Chapter 20
Allegra and Mrs Constantine left the party soon after the interview with Lady Milton.
There was no dancing and little refreshment on offer in the chilly grey rooms, and they both felt that they had had enough of the place and of their stuffy fellow guests, who looked at them down their long noses and showed no great desire to speak to them.
She had a brief encounter with her host immediately after her return to the main salon, which made it clear to her that he’d known beforehand that his mother had intended to ambush her, and, presumably, why.
‘Are you well, Miss Constantine?’ he said, smiling in a significant manner.
He’d already greeted her on her arrival an hour or so ago, so if her health had deteriorated in the intervening time, there could only be one reason for it: a sudden sharp attack of Lady Miltonitis.
‘I think so,’ she replied frankly. ‘I am… physically unscathed, at least.’
‘And mentally?’
‘Ask me again tomorrow.’
‘I believe I will, at that,’ he said with a bow, then left her. His grey eyes were kind, as always, but she couldn’t begin to guess what he might be thinking.
Was she wrong to read significance into his words? And if he was really going to offer for her at last, did she want him to? At present she was still so stunned by the effects of spending half an hour closeted with his mother that she couldn’t say.
She recounted everything that had passed as soon as she was alone with Leontina in the safety of the carriage. Her mother made no comment until she was done, and then said thoughtfully, ‘She said she would think on the matter, no more than that?’
‘I can’t imagine her saying anything else even if she did give grudging approval to the match.
She’s hardly likely to embrace me and shed tears of joy.
You saw what kind of woman she was, Mama.
She hasn’t smiled this century. And doesn’t it seem odd to you that a man of his age and position should seem to require her approval?
I can understand that he’d want to tell her, out of courtesy. But this is more than that.’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Constantine said slowly. ‘He does not give the impression of being a man who lives under the cat’s foot and must go running to his mama for permission.
And yet it seems almost as though she has come to London on purpose to look you over.
There is no point in denying that she must wish him to seek a bride from her own level of society.
It is undeniably all a little odd. We shall see, I suppose, if he calls on us tomorrow, as he implied he would.
He will seek me out first, since your papa is not here, if he means to make an offer for you.
I am sure that he is not a man who will ignore all notions of decorum and ask you directly first. He is always the perfect gentleman.
He has never attempted to engineer any sort of meeting alone with you, has he? ’
Allegra agreed that he had not, and tried not to think about the man who had done that and more.
Max Severin: handsome, outrageous, enigmatic and endlessly seductive.
If he should feel inclined to offer for her hand, she could be certain that no rules of propriety would be obeyed.
He wouldn’t treat her as though she were her father’s possession, even if in law she was.
But she knew he never would contemplate marrying her, or anybody.
He’d told her so in plain words. It was the height of folly to dwell on such an impossibility.
It struck her that Leontina did not sound at all triumphant, as she easily might have done now that her plan appeared to be coming to fruition.
Lady Milton might disapprove, but if her disapproval was overborne by her son, Lord Milton would be a great feather in Mrs Constantine’s cap.
Another one. Allegra might have expected her to express her normal steely certainty that all would happen as she had arranged; that he would offer tomorrow, and be accepted, and another daughter’s future would be secure at last. But she had said nothing of the sort.
‘Are you unwell, Mama?’ she asked as silence thickened in the shabby vehicle.
‘Just a little fatigued,’ Leontina said.
This was an unprecedented admission of weakness, and Allegra blinked in the darkness and wondered what could possibly be amiss.
Perhaps her mother was sickening for something; she hoped not.
Leontina was never ill. ‘We are almost home, my dear; I will go directly to bed, I think.’