Chapter 8
Allegra lay in bed and seethed. No part of her wished to admit that Mr Severin had been right, and that he had by his intervention, even if at the time it had felt like a bucket of cold water thrown over her, prevented her from bringing disaster on herself and – as a bonus – on her innocent family.
Her sisters might be excessively irritating, but their lives would be hard enough without her wrecking them before they’d properly started by turning herself into a public scandal.
It was deeply offensive for Severin to say that she should thank him for keeping a cool head when she had not – but then, so was a great deal else in his behaviour.
Offensive, and disingenuous too. He’d surely been thinking of himself as much as of her.
If she had run inside dishevelled, and cried out to the first person she’d encountered that he, a man she’d never even been introduced to, had come upon her when she was taking air and…
and gravely insulted her, she’d not have been the only one ruined.
It would have been hard indeed for him to avoid a huge scandal and the matrimonial trap then, suitor or not.
Since he had no doubt been acting chiefly in his own interests rather than in hers, he did not deserve a scrap of gratitude. Gratitude!
She snorted and rolled over, seeking and failing to find a cooler spot on her pillow.
But it just wasn’t true that he had assaulted her, was it?
She couldn’t lie to herself on such a serious matter.
She’d been a willing participant, with several excellent chances to pull away which she had not taken nor even wanted to take.
When she remembered just how willing she had been, she groaned.
He was not a suitor, so she had not even that excuse to comfort her.
What had she turned into, or what had he unleashed in her?
She’d behaved like some desperate, heedless wild creature.
That he had too was little consolation. They’d devoured each other with tongues and teeth and clutching hands.
The clutching hands, as she recalled very well, had mostly been hers, deep in his glossy hair, though his thumb, right at the end, had very shockingly…
She didn’t even want to think about that, or rather she did, very much, but wouldn’t.
Her body still tingled at the memory of his caress, from her head to the tips of her toes.
Her body had wanted, and still did want, much more.
He had put a stop to it in the end – though she still had no idea why – not she.
Allegra had not the least wish to know what might have happened if he hadn’t.
Fleeting pleasure and then disaster, she presumed.
She couldn’t even think How far might she have allowed him to go?
because allowed wasn’t at all the correct word.
So perhaps he had been horribly correct in what he had said.
Perhaps she’d been panting to be kissed – at the very least – by any man who had happened along.
That sort of pitiless insight into another person’s behaviour and the deep nature that underlay it truly was unforgivable.
Indecent. Society could not contain such openness. She’d been right to slap his face.
He hadn’t reacted to that, had barely even blinked.
He’d just released her at last and stepped back without making any reference to what she’d just done.
‘Go in by the hall – the furthest window on the left – so you can make yourself respectable before you return to the ballroom,’ he’d said dispassionately, as though he’d been making a light comment about the weather or something else equally trivial, not a woman’s precious reputation.
She hadn’t stayed to tell him that he had not the least right in the world to order her about so cavalierly.
She’d taken his excellent advice and left.
And she’d forced herself to walk slowly, not run away in a panic that would have been obvious to anyone who laid eyes on her.
Damn him for being so cool, she’d been thinking as she went, when he’d been so passionate a moment earlier.
She was not made in such an inhuman fashion. Hence the slap, she supposed.
She knew she’d had the luck of the Devil, though, afterwards.
Perhaps he had been looking after his own, whether that might be her or – more likely – Mr Severin.
There had been nobody in the hall when she’d entered it, not even a hovering servant, and she’d been able to gain the relative safety of the ladies’ cloakroom entirely unobserved.
Her over-dress was a little dishevelled, which was easily set to rights; her dark ringlets too were in slight disorder.
Beyond that, her eyes were bright and her cheeks flushed, but there was nothing at all in her appearance that might not have resulted from vigorous country dancing in an excessively warm and crowded room.
She peered in the looking glass that had been thoughtfully provided by her hosts, seeking the guilty knowledge that should surely be written on her face.
She had just allowed a complete stranger – she knew his name, but almost nothing else about him – shocking liberties.
Should not her lip, which he had bitten, been swollen?
The thought had done nothing to reduce the colour surging in her face, but as far as she could see it wasn’t. She looked exactly the same, outwardly.
When she slipped back from the hall to join the throng, her mother pounced on her almost immediately, which was only to be expected.
Allegra did not give her any opportunity to ask where she had been; attack was the best form of defence.
‘I was in the ladies’ retiring chamber all this time, Mama,’ she said hastily.
‘Mr Englishby wanted me to go outside to take the air with him, and I did not know how to say no without causing a scene.’ Liar, liar, but what else could she do?
‘I said I must go to the ladies’ cloakroom first, and then I stayed inside there for an age until I could be sure he’d given up and left. ’
Leontina seemed satisfied by this explanation.
She let out a little snort and said, ‘That one is dangerous. I had suspected as much. I am not entirely sure that it is marriage he has in his mind, and even if it is, he is not the man for you, or any decent girl. His fortune is not reputed to be large, though he seems to spend it rashly enough, and I do not believe he would treat you at all well once he had won you. It’s all a matter of the chase, with his kind.
I distrust that type of flashy good looks, and so should you.
Do not risk being alone with him again.’
‘I promise you I won’t,’ Allegra said shortly. She must have sounded as though she meant it, since she emphatically did. She had no trouble at all in putting Mr Englishby from her thoughts. If only it were as easy to dismiss Mr Severin, and those damnably unforgettable moments in his arms.