She had examples before her, of course, besides Viola. Sabrina’s husband Laurence was neither good-looking nor of noble birth, but he had all the other attributes that a woman might desire, including flawless dentistry. Allegra didn’t know if there was passion between them – she could hardly ask – but Sabrina still appeared to like him well enough, even after five or six years of marriage and nearly as many children. Everyone liked Laurence. Could one of her suitors prove to be such an undemanding, easy-going man, and would she with her deep-rooted contrariness care for him if he were? The uncomfortable fact was, she couldn’t be sure.
Viola’s husband, the Duke of Winterflood, for his part had seemed upon his entry into their lives to have only one flaw – his advanced age – and many, many positive endowments, but it had soon become apparent that his kindness was in short supply, at least where his wife was concerned. Allegra could see for herselfthat passion was entirely absent in that particular relationship, and she could not wonder at it.
And similarly, her own suitors all had their obvious drawbacks – though Lord Milton’s defects were something Allegra struggled to define – along with others, currently unguessed at, which they might be cunningly concealing until it was too late, as Edward had.
It wasn’t as though she considered herself to be perfect; she knew very well she wasn’t. Like most of her sisters, she had a hasty temper, and was liable to speak and act before she thought; long before she thought, or even instead of thinking, on many occasions. She could play on the pianoforte and ply her needle better than some, despite her left-handedness, and worse than many. Nobody had ever asked her to sing twice. Therefore, nobody would ever describe her as highly accomplished, if they were being truthful. And unlike all her sisters, she was extremely short, which she had been brought to realise was not at all desirable. This was unfair, because it lay entirely out of her control. If wishing to be taller worked, she would be already.
Nor was she a great beauty, unless one cherished a fondness for heavy black brows, stormy dark eyes, and olive skin. She doubted that such attributes had ever been fashionable, and they definitely weren’t now. If a man had a fancy for delicacy and wistful charm, for the ethereal, he had best look elsewhere. If he dreamed of a lady who would look meltingly up at him in adoration of his superior masculine intellect, he should probably run away in almost any direction. And if he particularly disliked blunt sarcasm, mockery, and bad temper in the morning (and at other times), he should leap on a fast horse and make his escape while he could.
So perhaps sheshouldbe grateful that despite all this she had admirers. There were men in society who unaccountably seemedto wish to court a short, plump, sarcastic, beetle-browed female of uncertain temper, middling accomplishments and no fortune, who had besides three annoying younger sisters who were bound to be a burden on him, and a mother who had more than once been described as a Napoleon in petticoats.
And actually, when one looked at them in those terms, it wasn’t at all clear precisely why the gentlemen who wooed her did so. They had many, many other debutantes to choose from, dozens of them more obviously agreeable, taller, slimmer, prettier, and with greater fortune and higher birth to their names. So why had she been chosen? It had never occurred to ask herself this before, but now she thought that it should have done. Helen of Troy she was not. Was this the face that launched a thousand ships? It wasn’t. Maybe three ships, at the highest estimate. Two and a half ships. A couple of leaky rowing boats.
Perhaps that was the answer to her problem, or the start of an answer – if she could work out why precisely each of them wanted her, it might become clearer what she should do about it. Sir Harry had already offered for her, several times, if she chose to take him seriously, blushing and stumbling over his words but comprehensible enough; Mr Englishby was apparently on the brink of doing so; and her mother was of the opinion that Lord Milton could be brought to that desirable point with just a little effort andagreeablenesson her part.
Sabrina had had to make no such effort, of course. Laurence had fallen in love with her on sight – he was prepared to tell the story, at length, to anyone who seemed even slightly interested. That wasn’t helpful to Allegra, because Sabrina was beautiful, and anyone who spent a moment or two in her company must also realise that she was even-tempered (unlike the rest of them), clever (but not too intimidatingly so), warm-hearted and amusing. These qualities were written on her face – of course men hadfallen at her feet and rolled there, panting, like so many puppies desperate for belly rubs and treats. She was tall, too, and yet it was impossible for even Allegra to dislike her for it.
Edward, by contrast, had married Viola purely because she was young and fertile; he had been twice married already, recently widowed, desperate for an heir and largely unconcerned with anything else. She was lovely also, and well above average height, but he didn’t seem to notice or care, and now he had his heir – two, in fact. This marital bargain had worked out in a highly satisfactory fashion for him, but perhaps less so for Viola. It was apparent that she loved her little children with all her heart, but not her husband. She didn’t even seem to like him all that much, as far as Allegra could tell. And if he’d noticed that sad fact, as surely he must have done, he didn’t appear to shed a single tear over it. Viola was one and twenty, with all the material possessions and financial security anyone could desire, but in many other respects her future was cold and bleak.
So – since Allegra had a long and depressing list of reasons why marriage was the least terrible choice available to her, and yet many equally compelling arguments for caution in the choice of a mate – she resolved to examine her suitors as dispassionately as she could, and work out why they desired her, and then, armed with that knowledge, whether she could bring herself to tie herself to one of them for life with no realistic prospect of escape. At least such enquiries would keep her busy, she supposed. And what could be more important? Her whole future was at stake. The stark reality was, she must make her choice and marry at the end of this Season. She was almost out of time.
And these were her options:
1. Lord Milton: handsome, amusing, clever, amiable, but sadly tepid. Rich.
2. Sir Harry Eager: not handsome, not amusing, not clever, certainly amiable, not tepid.Veryrich.
3. Mr Englishby: handsome, somewhat amusing, possibly clever, probably not amiable,definitelynot tepid. Not at all rich.
There they were; there would be no more; no bachelor number four. Allegra simply could not afford to delay any longer, nor would her mother permit it. She must decide.
3
Unaware of these musings, Lord Milton brought them all delicious lemon ices, and then left her in peace to eat hers; Mrs Constantine observed all this, and unquestionably had thoughts that she’d share freely later. Allegra would no doubt gain her approbation for singling him out from the others so neatly, and lose it immediately for not finding a way to make him then stay at her side so that she could flirt with him. But she couldn’t do it; she thanked him politely, as did her companions, but then he departed with a slight smile and the two older women chatted on, leaving her to her brown study. It wasn’t, she thought, as though she could seize him by the elegant hand or the muscled leg and beg him not to leave her. Being a young lady in the marriage mart apparently required a great deal of subtlety, which nobody would ever describe as her strong suit.
In fact, she didn’t particularly desire his company, or anyone’s, but should he not want hers, at any rate rather more than he seemed to? He might not be her richest admirer – that was the young Baronet, whose late father had been a nabob and preposterously rich – but he was in other respects the most eligible. Hewas a man of rank, connections and property, a baron with a large country estate; he was handsome, of famously equable temper – unlike Mr Englishby – kind, considerate and well-mannered. Intelligent, too – in contrast with poor Sir Harry. So why could she not find it in herself to like him to a greater degree than she did? Surely it could not be simply that he was too perfect, and she too imperfect.
Would she welcome ardour, if he ever showed it? She wasn’t sure. She had tried to picture herself alone with each of her admirers, in his arms, his lips on hers, more than that… It was nigh-on impossible. Mr Englishby came closest to stirring her blood – he had a certain spark in his liquid brown eyes that promised much – but since she liked almost nothing else about him, this wasn’t all that helpful.
Allegra knew herself to be inconsistent, perverse even. She didn’t care for it at all, nor found it the least flattering, when Sir Harry and Mr Englishby fought over her; Lord Milton would never do that, making a spectacle of himself and her too. It was inconceivable, because he had too much good sense and his manners were too elegant. And because of that, she criticised him as tepid. Did the younger men care too much for her liking – was that even possible? Or were they just silly boys with no self-control, their feelings being entirely bound up with their sense of their own dignity and having nothing to do with her as a person, as she’d suspected earlier?
And perhaps it was true too that Lord Milton did not care enough. His feelings of admiration and interest in her, she felt instinctively, were lukewarm at best. Probably he wanted an heir, as a man of his age and standing well might, and his fancy had fallen on her. His duty to his name required him to marry someone and set up his nursery soon enough, and her older sisters now had four sons between them, at the latest count, as heno doubt knew. The Constantines were becoming famous for their fertility, or in her case their potential fertility, like so many heifers brought to market and sold to the highest bidder. Or the only bidder. Against her will her lips formed a silentmoo. Anyone watching her would think she was running mad, and perhaps she was. She wasn’t sure ifheiferwas the right word, but it had a sort of feminine heaviness to it that suited how she felt about the whole situation; she’d seen cattle markets, near her father’s house in Surrey, and what was this but another one? She had no desire at all to be seen as little better than a farm animal, prize breeding stock, as Viola had so plainly been.Moo.
And maybe Lord Milton was secretly as bad as Edward, and she would find herself in no better case than Viola if she married him, alone and trapped with a man many years her senior who was a virtual stranger to her, watching her impatiently each month to see if she was finally going to fulfil her only real purpose in life: reproduction.
What was the right amount of liking – on a gentleman’s part, and on hers? Was physical attraction necessary, and if it was, was it enough? Surely not; it couldn’t be. There was a whole long life ahead of her with anyone she married. She felt herself to be on a precipice, looking down into an abyss, with several hands in the small of her back pushing her to make a step that could be fatal. It was all so important, so irrevocable and so dangerous.
And she had no one she could really trust to guide her. Her father, unfailingly kind but always absent-minded, preoccupied with his agricultural interests, would inevitably tell her that such matters were her mother’s domain. Her mother’s opinion she knew. She’d been provided by her with options, which was more than many girls had, but the consequences of whatever choice she made would be chiefly hers to live with. Forever. Sabrina, who was happy, secure and loved, would no doubt fob her offwith platitudes and affectionate but useless words of reassurance that it would all come right in the end. (How?) Viola would be more honest and less emollient, but then she already knew what Viola thought – she’d told her already to be careful how she chose, to take her time, but what did that really mean? What should shedo?
4
There was a ball that evening. Her life was nothing but a ceaseless round of gaiety, Allegra thought glumly. Beatrice and Cecilia came into her chamber to watch her dress for it, and she was in such low spirits that she didn’t even attempt to drive them off, or stop them from jostling each other and bickering irritatingly as they sat wide-eyed on her bed, like a pair of restless baby owls in a nest.I’ll marry someone, she mused –I really in the end will have to marry someone – and then Beatrice will be next, this will be her room for a while, then Cecilia, then in the end even little Bianca.Society is a machine that eats up young women, and there are always more to feed its insatiable appetite once the last has been digested.And yet the alternatives, as she well knew, were none of them more pleasant, and most of them decidedly worse. And for this, to avoid the even more disagreeable fates, one dressed to attract.
Mrs Constantine had more sense than to do up her daughters in fashionable unrelieved white, which, because of the Mediterranean complexions she had passed on, didn’t become them. Nobody should ever have the opportunity to describe Allegra as sallow. Her gown was a dull gold, and this was paired with amuslin over-slip in a slightly deeper shade, embroidered with brilliants, which formed an almost transparent covering for her shoulders and draped gracefully across her hips, accentuating their lush curves. The gold silk was cut quite low across the bosom, as was the current mode, but the muslin masked this somewhat, offering only discreet glimpses of flesh. Constantine women were most of them built along ample lines, whether short or tall; Allegra must be conscious that her stays presented her substantial endowments in the most flattering manner possible, if anyone should chance to be looking. Since almost everybody was taller than she was, they’d have to be looking down, of course.
Nobody would know that the over-dress had been Viola’s four Seasons back, and the gold silk cut down from an outmoded toilette of her mother’s from the previous century. She had Mama’s topazes about her neck and in her ears, and a simple gold silk ribbon woven through her dark curls. She looked as well as it was possible for her to look; her inner turmoil was not reflected in her face, she believed.
When she presented herself for inspection before they left the house, Leontina let herself betray her satisfaction. ‘Perhaps Lord Milton will ask you for two dances tonight,’ she said. ‘You are looking very well indeed.’
