Chapter 13
Allegra was back in the ballroom a short while later, as if nothing of any significance had happened to her.
It was a sea of bodies – the dancers, and those standing in crowds to watch them.
But as far as she could see, her mother was not present, still presumably allowing herself an evening of rare self-indulgence in the card room, and therefore her own absence might have gone undetected for once, which made her luckier than she deserved.
Leontina enjoyed gambling – it could have been described as her only perceptible weakness, except that she was clever and cautious, knew when to stop, and won with unnatural regularity.
Possibly she cheated; it would be entirely typical.
A hand seized Allegra’s and pulled her back into the whirling throng – not Severin, not one of her suitors, not anyone she knew, as far as she could tell behind the mask.
In some ways this was a relief, and she lost herself in the exhilaration of mindless motion, a pleasure that did not demand any sort of reflection and was far less dangerous than what she’d been doing a few moments earlier. And infinitely less earth-shattering.
Severin had wrought her delicious ruin with his clever touch, and when he’d realised somehow that she was going to be noisy in her release, a liberty they could not afford to indulge in, he’d offered her his other hand and she had found herself sucking greedily on his fingers and biting them, instead of screaming aloud as she came for half the house to hear.
He’d had her pressed back against the panelled wall, his hard thigh between hers, his lips still worshipping her nipples.
She had no idea how he knew exactly what would please her when she barely knew herself.
Even more of a mystery was how some ancient part of her brain could easily divine the reasons for his actions when such shocking contact was entirely new in her experience.
And what of his pleasure in turn – could this possibly be enough for him, even if she was entirely overset by it all?
It seemed, astonishingly, that it was. ‘Understand this, Miss Constantine,’ he’d told her with an edge to his voice that made her shiver afresh.
‘I don’t ask anything of you. I’m sure you must be wondering if I will, expecting it even, but I won’t.
This… encounter, wonderful as it has been, need never be repeated, unless you wish it to be, and even then, it comes with no obligation on either part, and never shall. ’
Now that she had come back slowly to her senses, she found that hard to believe.
Not of him – she hardly knew him, after all – but of any man.
She also could not believe that the mind-melting pleasure she’d just experienced could be entirely without consequences.
Her experience of the world suggested otherwise.
‘You have me in your power, I think,’ she said with a passable assumption of calmness, though she had no idea why she was telling him, if indeed it hadn’t occurred to him already. But surely it must have done.
‘How so?’ he asked, his tone light, showing nothing but mild and casual curiosity. This she distrusted profoundly. Nothing about this man was mild.
‘If you told anyone what had passed between us, even the slightest part of it, I’d be ruined.’
‘And so?’
‘You could blackmail me. Into… doing more.’
He showed his teeth, his extraordinary eyes glittering behind the mask he still wore. ‘I suppose I could at that. But would I need to? Honestly, now?’
She had expected him to declare that he was a gentleman, and would never do such a thing as to use coercion on her – clichéd words she was not certain she’d have believed – not push the question back on her like this.
But she refused to show her surprise at his unexpected response, jutting out her chin belligerently and staring at him in silence.
He laughed softly and said, ‘Allegra, if you’d really been scared that I might treat you dishonourably, the last thing you’d have done would have been to mention it to me.
No, the truth is, some people are ordinary, I believe, content with ordinary lives, as is their absolute right, and some…
like to play games. Blackmail is not a game I’d wish to play with you, but I do enjoy obliging you to recognise that you, like me, are one of those unusual people.
I won’t ever stoop to pretending that anything we do together is done by force – unless you tell me explicitly that you want me so to pretend, and then I will, with pleasure.
I could bind you, with your consent, blindfold you…
a dozen things. And yes, this is highly dangerous territory, of course it is – and yes, my dear, I know and you should admit that that too excites you, perhaps more than all the rest.’ He added, very low, ‘As it does me, Christ knows.’
He was right in everything he said, though she had no idea how he knew any of it – his own feelings, of course, he might be unusually aware of, but hers too, which must be a puzzle to her and therefore should be to him also.
These were murky and uncomfortable facts that should be shocking to any member of the ton, and particularly to a woman in her vulnerable position.
Could it be true that despite everything she craved this sort of danger?
It must be so, or she would not be in this room alone with this man.
She would not have encouraged him to do what he had just done.
She would not have loved every minute of it, and now already be longing for more.
‘I don’t understand any of this,’ she said frankly.
‘I’m not sure I do either, not completely. But it would be idle to deny the truth of it. The power, too.’
‘I’m not denying it. I’m not so foolish or dishonest.’
‘I realise you aren’t. You are brave as well as beautiful and infinitely desirable,’ he told her with a wry smile, and his words lit a flame deep inside her that in some mysterious manner seemed even more intense than the physical ecstasy she’d just experienced.
‘What if I am? It doesn’t take us anywhere. Do you intend that we should continue meeting in secret for snatched moments of pleasure?’
‘Of course, if you wish it. Why deny ourselves?’
‘Pleasure without obligation or consequence?’ She shook her head in disbelief, and he grimaced.
‘Everything has consequences, even a stone thrown casually into a lake that may disturb what lurks there, sleeping. I can’t control the world; I can only take ordinary precautions.
And as for obligations… I cannot marry you, or any woman; I shall never wed.
Believe me when I tell you that I do not say that lightly.
And because of that I would not willingly put you at risk of scandal, Allegra – you should leave now. ’
She knew that he was right, but she was always one who would push, beyond what was wise – he had seen that in her already and seemed somehow to understand it and to share it.
And so she could not resist asking, ‘Which of them would you marry, if you were me?’ She wasn’t certain if she’d said it to provoke him into a fierce denial or some further demonstration of passion, or if it was a genuine though gauche question that expected a serious answer.
He gave a harsh little laugh. ‘There’s no use in me saying, none of them, I know that.
Very well, madam, since you asked. Never Englishby; I distrust him and so should you, even if I cannot say precisely why.
Milton, perhaps, if you can come to terms with what he wants and if he has no dirty little secrets in keeping that will come back to sting you.
Most men of his age have accumulated some secrets, but what are his?
Don’t look at me like that – how could I know?
He is a virtual stranger to me. He’s not the kind of man who’d make a friend of one such as me.
Eager, I suppose. I’m sure his life is an open book, with very few words in very large type on each page.
That is, if you don’t think you’ll be driven to brain him with a heavy object three days into the honeymoon. ’
She’d get no comfort from him, it was plain. This was his version of honesty, and she would see if she could match it. ‘And would you want to be my lover, later, if I married one of them?’
He shrugged. If this fresh question disturbed him or excited him, he would not let her see it, so perhaps it did not do either.
‘Willingly, but it is not so straightforward as all that, I fear. It seems to me, now that I reflect upon the matter further, that Milton would never stand for infidelity from you, my dear, for all his suavity and lack of passion. Least of all infidelity with me, with all the risks that carries. You might be hard put indeed to pass off a bastard of mine as his. Eager by contrast would never suspect a thing, I could be fucking you in his bed while he sat happily over his port in the dining room – but it would be like deceiving a child, and I don’t think in the end you could bring yourself to do it. ’
‘Could you?’
‘Why not? It would be your responsibility, not mine, as long as we did not risk having a child. You’d be the one married, not me. Are you going to slap me again?’
She left before she was tempted beyond what she could resist to do so. She had not the strength tonight to see where that might lead. Into places she could never previously have imagined, she suspected.