Chapter 42
Allegra became aware that she was staring at Max with her mouth open.
She closed it, but she still couldn’t look away.
Their eyes were locked and his face showed a number of warring emotions.
In the name of heaven, it was no wonder.
‘She is…’ she said weakly. ‘Your mother is…’ She couldn’t seem to get any further, with the sentence or with the thought.
It was too overwhelming, too dangerous to put into words and make real.
‘Yes. I know it sounds insane. Incredible. But I swear it’s true. Allegra – my dearest, my love – it’s not something I’d be likely to invent.’
Once she would have been astonished and delighted to hear him say that he loved her. A part of her still was, but this… ‘I suppose not.’
‘I’ve never told anyone before. You can see why.’
‘They’d kill you if they found out.’
‘Who?’
‘Everybody.’ She let out a little hiccup of laughter, loud in the quiet room, and heard the wild hysteria in her own voice. ‘Good God, Max, my poor darling, everybody in the world.’
‘I know. That’s what I’ve always thought, ever since I found out.
His supporters, of course, most of all – unless they wanted to use me, my very existence, to help him get rid of her, as he is said to wish to, since she has not been able to give him the heir he needs.
But then they’d probably do that, use me to destroy her, and kill me afterwards.
I’d still be an embarrassment, a reminder that would reflect badly on him.
He is said to be very proud and careful of his consequence, now he is Emperor. ’
‘Emperor,’ she murmured dazedly. ‘Empress. Good God in heaven, Max… No wonder you did not want to tell me.’
‘The British, too. They’d like to parade me about, perhaps, to taunt and humiliate him.
But they wouldn’t necessarily need me alive at the end of that, either.
Probably better if I wasn’t. Simpler, you know?
The stepson, if that’s what I am, of their greatest enemy.
And there are people, too, here and everywhere, who don’t believe that the races should be mixed.
To them, I am an affront, even as Max Severin, which is to say nobody in particular.
If they knew I was Josephine’s bastard…’
‘Crazy people,’ she murmured, not disagreeing with him, for it would insult his intelligence, his bitter lived experience, to do so, or to offer false words of comfort. There was no comfort she could give him. ‘So many crazy people, everywhere.’
‘They’d be drawn to me, like wasps to jam.
You can see that they would. And that’s why I can’t marry you, my love.
Or anybody, not that I have ever had the least desire to wed before.
It wouldn’t be fair. I can’t ask you to take that terrible risk, however much I wish I could in my more irresponsible moments.
It would be like painting a target on your back.
I love you. I’ve never been in love before, and now I know the wonder and the pain of it.
You mean more to me than my own pathetic life. I won’t do it.’
‘I love you too,’ she said softly. It should be a momentous thing to say, a rare and precious thing, for both of them, but it was inevitably overshadowed by the circumstances. ‘For what it’s worth, Max, I do. I’ve been fighting it for a long time, it seems to me now.’
He raised her hands, and kissed them with passionate intensity, then held them against his stubbled cheeks.
‘It is worth everything, at least to me. I never dared hope you might, and I almost wish you didn’t, love, though it warms my heart to hear you say you do.
I cannot tell you how much it means to me, not if we sat here till the dawn broke, but I do not welcome it, because I would give anything to spare you pain.
And you must see that nothing good can come of this. ’
She found a fugitive spark of humour in herself, in this extremity of emotion. ‘You could ravish me here, on the kitchen table. I expect that would be good.’
‘I could, but I won’t. I made a promise to your grandfather, and if I cared nothing for that or for him, I would not put you in that danger. There could be a child. You have barely escaped disgrace once already, in part because of my reckless actions – enough. I have not quite lost my mind.’
‘And you’re too bloody tired.’
‘I don’t think I could ever be too tired to make love to you, not while I have breath in my body. But still I won’t. I should go now, my dearest, my precious love – it’s late. Your mother will be lying awake, listening for your step on the stairs.’
She admitted that this was so, and after a little while he got up to leave.
He took her in his arms and held her, and they clung together, until they found the strength to break apart.
They kissed very tenderly at the last, and it felt like a goodbye, though neither of them said the hateful word, or spoke of whether they would ever meet again.
She locked and bolted the door behind him and made her way slowly up the stairs, which seemed steeper and narrower than they ever had before.
She was so tired, and could only be grateful that her mother did not call out to her, but let her drag herself to bed, even if there was no sleep or rest to be found there.