Leontina, as was her nature, gave only grudging agreement, but allowed her father to usher her out of the kitchen before he took his own leave, winking irrepressibly at them as he did so.
They were alone.
39
A tense little silence fell between them. Max said, sounding more sober than he had a short while ago, ‘You have heard gossip about me. I suppose I should not wonder at it. What did the tattling tongues say?’
‘Only what you have yourself implied before. That you were caught in a highly compromising situation with a young lady, some years ago, and that her family and yours insisted that you marry, but that you – evidently – did not do so, though nobody knows why, and she has since disappeared. There are the wildest rumours circulating on the subject – that she took her own life rather than go through with it, or that she refused to be wed to you and would not budge no matter what pressure was applied, and has been shut away by her parents ever since because of it. Gothic nonsense, I had thought, the kind of stories my silly little sisters enjoy. But perhaps I was wrong. How can I tell?’
He seemed really amused at last. ‘The lady in question put a period to her existence because she could not bring herself to marry me? Well, that is an excellent jest, and one that is new tome, though the story of her supposed imprisonment had already come to my ears. I must write and tell Melissa this novel twist. She will be most amused. No, my dear Allegra, despite what people say, she is alive and well; thriving, in fact. The truth is far more prosaic, and you can vouch for it, because you have met her yourself, not long since. She is running a very successful modiste’s business under the assumed identity of Madame Lisette, along with a certain Miss Reynolds, who is her business partner and close companion – her lover, in truth. I invested money in their enterprise at the outset, and it has given me a handsome return already, though that was not why I did it.’
Allegra digested all this startling information in silence. ‘No wonder she looked at me so intently, putting me quite out of countenance. I was highly suspicious of your connection with her, but told myself it did not matter. I think you must tell me all, now you have told me part. My head is whirling.’
‘I will, gladly. I could have revealed all this before. Half-drunk and tired and sitting here in the dark – by the way, what is that horrible smell, is it the drains? – I do not know now why I did not. I know you will not share anything I reveal to you with anyone, for reasons that must be sufficiently obvious. Melissa was my first friend in England, and my best; we grew up together in Kent, her father’s estate adjoining my adoptive parents’ acres. We played in secret, as far as her family were concerned – in their eyes, I was, naturally, far beneath her notice. Male friends who might one day become suitors – least of all friends of my complexion and origins – would not have been welcome in her house. This was all the more the case because she was betrothed from her early childhood to a distant cousin, a man much older. She had no say on the topic, you will not be surprised to hear, and certainly no power to refuse. It was a matter of property, of debt and complex inheritance; she was an heiress in a modest way.’
‘Poor girl,’ Allegra whispered. She had always known that society had devised traps for women other than the ones she and her older sisters had experienced. Wealth was no guarantee of freedom; quite the reverse.
‘Indeed. This idea of such a union greatly displeased her as soon as she was old enough to understand it, as it might any person of sensibility. But then she went to school and met her love there, and when her eighteenth birthday arrived and her engagement was to be announced that very evening, with no escape from it… Why then, she asked her oldest friend to help her in the only way anyone could. To make itstopsomehow, to halt the desperate runaway carriage that was her life. After that night it would have been too late.’
She thought of what she had heard from Lord Milton and her mother of the events of that evening. ‘You pretended?’
‘We did – we made a play of it. We were laughing so hard that it was a wonder our discoverers did not observe it and realise it was all a sham, staged for their benefit. But they were not very perceptive people, and disposed already, of course, to think the worst of one such as me. It worked perfectly. Melissa’s betrothed, after what he had seen with his own bloodshot eyes, would not have married her then if she had been as rich as Croesus.’
He grinned briefly, and then said more soberly, ‘By that point, of course, I was Mr Severin’s acknowledged heir, a person of some standing, not the nameless waif he had so quixotically taken in. And so we should have foreseen that we had freed her from one snare only to entangle her – and me – in another. Perhaps we did foresee it; I cannot say at this distance. We were so young and careless. I might have married her willingly then, if she had wished it, then set her free to live her life with the greater independence of a married woman. My own situation was… less complicated then than it later became. But she did not require that of me. It was much easier, you see, for her to break off this second, makeshift engagement – an engagement that horrified her parents even as they agreed to it. In the end, once she was free of her fiancé and of me, she chose to tell them exactly why she was leaving, and where she was going. To whom. At last she spoke her truth, and forced her family to hear it. They cast her off, which remains a grief to her, but they would never have allowed her to leave in any other circumstances. Think of me as a key, one that opened a previously locked door.’
‘You sacrificed your reputation for your friend’s sake,’ she said slowly.
‘I suppose so. How noble it sounds, how laudable, and how unlike what anyone, even my more recent friends, would believe of me – but reflect, Allegra, I was barely eighteen, and I had little idea what I was doing. Of the consequences.’
‘Do you regret it?’
He answered her readily. ‘No. No, I do not. Melissa was my friend, when I had few, and remains so. I visit her and her companion when I can, but she is very busy and obliged, of course – I am sure you see the irony of it – to be discreet in her dealings with members of the male sex, all the more because she is in a position of some public scrutiny and must look to her reputation. She loves her life; she is happy. I’m glad I was able to help her. She was the courageous one, after all, not me, and has paid a greater price for her freedom, in the loss of her family, such as they were. Her younger sister, if you can believe it, married Melissa’s elderly betrothed in her place, and did so with glee, gaining a title by it. She had always been envious of the match. The cost to me is irrelevant. Non-existent, even. What are a few ill-informed whispers? It is not as though my reputation is some precious thing that could have been preserved for a greaterpurpose, or that I have ever really felt the lack of it before, as a woman must.’
‘There is nothing in this story – unless I am gravely mistaken – that would prevent you from…’ Allegra trailed off. What was she even asking him?
‘From marrying you, or anyone? No, of course not. The secret is not mine to shout abroad, but Melissa would never ask me to keep it from you, if my own happiness depended on it. If confirmation were needed – which it should not be, between lovers in a state of mutual trust – I daresay she would readily confirm that all I have said is true, always in strictest confidence. She would be very happy to know you better, as you might have guessed. But all this is to no purpose.’
She could not think of anything to say. Why had he told her this, if it was not the great secret thing that ruled his life and all his actions, and set him drinking at ten o’clock in the morning? He wanted her to think well of him and understand him better, that was plain, and perhaps she did, but to what purpose?
‘Do you believe me, Allegra?’ It was little more than a whisper.
‘I do. But what does it matter?’
‘It matters to me.’
‘Very well. I can see that it does, Max. And I suppose that I am glad you have told me, since I need not think badly of you in this one respect and be unjust. But why?’
‘I like it when you call me by my name.’
‘It might be the last time. We are supposed to be saying our goodbyes. Marry her or leave her be, my grandfather said. It seems as though you’re not willing to do either, and still you will not tell me why. What use is frankness, if it is only partial? You want me, no, youneedme to believe that you are honest and well-meaning and to trust your word – I can see you do – but you asktoo much and give little in return. You must see that. Women cannot afford to be so trusting in this world.’
He sighed. No longer sounding drunk, but only desperately weary, he said, ‘I see that. Allegra, I do. Trust goes both ways, or it is not trust at all. Very well, then. I must beg your patience at this low hour of the night, for it’s a much longer story…’
40
‘I have told you I was born in Martinique,’ he began. He felt strangely detached from himself, though it seemed as if it had nothing to do with the alcohol he had consumed over the course of the day, and a great part of him could not believe that he was really going to tell her – or anyone – this. But he was, he was committed to do so now, and he did not attempt to check the words as they rolled from him. He’d never told a living soul any part of this most significant of secrets before, but he needed to share this with her now, or run completely mad.
‘I grew up on the island till I was almost seven, with a nurse – Celestine – to whom I had been entrusted as a newborn. I was very lucky in that respect – she loved me as if I had been her own. As I grew, I understood that my mother was a Frenchwoman of noble descent – a girl of fifteen, I later discovered – who had had a scandalous and secret affair with a man, or a boy, whose mother was a slave and father her master. That is my heritage, Allegra. Quadroon is the word for such as me. Bastard is another.’
