max felt her eyes on him too, sharp and judging. ‘We need to talk, Allegra,’ she said flatly. ‘You’d better come in as well, Mr Severin. The kitchen is good enough for this sort of meeting, I’m sure you will agree. It seems you both have a deal of explaining to do.’
32
Max felt he owed it to Allegra to go on the offensive, if only to give her a moment to collect herself. He was surprised enough that they’d been caught in highly compromising circumstances, but Leontina Constantine was not his mother, thank God – he didn’t have to live with her or suffer the worst consequences of her displeasure, however much she might now reproach him. And as for the unknown old man… The poor girl must be greatly shaken. ‘Explaining, you say? So do you, ma’am, if it comes to that,’ he said drily.
The woman’s mouth quirked as she raised her lantern and hurried them inside, down a dark little passage to the basement kitchen, but she made no other immediate response. An enormous, ragged-eared cat had slipped in with them, and it jumped up onto a cupboard now, apparently so it could better glare at him while it washed itself. ‘Sit down,’ Mrs Constantine ordered, and they pulled out heavy chairs and seated themselves at the table, two on each side, like adversaries.
Allegra must have been shaken, but she rallied quickly. ‘Mr Englishby is attempting to blackmail me into his bed.’ Her eyesnever left her mother’s mysterious companion as she spoke; he still hadn’t said a thing. Max could tell somehow that she was wondering if the stranger knew only Italian and could not understand her. ‘He suspects me of illicit meetings with Mr Severin…’
‘How manifestly unjust of him,’ her mother put in ironically.
Allegra pushed on doggedly, not even acknowledging the interruption. ‘And he said he knew more information to our discredit. Yours. He told me he had discovered that all you’ve said about your background is lies, and that you do not come from a noble line at all, but from a very humble background. I won’t repeat what he said of your past, Mama, though I expect you can imagine, but he did say your father is still living, and that he is… a beggar.’
Extraordinarily, the old man was laughing, a low rumbling sound, oddly pleasant and intimate. ‘Well, that at least isn’t true. Not any more. Though I have been a mendicant once or twice, I suppose, when I walked across Europe with my little child on my shoulders. We had to eat.’
‘Grandfather…?’ Allegra said uncertainly.
Mrs Constantine huffed out an exasperated little breath. ‘This is no time for tender reunions and sentimental embraces. Let us save that fustian for later, if we may. Allegra, since I hope I have not raised you to be a goose-cap, it must be obvious to you that this is indeed my father. He is known as Amadeo Schiavi. Schiavi was his mother’s surname, you understand, and the only one he has a right to, because his father was the Count Orlandi Veronese. All that I said of my paternal ancestors was true – but my grandparents were not married, or not to each other, in any event. My grandmother was a poor woman at the mercy of her master.Pader, this is Mr Severin, who is a gentleman, if that’s the word, who, as your own eyes will tell you, has been placing your sillygranddaughter in danger by meeting with her illicitly. And here we are.’
‘I am only a gentleman by adoption,’ Max felt impelled to say, perhaps infected by the spirit of uncomfortable honesty that seemed to prevail here in the close, dark room. ‘I was born in Martinique, in the Caribbean, and brought here as a child, and the Severins raised me and made me their son by law. None of this is any sort of secret, though.’
‘It is rumoured that Mrs Severin was your mother,’ Mrs Constantine mused.
‘She wasn’t,’ he replied shortly. ‘I was a nameless gutter brat and she was kind to me, loved me as if I really were her own, and her good name suffered because of it, and still suffers even though she is long dead.’
‘Nameless gutter brats are ten a penny in London,’ the old man said, his tones measured and deep. ‘A gentleman hardly needs to go halfway across the world to find one to take in. It’s a curious tale, therefore.’
These were dangerous waters and he must not be lulled by the darkness and the low, confidential tones into revealing more than he should. ‘Nevertheless, that is what happened, Signor Schiavi. I can’t help it if you think it implausible. And I can’t see that it’s at all relevant to our current situation. I told Allegra… Miss Constantine, that she should share everything with you, ma’am, without reservation, despite how awkward it must be, because if the part of Englishby’s threats that related to your history was baseless, we could deal with him easily enough. I could; he doesn’t scare me and I’d be glad to set him straight. But I see now that his information was not entirely inaccurate. So wedohave a larger problem.’
‘And it is partly of my making, you imply,’ the woman said. ‘That’s true, I suppose. My motives for deception were obvious;yours I must consider equally so. Let us hear the worst of it and be done. Are you with child, Allegra, or could you be? Have you indeed been so criminally stupid and thrown away all the opportunities I sacrificed so much to give you?’
‘I am not, Mother. I have not been so foolish or so reckless. There’s not the least chance of it, you’ll be glad to know. I suppose there’s no point saying that such a suggestion is insulting to me, nor that I never asked for such a sacrifice. None of us did.’
Leontina scoffed. ‘I’m afraid I don’t feel like begging your pardon, child. And don’t say you’renota child. You aren’t, but your behaviour has been sufficiently irresponsible, you must agree.’
‘While yours has been irreproachable? Really, Mama?’
Max felt as though he was watching the start of a bare-knuckle boxing match; all that was missing was the blood, and the cheering crowd. Women fought, sometimes. But the stakes here were much higher, and it was very far from being entertaining. There could be no winner, no prize to carry away. ‘I cannot marry your daughter, Mrs Constantine, in case you were about to suggest that as a solution. I wish I could – believe me or do not, as you choose – but circumstances that are not mine to share mean that I am unable to do so. And in truth, given what you’ve just told us, that would not help all that much, would it? If I could relieve Allegra of the compromising position I have placed her in by giving her my name, as I sharply regret I cannot, that would hardly assist you or your other daughters. Not if young Captain Hackum carries out his threat and exposes you to the censure of the world. So we need not fall to upbraiding each other uselessly at this dreary hour of the morning, when it seems to me that there are far more important matters to discuss.’
‘You are already married?’ Mrs Constantine persisted, almostas if she’d only heard a part of what he said. ‘I had heard whispers that you might be, or that you should be.’
‘I am not, but still I am not free to take a wife. I will say no more; you do nothing but waste precious time by pressing me. Let us move on, shall we, madam? What Allegra has not told you is that Englishby made wild threats – said he had criminal friends, powerful people, and could easily have her murdered if he wished. I don’t suppose it’s true, but you should know it all the same.’
‘This Englishby is a complete villain. Probably we should just kill him,’ Schiavi said suddenly. He had a great quality of stillness, and had not spoken for so long that Max had almost forgotten he was there. ‘I should, at any rate. Not in one of your foolish public duels, but a sharp knife in the back, one of these dark nights. That would rid you of him for good and all, whoever his friends are.’ These extraordinary words were not uttered in a spirit of bravado, Max thought, but quite seriously, from a strong but perhaps misguided wish to be of assistance. What a personage this old man was, whatever his worldly status might be.
‘You’re not a criminal,Pader,’ his daughter protested wearily, almost as though his bloodthirsty words had come as no shock to her. ‘You talk so grandly in front of the fine gentleman and my daughter, but you’ve never murdered anybody, and now is not the time to start. I won’t risk you hanging for it. And if you employed someone else, even someone you believe you can trust, you’d be putting yourself in their power. I won’t countenance it. Think of something else, I beg you. Something less dramatic and more practical.’
‘What do you know of this man Englishby, ma’am?’ Max asked. ‘I had seen enough of him to distrust him even before this, but I know little of his background. I would not have considered him a suitable aspirant for Miss Constantine’s hand, myself. But itseems you did, so perhaps you know things to his credit that are not apparent to the rest of us.’
‘No,’ the lady said shortly. ‘He was never a suitor I took seriously. But to be wooed by several gentlemen at once gives a young lady a certain cachet, an added desirability in the eyes of others, given how foolishly competitive men always are, and I thought his ardour – which was plainly always chiefly physical – might spur others more eligible on to declare themselves, for fear of losing her. As in fact it did, with Lord Milton and Sir Harry.’
‘A dangerous game, madam.’
‘You of all people have no right to say such a thing to me, young man. But I suppose that is indeed of no moment now. As for his background – he is from a good Midlands family, but not wealthy, with no prospect of inheriting more than he has already wasted, and it is by no means clear to me how he maintains his expensive and fashionable life in London. He lives on credit, I suppose, like so many others, and will take a dozen honest tradesmen and their families down into ruin with him when at last he falls.’
Max shook his head. ‘I wonder. He is no friend of mine, but I have seen him at boxing mills more than once, flashing great bundles of paper money and wagering recklessly, as a man does when large sums are of little moment to him. It is difficult to see how this can be true, since hard cash at least you cannot obtain on credit. He either wins extravagantly and consistently at the gaming tables – which seems to me unlikely, though I suppose it is possible, especially if he cheats – or he has some other source of income. I think we can all agree that it could easily be an illicit one, given what else we know of him.’
