Chapter 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 a muslin 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.’
‘As long as I don’t spoil it by appearing sulky and disagreeable,’ Allegra replied, a touch wearily.
‘As you so often do,’ Mrs Constantine shot back.
‘You might have a greater choice of suitors if you did not. But I have observed that the ones you have don’t seem to mind in the least. Perhaps they regard it as a perverse challenge of some kind, perhaps even they like it; men are so odd.
And so I shall no longer waste my breath saying, do not scowl, since you never pay me any heed. ’
Allegra was simmering with resentment as she climbed into their shabby carriage.
Her mother always knew how to outmanoeuvre her, and did it deliberately; if she couldn’t rely upon her forbidding looks to drive the men away, if her dark glowers perhaps even attracted them, where did that leave her?
Exactly where she had been before, she supposed – trapped, forced to watch, listen, and in the end to choose. But not tonight, surely.
It was a come-out ball at a private house – a coveted invitation that Mrs Constantine had obtained by her usual mysterious means – and the evening as it progressed grew so sultry that the tall ballroom windows were thrown open to allow welcome currents of cooler air into the room, along with the heady, dangerous scents of summer.
The chaperons would have their work cut out for the next few hours – it would be all too easy for couples to slip out unnoticed into the warm night and conceal themselves in the shadows of the terrace, or the garden beyond.
There was no moon to betray them; it was all too tempting.
Allegra did dance twice with Lord Milton, since he chose to single her out so markedly, but he showed not the least disposition to take her outside into the darkness and further their acquaintance in such a scandalous manner.
Sir Harry didn’t suggest it either; obviously such a shocking idea hadn’t so much as occurred to him.
But Mr Englishby did.