“Perhaps you need to stay near and protect me,” Allegra said, half in jest.
To her surprise and delight, Rob tucked her hand more firmly under his arm. “Perhaps I should. In any event, I shall insure that none but eminently respectable gentlemen approach for the rest of tonight!”
From that moment, Rob proceeded to be as good as his word. For the time they remained at the rout, he hardly stirred from her side, escorting her to meet his friends, obtaining her refreshments, and when not conversing with other guests, focusing all his attention on her.
Twice during the succeeding hour she saw Lord Tavener among the guests and wondered if he would approach. Each time, Rob took a protective step closer, as if to warn the man off. Like that valiant knight of old…although in this case, she wasn’t sure she really wanted his protection.
Soon after, Mrs. Randall professed herself tired and Rob summoned the carriage to convey them home—to Allegra’s gratification, seating himself beside her.
As the carriage bowled along, Mrs. Randall nodded off while Allegra and Rob sat in companionable silence. Content to have Rob at her side, Allegra mused over the events of the evening.
In the past few weeks she’d seen so little of Rob. He seemed to always be away on business or meeting friends at his club. He had not accorded her as much time or attention as he had tonight—after reclaiming her from Lord Tavener—since the two private interviews he’d given her the day of his arrival.
Could he be jealous of Tavener? she wondered with a little thrill. Probably not, she conceded. Still, if having Lord Tavener dance attendance would prompt a protective Rob into spending more time with her, perhaps she should openly encourage that gentleman.
She’d have to use the diversion Tavener created cautiously, though. Attractive the man certainly was—perhaps too attractive. The heated sort of feelings he generated could not be permitted to go beyond titillation, no matter how much they intrigued her, lest she endanger her reputation. Besides, she recalled with a sigh, even for an actress who was free to pursue such attraction, lustful adventures seldom ended well. Molly’s handsome rake had broken off their affair after only a month, leaving her friend brokenhearted.
Nor was there any question of a more serious relationship between them. The likelihood of a man who openly admitted earning his rogue’s reputation turning into the sort of faithful, devoted husband she required was slim. She had no desire to spend her life worrying and wondering whether her husband was truly in London on business—or dallying with another of the women he could charm so easily. In any event, her dowry probably wasn’t large enough to tempt an offer from a man who needed to refurbish his estate.
Though her parents had loved each other dearly, Allegra was now paying society’s price for Lady Grace succumbing to her attraction to the wrong sort of man. The bitter aftermath of her parents’ and then Uncle Robert’s deaths had burned into Allegra’s soul the realization of just how alone and without resources she had been left, caught between two worlds, truly at home in neither.
Uncle Robert’s bequest had given her the opportunity to change that. More than anything, she wanted a home and a place of her own. Regardless of Lord Tavener’s potent allure, Allegra didn’t intend to throw away her one chance at a secure future by becoming beguiled by a rogue.
Still, encouraging Lord Tavener’s attentions would set her on a risky path, walking a thin line between friendship and the power of his dangerous charm. But if doing so would jolt the handsome, honorable, peerless man of character she wanted into realizing he wanted her too, surely the risk was justified.
Smiling in the darkness, Allegra edged closer to Rob. She would look forward to Tavener’s admittedly amusing company and repay his friendship by helping him reform his behavior so he might woo an heiress to restore his estates. And with Tavener goading Rob into staying near, maybe she’d finally be able to bewitch the man of her dreams.
As long as she stayed sensible, how could she lose?
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALLEGRA HAD an opportunity to put her resolve into practice the very next afternoon. To her delight, one of the gentlemen who called to pay his compliments after meeting her at Lady Ormsby’s rout was Lord Tavener.
Unfortunately, Rob was not present to see how Tavener’s eyes brightened when, after pausing on the threshold as the butler announced him, he located her on the sofa, flanked by a widowed friend of Mrs. Randall and one of Rob’s military mates.
Of course, the smile that sprang to her lips as she saw him would also have served to increase Rob’s determination to keep watch over them.
But why should she not smile at Tavener? she asked herself. They were to be friends and accomplices of a sort, she assisting him to more successfully beguile heiresses, he helping her to fix Rob’s interest. She dismissed a guilty little pang that while his purpose in seeing her had been freely expressed, she had no intention of divulging her private reasons for encouraging his calls.
A little voice warned that she should be careful what she asked for. By his own words last night, Tavener admitted he’d earned his rake’s reputation. While the danger of his company might keep Lynton on the alert, she must stay on her guard lest Tavener use his mesmerizing eyes and tremor-inducing touch to lure her into a situation that could destroy her plans for a future with Rob.
Tavener nodded to her before seating himself beside Mrs. Randall. To Allegra’s gratification, however, when the military gentleman stood up to take his leave, Tavener quickly claimed the place beside her. Their other caller also rose to depart, leaving Allegra with Tavener as Mrs. Randall walked her old friend to the door.
“Let me tell you again how much I enjoyed our conversation last night,” Tavener said. His gaze roving over her, he added, “As lovely as you appeared then, you delight the eye this afternoon in that sea-green frock, reminding me of a goddess just arisen from the waves.”
Though he brought his eyes back up to her face, something in his smoldering look and the caressing note in his voice intensified the warmth within her, pooled it sweet and thick as honey in her belly. Heat flushed her face as she recalled that the goddess who’d emerged from the sea had been clothed only in her natural beauty. Was that how Tavener envisioned her?
If so, she needed to redirect his thoughts—and her own. Forcing her eyes away from the power of his gaze, she said reprovingly, “A rather unacceptable greeting, my lord. Not only am I dark where she was fair, a compliment that mentions the birth of Aphrodite cannot be considered proper. I’m afraid you still have much to learn.”
His brows lifted in surprise for an instant before he laughed. “Touché, Miss Antinori. So you know the story?”
By the dancing light in his eyes, she knew he knew she’d caught him trying to sneak an impropriety past her. Disarmed by the swiftness of their wordless communication and happy at knowing she could speak freely about her family with him, she couldn’t make herself scold. “Yes,” she said instead. “Though music was his passion, my father interested himself in all the classic forms of art and literature. My mother read the fables to me as a child.”
“Ah, then I know the perfect excursion to suggest. You did tell me that it was acceptable to discuss topics pertaining to a lady’s interests, did you not?”
“I am gratified that you remember something of my instructions,” she returned severely, not willing to let him off entirely unscathed.
“Oh, I did listen, most carefully. It’s just that impropriety comes so much more naturally to me.”
He gave her a half regretful, half roguish smile so utterly charming, for a moment she was lulled into wondering what other improprieties he might be contemplating. Catching herself, she determined to steer the conversation back on track.
“If you wish to accomplish the purpose you described to me last night,” she admonished, “you shall have to embrace propriety wholeheartedly.”
Chuckling, he slid a quick glance up and down her figure. “I can assure you, I am most anxious to
do so.”
He might just as well have run his hand along her torso, so keenly did she feel that glance. But before she could protest again, his face sobered and he held his hands palm-out in a gesture of surrender. “Let us cry pax! I shall follow your excellent advice and behave myself now. Did your father ever take you to see the Elgin marbles?”
Relieved—and a tiny bit disappointed—that he’d decided to play the gentleman, Allegra shook her head. “No. They are…carvings, I presume?”
“Remarkable ones, dating from the age of classical Greece. Lord Elgin, when he was ambassador to the Sultan in Constantinople, sent a team of artists and craftsmen to Athens, intending for them to sketch and make plaster molds of the sculptures in the Parthenon, the temple to Athena,” Tavener explained. “Upon discovering that the Turkish authorities in control of the city were allowing these treasures to be ground into lime or sold off, he decided instead to buy as many as he could and transport them back to England.
“Greek art represented the highest expression of civilization, Elgin believed. He wanted both to save these irreplaceable objects from destruction and enlighten and inspire his fellow countrymen when they viewed them. So, would you—and Mrs. Randall, of course—like to come and be inspired, Miss Antinori?”
“I would, very much!” Allegra declared. Thrilled at the prospect of an excursion whose object was of much greater interest to her than the shopping expeditions and stilted, tedious afternoon calls that had occupied her recently, Allegra looked over at her chaperone, now returning to her seat. “Lord Tavener has invited us to view some Greek sculpture. Should you like to go, ma’am?”
“Sculptures?” Mrs. Randall echoed. “At the Royal Academy?”
“Not far from it,” Tavener replied. “The collection is housed in a building on the grounds of Burlington House. ’Tis more like a shed, actually, and the space can be rather cold and damp. If you would rather not go, ma’am, I could escort Miss Antinori in my curricle. We could take a turn through Hyde Park on the way back. That would be quite unexceptional, would it not?”
“Of course.” Mrs. Randall nodded. “I must confess I am not a great admirer of carvings, particularly if they are housed in some chilly place. But if you wish to, Allegra, and Lord Tavener drives his curricle, you may go.”
Allegra glanced over at Tavener, her eyebrows raised. Though he returned her gaze with a look of bland innocence, it did not escape her that he had just cleverly disposed of her chaperone—in an entirely proper way. But the idea of viewing Greek art—and indulging in more of Tavener’s deliciously improper conversation—was too appealing for her to cede to the caution that should have made her overrule an excursion without her chaperone.
“Shall I return for you in an hour?” he suggested.
She gave him a stern look meant to inform him she knew exactly what he’d just done. His answering grin once again told her that he realized she’d seen through his ploy.
Suppressing the desire to grin back—like two children sharing a guilty secret—she said, trying to infuse her voice with quelling hauteur, “An hour would be acceptable.”
Accordingly, some ninety minutes later, Tavener handed her down at the entrance to Burlington House. “It seems a rather inauspicious place to house ancient treasures,” she remarked, gesturing toward the low-roofed building at the side of the grounds to which he was leading her.
“Lord Elgin had hoped to construct a museum to display them,” Tavener replied. “But after leaving Constantinople, he was captured and imprisoned for two years in France. When he at last arrived home, he discovered that his wife had…bestowed her affections elsewhere, leading to a divorce trial whose expense and publicity were ruinous. Needing to recoup some of his investment, over the last few years he has attempted to sell the works to the British Museum. One hopes, recognizing their value, that Parliament will approve the purchase and have them installed in a place worthy of their beauty. But now,” he said as he held open the door for her, “you will see for yourself.”
Allegra was about to speak when her gaze, adjusting to the darker light within the shed, focused upon the first sculpture. Her reply was lost in a gasp of wonder.
Precisely delineated in white marble was the head of a stallion, his mane cropped, his nostrils flared. So perfect in every detail was he, she felt she might rub his neck and feel beneath her fingers the warm, velvet texture of his skin.
Shaking her head in awe, she looked over at Tavener. A brilliant smile lit his face and he gestured her forward. “Go on. There’s much more.”
She walked ahead to examine bas-relief panels of figures seated on banqueting stools, the folds of their draped clothing looking as if they should ruffle in the breeze. Another displayed a man striding purposefully forward, drapery swirling about his muscular legs. Yet another, a rearing centaur grabbing an attacking male figure by the neck.
So exquisite was the work, she was not even embarrassed at discovering a number of the male figures were completely nude, though that fact did make her grateful Tavener had found a way to prevent Mrs. Randall from accompanying them.
The final work held her once again transfixed. The statue of the young woman was fully formed, the figure standing with arms at her sides and one leg slightly forward, a column capital balanced on her head.
“She is one of six maidens,” Tavener said at her shoulder, “who supported the porch of the Erechthion, one of the smaller temples below the Parthenon. Though she seems to be carrying the weight of the world, unlike the other figures, she was lucky enough to keep her head.”
“I cannot imagine how one could carve so large and perfectly formed an image,” Allegra marveled.
“There were originally some fifty even larger statues in the temple’s pediments, most of which were lost in an explosion when the temple, which the Turks were using as a powder magazine, was attacked by the Venetians. The largest statue, a thirty-three-foot-tall image of Athena made of ivory and gold, masterwork of the sculptor Pheidias, stood at the center of the temple.”
“Was that also destroyed in the explosion?”
“Perhaps. In any event, no trace of it remains.”
Fascinated, for a long time Allegra wandered back and forth examining the variety of figures carved onto the frieze panels, which Tavener explained represented a festival procession to the temple. From the clothing and the objects carried by the figures, Allegra tried to guess their occupations and envision what their lives might have been like.
Certainly musicians were well represented. Would her father’s status—and her own—have been higher in this ancient culture?
After studying the panels one last time, she took Tavener’s arm and let him lead her out of the shed.
“You enjoyed the carvings?” he asked as they walked back to the curricle.
“They are incredible!” she exclaimed.
His fierce blue gaze, free this time of any teasing sensual overtones, caught and held hers. “I knew you would love them,” he said simply.
Allegra could neither explain nor put a name to the emotion that flooded her as their gazes locked. Though all the suggestive remarks he’d already addressed to her argued that by no logical measure could Tavener be considered “safe,” still she couldn’t shake the strong sense that in his company she was protected, valued…at peace, as she had not been since the loss of her family.
Then his eyes darkened with a heat she did understand, sounding a warning in her brain that allowed her to break free of his spell. Pulling her gaze from his, she murmured, “Thank you for bringing me.”
“It was my pleasure.” They had reached his curricle, the sense of connection still humming between them. When she relinquished his hand after he’d assisted her into the vehicle, she felt somehow…bereft.
To distract herself from that disturbing reaction, as he set the curricle in motion, she said, “You seem remarkably knowledgeable about the artifacts. How did you learn about them?”
“My classics professor was ac
quainted with Reverend Hunt, Elgin’s chaplain whom he sent to negotiate with the Athenian authorities about the acquisition of the antiquities. Hunt described to him how it came about.”
“You are quite the scholar,” she said, intrigued to discover a more serious side to this beguiling rogue.
“Shockingly unfashionable, but I once thought there could be nothing more satisfying than spending a lifetime immersing oneself in the texts of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The plays of Euripides, the tragedies of Homer, the natural science of Aristotle—almost everything worth reading was written by them. However,” he continued with a self-deprecating twist of the lip, “my uncle said he’d be damned before he’d allow me to disgrace the Carlisle blood by becoming, as he put it, a common clerk.”
Though the words were pronounced casually, Allegra sensed an undercurrent of bitterness and regret. Sympathy filled her, but before she could express it, he continued, “Luckily, I soon discovered the superior delights to be found in…tasting the company of a beautiful woman.”
Taking his attention from his horses, for a brief moment he focused that intent gaze on her mouth.
Warmth coiled in her belly again as she forced herself to look away. Reminding herself she must not succumb to the blandishments of a rake, however scholarly he might be, she struggled to refocus the conversation. “Does it seem likely that Parliament will approve purchasing the marbles?” she asked after a moment. “Such beauty begs to be treasured.”
“Indeed it does,” Tavener replied softly, the heat of his quick glance making her wonder if he meant more than the sculpture. “Some argue that, rather than saving the works, Elgin butchered them by removing them from the site and contend he should not be rewarded for his piracy.”
“But if the Turkish authorities were not protecting the works, surely Lord Elgin can be forgiven for transporting them where they might be preserved and appreciated,” she said, relaxing a bit now that Tavener had returned to his story, easing the subtle tension sparking between them.
Rogue's Lady Page 8