Her mother, as always, had chosen how she would appear. Mrs Constantine was Italian; she claimed noble birth, but the details she gave were somewhat vague, little more than a name and place, and no doubt comment had been made in society to the effect that it was very easy to say that one’s grandfather or father had been Count So-and-so, and far less simple to prove the truth of the matter when one’s land of birth was many hundreds of miles away and currently under hostile foreign occupation. As was her way, Leontina dealt with the rumours with superb indifference, and had decided to dress her daughter as acontadina– an Italian peasant girl, just exactly what the most maliciouswhispers said she really was.Youmay mock us, Leontina seemed to say,butyouwillnotshameus; we will defy you. There was no limit to her effrontery, and in this respect at least her third daughter found her admirable.
When Allegra stood in front of the cheval glass now and tried to inveigle a little information from her mother by asking if her ancestors had really dressed like this, or had servants who had dressed like this, Mrs Constantine merely smiled enigmatically. ‘I should not imagine anyone ever clothed themselves in such a manner outside a costume ball,’ was her frustrating response. ‘It is hardly practical garb for the performance of agricultural labours, is it? But it is vastly becoming all the same.’
Allegra was wearing a thin lawn shirt, which her mother’s clever fingers had adapted in a ridiculously short time from one of her father’s old garments. It was soft from years of washing, and had long, full sleeves but no collar, so that it slipped from her shoulders, leaving them bare. Over it she wore a boned bodice – a corset, really, which her mother had repurposed from another ancient garment of her own. It was very tightly laced from breast to waist, and made of slightly shabby red velvet. Below it, she wore a bright coquelicot-striped skirt that had also come out of some attic trunk. It was hitched up on each side to show frothy white petticoats and a good deal of ankle, in laced black boots that had an old-fashioned Louis XV heel and gave Allegra a welcome extra inch or two.
Her freshly washed dark hair was worn long and loose, as it normally never was in public, in artfully tumbled curls across her shoulders and down her back, and her face was partly covered by a plain black velvet mask. She certainly didn’t have the appearance of someone who was about to go and milk a cow, pick fruit, or trudge miles to market with a heavy basket on her head. She looked seductively unlike herself, in a way that even she could seewas dangerous. And it seemed she didn’t care. Perhaps she even liked it.
In the carriage, Mrs Constantine warned her sternly against being alone with Mr Englishby, who might well think to profit by the licence given by disguise. But Allegra didn’t think for a moment thathewas going to be the problem.
She wasn’t the onlycontadinapresent – apparently there was a general understanding that velvet and bare shoulders were de rigueur for foreign female farm workers. Some other young ladies wore lace mantillas too, and could be understood to be Spanish in inspiration. Others still were Grecian, or Roman, or aped the Middle Ages or the French court before the Terror. Many gentlemen had gone to disappointingly little trouble and merely wore domino cloaks over their ordinary evening clothes, and she believed she saw Lord Milton among them, thinking it somehow typical of what she knew of his very correct and conventional personality. But some had made more of an effort in tribute to the occasion; Mr Englishby – whom she did her best to dodge – was easily recognisable as a bold Elizabethan gallant with a pearl in one ear, while Sir Harry was startlingly authentic in the upper part of a suit of armour covered in a blue, red and gold surcoat.
The young Baronet showed off a fine pair of calves in parti-coloured hose, and had even, overgrown boy that he was, brought a hobby horse to serve as his battle charger. Such behaviour might be endearing in a mere youth, but perhaps was less desirable in someone who wished to present himself as mature enough for the responsibilities of marriage.
He confided in Allegra as they danced (without the horse) that he was meant to be Henry V, as she had guessed, and that he was dashed hot, uncomfortable and unable to bend, which too she could well believe. He also told her fervently that she lookedlovely, and at this she smiled and made no response; in truth, he did not seem to expect one.
Miss Constantine was waiting, watching, trying not to make that fact too plain as she scanned the black dominoes and masked faces for a particularly broad pair of shoulders, amber eyes, and a resolute, mocking mouth. She looked among the figures at the edge of the ballroom, not among those on the dance floor – Mr Severin was one of those superior gentlemen who disdained to dance, she thought; at any rate, she’d never seen him do so, and she had been observing him, unconsciously, every bit as closely as he’d been observing her all these weeks.
But tonight was different, it seemed, and she discovered as much when her hand was taken in a firm grip and she was pulled willy-nilly into the steps of a country dance. Her domino-clad partner did not greet her – he did not need to. It was him.
They hadn’t had any conversation since she’d slapped him and walked away, but he didn’t appear to be harbouring any resentment towards her, which was extraordinary in itself.
‘Last time,’ he said conversationally, ‘and several other times, if I am honest, I watched you in this exercise with others and envied them. So I have broken the habit of years to dance with you. Luckily no one but you will know it; if they became aware, my friends would make great sport of me and never allow me to forget it.’
Should she be flattered – was that his intention? She felt sure that he was a master manipulator, exercising all his skill on her for his own ends, and the fact that she seemed not to mind it – in fact to find it thrilling – should have disturbed her much more than it did. In her life she often felt powerless – at the mercy of others – and greatly disliked the sensation, but with him somehow it was different, and she had no idea why it should be so. Of course, she had no intention of telling him any of that. ‘AmI meant to take it as some form of unconventional compliment, sir, that you should so single me out?’ she said, her tone cool and unimpressed.
They parted in the movement of the set and then came together again. The room was crowded, but they had no eyes for anyone but each other now. ‘If you wish, of course, but I intended it merely as a statement of fact. Here is another: your sleeve fell back and exposed your lovely shoulder last time, and I was overwhelmed with such sudden desire for you that I imagined all the rest of the throng gone, and you and I alone.’
She was breathless suddenly. ‘And tonight?’
‘Tonight your shoulders are bare already, and tonight… Well, it’s up to you. It must always be up to you.’
‘Last time, you insulted me, and I slapped you.’
He grinned wolfishly beneath the mask. ‘I deserved it, I’m sure. I also liked it. As did you, I think. If you wish to deter me, you will certainly not do so by being wild and uncontrolled and recklessly willing to expose your genuine feelings to me.’
She would not answer that; she dared not. ‘There’s no garden here.’ Though that was an answer in itself, she supposed.
‘Sadly true. But I know this house – it used to belong to a cousin of my adoptive father; I spent time here as a boy. And, precisely because there is no garden, your mother has thought it safe to relax her vigilance and slip away to the card room with her cronies. Leaving us also free… to slip away. If you want to.’
‘I don’t know the way.’
That wolfish smile again, that tacit acknowledgement of hidden meaning. ‘But I do. Do you trust me?’
‘Not in the least.’
‘How wise.’
12
Miss Constantine had a natural talent for intrigue, it seemed. Max made his casual way out of the ballroom and stood concealed for a few moments in an alcove in the hall, watching her follow him, which she did with an admirable air of unconcern, just as though she’d been practising deception for years and was a mistress at it. No furtive glances to see if she was being observed, no suggestion of panic or even self-consciousness, just a bold air of being exactly where she had a right to be. Even that fired his blood. Everything she did fired his blood, it seemed.
And now they were alone, in the little antechamber that led off the library. Perhaps the place had had some innocent function once – this was an old house with centuries of history in every passage, room and corner. Or perhaps it had been designed for exactly this purpose, by his adoptive father’s wicked ancestors in some previous century. There was no denying the fact that it had a chaise longue in it, and little else. What else could it be for but dalliance? There was an endearing lack of pretence about that, from a more honest time. Where is the room for fucking? At the end of the corridor, on your left. You’re welcome.
He set down the candelabra he had carried in on the window ledge, and turned to devour her with his eyes now they were alone. God, she was magnificent. If this was what peasant girls in Italy looked like, he’d be booking passage on the next boat tomorrow, war or no war. But he seriously doubted that they did. Black boots, black stockings, white petticoats and pleasantly vulgar cherry-red stripes to her skirt. An old-fashioned bodice of tight red velvet, pushing her spectacular breasts up and out. Thin white fabric, falling from her shoulders, barely covering her splendour. Her black hair, loose and wild and wanton. No paint and no jewels, no need of any. And always that touch of sulky defiance in her face, beneath the mask, that pushed him over the edge, for reasons he hadn’t even begun fully to understand yet. He could imagine other men seeing her so fierce and untamed and wanting to break her – he suspected that was the deep, dark root of Englishby’s interest. But he didn’t feel like that. He wanted more of this elusive quality, not less. He wanted tounleashher. To see just how wild and defiant she could really be. She was his drug.
‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ she said.
He laughed, his amusement provoked equally by her words and the nature of his uncensored private thoughts. ‘Oh yes, you do.’
