But if he was still seeking to comfort himself with the hope ofone day, somehow, having her, Allegra, he was in serious trouble and must acknowledge it. And yet, he found he had no intention of leaving London, even though he knew in every fibre of his being that he should go tomorrow and not look back.
He was enmeshed somewhere deep in tales from Ovid when slumber finally claimed him, and his dreams were rendered uneasy by images of Allegra Constantine, more lovely in her nakedness than any marble statue of a goddess could ever be, fleeing him and transforming in her flight into something unsettling and half-human that had branches instead of hands. They’d sent him to an English public school to mould him into something he was not, and now as a result, their stories invaded even his nightmares.
10
In the succeeding days, Allegra was possessed by an irrational desire to learn more about Mr Severin. She might tell herself that knowledge was power, but she was aware even as she formulated the thought that she just burned to know, and anything else was but the feeblest attempt to explain away her irrational hunger. But who could she ask? Not Mr Englishby, that was certain. Their previous confrontation had been quite dangerous enough; she was supposed to be avoiding him now, and happy to do so. And assuredly not her mother – she was far too shrewd, and could very likely read minds; her daughter’s mind, at least.
She had few options, then, and made the most of the only opportunity that occurred to her a couple of days later. Lord Milton had taken her, decorously chaperoned by her mama, to see an exhibition of paintings. Soon after their arrival in the gallery, Leontina had made an unconvincing pretence of decrepitude which apparently necessitated that she remain on a bench placed in front of a large, dull rendition of an Italian scene. Perhaps it reminded her of her distant childhood home, if home had been excessively brown and full of crumbling ruins. MrsConstantine waved them on, saying that she preferred to repose herself alone for a few moments, and they left her, moving slowly about the large room along with many others and, at least at first, chatting idly about the works they saw. It was a rare chance for a semi-private conversation, efficiently engineered by a mistress of the art, and Mrs Constantine would have been most displeased to hear that her daughter chose to use it to ask her companion what manner of man Mr Severin was.
‘Why do you ask, ma’am?’ Lord Milton said, his tone showing a little surprise, one fine eyebrow raised in polite interrogation.
‘I barely know him, and yet he seems to derive a great deal of amusement from observing me, perhaps even from mocking me,’ Allegra told him with a fair show of casual composure, no doubt because she had practised what to say in such a situation several times in front of her chamber mirror. ‘You must have seen him the other day, when Sir Harry and Mr Englishby were being so very disobliging at Mrs Singleton’s al fresco breakfast. He never spoke a word to any of us, but stood by and laughed at the whole scene in a most disagreeable, sneering way, as if it had been a play set up for his entertainment and not a decidedly awkward moment that should have been repugnant to him, or anyone with the least sensibility. I was obliged to remark inwardly upon how extraordinary his behaviour was, and what it could possibly signify.’
‘Yes, I could not fail to notice that too,’ her companion conceded, his mild curiosity about her motive apparently satisfied. ‘Well, Miss Constantine, Severin has something of a name for incivility, so perhaps that accounts for it. The rules that govern the rest of us and call for common courtesy in social situations don’t seem to apply to him. You’d think a man in his peculiarly awkward situation, as an obvious foreigner of obscure origins, would be careful not to show himself a boor, but that is very farfrom being the case. He has been described as the rudest man in London, and now you have seen the justice of it.’
What a lucky person he must be, thought Allegra wistfully. I wish the rules didn’t apply to me either. Imagine the fun to be had in being the rudest woman in London. But the very idea was ridiculous – if there were such a person, she’d have to be very rich and noble, and probably extremely old, so that nobody cared what she said any more or dared to censure her. ‘So you believe he was simply choosing us as random objects of mockery, sir? And yet I feel I’ve seen him laughing at me before. It makes me feel sadly self-conscious.’ And this at least was nothing but the truth, though not the whole truth.
‘Your countenance is… peculiarly expressive,’ Lord Milton said gently. ‘And your young suitors do make a sad show of themselves upon occasion. I can’t imagine it to be any more than that. No doubt other ladies have also had cause to remark upon his disagreeably satirical regard. Since he does not, as far as I can see, generally say anything in these situations, there is little to be done about it, by me or anyone else. One cannot – or in these enfeebled modern times one does not – call a man to account merely for having a supercilious sort of a face. Or one would be forever coming to blows with strangers.’
She’d pushed the matter as far as she dared, Allegra knew. ‘No doubt you’re right, sir,’ she said sedately. ‘How unpleasant, to be sure. But it can only be endured as one of life’s minor nuisances, I suppose, and not made too much of.’
‘Yes,’ he said abstractedly. ‘Yes, that’s quite right.’ And then after a moment’s hesitation he went on slowly, ‘Severin has a terrible reputation, and I am not speaking solely of his gross incivility; that is not the half of it. There was a particularly disagreeable scandal caused by him some years ago; I really can’t share the details with you, so please don’t ask me to. But suffice it to saythat I would be very sorry indeed if he should turn out to have any sort of personal interest in you. I assure you, Miss Constantine, if indeed he does dislike you and even mock you, that is far preferable to… any other kind of interest he might have in you, or any other young lady for that matter. I promise you, I am not exaggerating. Would that I were.’ He went on, almost to himself, ‘This is what comes of adopting a mongrel child rescued from the gutter; I wonder the late Mr Severin was so foolish, so indulgent of what I must suppose to be his wife’s whims. Bad blood will out, always.’
Allegra’s interest was aroused, her curiosity piqued, by this pompous little speech, as a man of Lord Milton’s years should have realised would be the case for any woman of spirit. If she had not had the slightest interest in Mr Severin before, she would have instantly developed such an interest now. Had Milton never heard the legend of Bluebeard’s wife? To tell a lively lady of nineteen that there is one room she must not go into, even under pain of death, or one tale far too shocking for her innocent ears to hear, is almost to guarantee that she will at the first available opportunity try with all her might to enter the forbidden room, or seek out every dreadful detail of the prohibited story with the greatest persistence. This would have been true even if his interlocutor had not had a scandalous encounter with the gentleman in question only a day or two before. But to know that she had been very thoroughly kissed by someone who was the subject of enormous scandal must provoke the wildest and most intriguing speculations in Allegra’s mind. And as for his reference to Mr Severin’s mysterious origins, that too was fascinating rather than otherwise.
Yet she showed no outward sign of the feverish desire to know everything that could be known that possessed her, only murmuring that she had had no notion of anything so shocking,and must be very sure to avoid Mr Severin in future, and then she turned the subject to one of the uninteresting artworks that they had supposedly come to see, and to which they’d hardly been paying any attention at all.
She was, she thought later, getting quite proficient at lying to her mother now. It was wonderful what one could do with practice. ‘Mama,’ she said casually once His Lordship’s carriage had dropped them back at their shabby rented house and he had taken his punctilious leave of them without coming inside, ‘Lord Milton was good enough to warn me, as we looked at the very dreary pictures, against Mr Severin. Perhaps you saw that gentleman standing close by at the archery butts the other day? Yes, I thought you must have done; his unpleasant attention was so very marked and you could not fail to see it. Lord Milton says that he has a terrible reputation, that he was once involved in a very shocking scandal, and that I should make every effort to avoid him as one who is dangerous. But he wouldn’t tell me what happened; he is so very correct that he would by no means reveal anything further. And naturally I am most curious to know more than he was prepared to say, and thought I would ask you if you had heard anything on the subject.’
Her mother came as close as a lady could to grunting, but she didn’t seem to suspect Allegra of anything more than a forgivable interest, such as anyone might exhibit when confronted with such an annoyingly incomplete remark. ‘Lord Milton does not appear to have much knowledge of young women, does he? Or women of any age. What a thing to say to you, and expect that you should think no more of the matter just because he said so. I suppose one might consider that admirable – clearly he is no philanderer, not intimate with many ladies, or he would know better than to give you half a salty tale and expect you to have no curiosity about the rest. But Severin, by contrast, is a libertine, orso I understand.’ This was startling news, and Allegra listened with rapt attention. Of course Leontina would know. She knew everything – or almost everything.
Mrs Constantine went on, ‘I have heard it whispered that he was caught in a compromising situation – really averycompromising situation – with a young lady at a ball in some country house, seven or eight years ago. His adoptive family is wealthy, so the chit’s parents made the best of it and arranged that the guilty pair should be married without loss of time. Mr Severin senior was still alive then, and supported them in their insistence, since he had little choice if he wished to retain any shred of his good name.’
‘So this Mr Severin is married, then? I had no notion of it.’ Allegra tried to keep the cold shock from her voice, and could only hope that if her mother heard she would entirely misunderstand the cause.
‘No. He should be, but he is not, and there must be scandal there too. The wedding simply never happened; the girl disappeared entirely from society. No one knows exactly what prevented it or what became of her instead. Her family and his made great efforts to hush the whole matter up between them, but there have been many distasteful rumours circulating about the man ever since. Lord Milton is right in what he tells you, in effect, even if his disapproval is partly motivated by prejudice. I am glad that Severin shows no interest in courting you; I had rather he did not even know you existed. Such attractive but unprincipled men are dangerous indeed.’
‘Bluebeard…’ Allegra whispered softly. She hastened to add, ‘I wonder he is still received in society then, ma’am. It would surely be better for everyone if he were not.’
‘Did I not say that he is very wealthy?’ responded her mother drily. ‘Despite what happened, he was not cast off, but inheritedall the Severin fortune. I am sure you perceive the injustice of it. Rumours that will entirely ruin a woman can merely add spice to a man’s name, if he is rich and tolerably good-looking, as we must admit he is. If Severin had refused to marry the girl that he compromised, that would be a different matter. The rules of society cannot be so grossly outraged, even by young men of fortune. But her family have made no claim that he did such a thing – they have never spoken of it at all in public. It is even said by some that she took her own life because the marriage was so disagreeable to her, or that she stubbornly refused his suit and is kept locked away in some attic still because of it. There were rumours too that she conceived his child, gave birth to it, and still would not marry him.’
‘Goodness,’ said Allegra weakly.
‘Yes, yes, it is like a novel, and therefore probably all a tissue of lies. No doubt the reality is far more mundane and sordid. And so he is still invited almost everywhere, still whispered about behind fans, and in spite of it or even because of it, silly girls giggle and blush when they see him, and throw their caps at him in a shameless fashion because they like the idea that he isdangerous. You will not be one of them, I hope, Allegra. You know you cannot afford to be. He has shown no disposition to court you, or anyone, and the rumour is that he will never marry now, but lives a life of relentless debauchery.’
Miss Constantine could only agree that she would certainly not do anything of the kind, and kept her face arranged in an expression of shock and mild interest as best she could. She thought she could risk just one more question before she had done. ‘Lord Milton made some reference to him being a child of the gutter, and you too said he was adopted…’
‘Yes, though it seems unlikely that a gentleman would pick a child absolutely from the street as one might a puppy or a kitten.I believe he is indeed of mysterious birth, grew up in Mr Severin’s household, and was legally adopted by him some ten years ago. Mrs Severin, of course, was French-Caribbean in origin, what is known as Creole, and there were rumours at the time, I seem to recall, that he might be a natural child of hers from before her marriage, whom she had finally prevailed upon her husband to give his name to. Such things have been known to happen, though usually it is the woman, not the man, who is obliged to welcome a cuckoo into the nest and rear it as her own. But whether that is so or not, I suppose it is to the old gentleman’s credit – speaking to his heart if not his head – that he did not repudiate the boy when the scandal broke, but instead still left him all his fortune quite as if he had really been his son. We need not concern ourselves with his origins, Allegra, which are no affair of ours, but only with his character, and that merely in so far as to be wary of him. Do I make myself sufficiently plain?’
Miss Constantine said meekly – but not too meekly, which would in itself be suspicious – that her mama had indeed conveyed her meaning with adequate force. She managed to keep her voice level and her tone unconcerned while she responded, though this was very hard indeed, when her mind and her pulses were racing unaccountably, and she had absolutely no intention of paying any heed to her mother’s stern warning.
11
It was hard to distinguish, Allegra thought a couple of days later, between pure chance and the effect of Mr Severin’s interventions in her life. Chance had led her outside with Mr Englishby on that particularly memorable occasion, as never before, but Mr Severin had been there to take advantage of the situation. If she understood him correctly, he had been there precisely because he had developed some manner of obsession with her, and was always watching and waiting for a slip on her part. This thought set the blood coursing through her veins in a most disturbing manner. Honesty compelled her to admit that she had felt his extraordinary amber eyes on her for weeks, and that the sensation had been far from disagreeable from the outset. And now it was all too easy to recall how wickedly good it had felt to be in his arms, and to wonder how much better still it might have been if his hands had begun really to explore her body, and his mouth made its hot way further across her breasts. Even alone, she blushed to think of it. The news that he was an object of scandal with a mysterious and disreputable past should no doubt have frightened off any respectable female, but Allegra, like the othergirls who made sheep’s eyes at him, was apparently not such a person.
And even as she readied herself for the masquerade ball she was to attend that night, she knew deep down that no better opportunity could be given to a man who wished to get a woman alone for dubious purposes. If she really wanted to avoid him, she should feign a sudden indisposition and not go, despite all the trouble her mother had gone to over her costume. Everyone would be masked. The normal rules of society would not apply.
What she did not know, of course, was whether Mr Severin had any intention of profiting from the occasion. Or what she’d do if he did. But she had her suspicions, on both counts. A reckless idea had entered her head, and would not be dislodged. If she must marry soon, and society would not permit her to experiment with physical passion with her suitors, which meant she could not know if any of them really offered it to her along with their hands in marriage, might not Mr Severin be the ideal solution? There could easily be very little pleasure in her future. Perhaps she should seize it now. Perhaps this was her only chance and she would regret it forever if she let it slip by. She frowned at her reflection in the mirror.
