The chaotic Miss Crispino
Page 16
Valerian’s explanation for Bernardo’s appearance had satisfied the Baron as easily as it had Gideon—for none of the purely English inhabitants of Number 23 was especially acute. Even Agnes fluttered and giggled, and Isobel, who had thought herself hopelessly in love with Valerian, transferred her loyalties to Bernardo within five minutes of his arrival on the scene.
All in all, Bernardo’s entry could only be termed a brilliant success. It was only later, while the “Conte Timoteo” and Isobel took a stroll about the garden and Allegra and Valerian stole some time to themselves in the morning room, that Allegra could voice her fears.
“Nonno wishes to take Bernardo with us tomorrow to the Pavilion,” she told Valerian, her sapphire eyes clouded with apprehension.
“And you are wondering how you will explain the dear Conte’s propensity for eating with his fingers?” Valerian offered, seating himself beside her on the striped satin settee. “I admit it might prove difficult. Shall I have him develop the plague, or will a simple inflammation of the lungs be sufficient to have him cry off for the evening?”
Allegra’s bottom lip came out in a pout. “Do not make sport of me, Valerian,” she commanded testily. “I have not had a very nice day—a very nice several days. Why did you stay away so long?”
“Did you miss me, imp?”
Allegra shot Valerian a look that delighted him no end. Until she spoke. “I need to make a small confession, I suppose. I have been very naughty, Valerian—though it is all your fault.”
He raised one eyebrow, looking down at her expectantly. “Of course it is, imp. Heaven forbid you should do anything that is your fault.”
She sprang up from the settee to begin pacing the carpet and Valerian leaned back, content to admire the sight of his dearest Allegra in a dither. “You were mean to me, Valerian, saying that polite young ladies do not speak of proposals and the like. You remember this, yes? I was very hurt—very hurt. And when I am hurt I do not always do nice things, although I am always sorry for them later.”
Valerian looked about the room, noticing that all the vases and mirrors were still in one piece. “Is the damage confined to your room, then? I see nothing amiss here.”
She rounded on him, her small hands drawn up into fists, her ample breasts heaving in agitation. “Stupido! Why must you persist in thinking I know no other way to show anger than to scream or break things? I can be devious, you know. I was devious! And I am now so ashamed of myself!” With that, and totally without warning, she burst into tears, launching herself on Valerian’s chest.
It took some time, but at last Valerian succeeded in getting the entire story out of her—all about her plans to pay Gideon out for his lies and greed while punishing Isobel for her scheme to lure Allegra into social disgrace.
He could not, he found, discover in his heart any sympathy for either Kittredge. Gideon had deserved his punishment, and as for Isobel—well, wasn’t it true that all was fair in love and war? He did, however—since Allegra had told him everything—feel impelled to ask her how she had come to the conclusion that he was going to propose to her.
“You already did!” she exclaimed, now sitting beside him once more and dabbing delicately at her still moist eyes. “Oh, I know it was only to protect me that you thought of it, but you did think of it, when there were so many other things you could have done. You did not like me over-much when we were in Italy, as I did not very much like you—but that has changed. You love me now, Valerian.”
Valerian rose, finding that it was now his turn to pace the carpet. It was true. He loved Allegra. He loved her with all his heart, Heaven help him. But he also loved his well-ordered life, the life he had lost the moment he had first learned of her existence. Suddenly, without warning, he felt trapped, backed into a corner.
The devil with his earlier notions that she was too young to make up her mind about marriage when she had yet to see London, let alone experience a Season. That had only been an excuse he’d used to delay the inevitable. If there was one thing he had learned about Allegra, it was that the child had very definite opinions.
And how could he forget his dreams of traveling the world with her at his side, or his visions of their sons and daughters playing on the lawns of his estate? He was the one he had believed to be too young to be tied to a spouse and children.
Yes, she was lovely. Yes, life since meeting her had been exciting. Yes, he dreamed about her at night and looked for her all the day long. Yes, he was fast on his way to becoming obsessed by his longing for this small, exciting, exotic scrap of explosive femininity.
His sigh was so deep and heartfelt that he saw Allegra’s hand go out to him, as if he might be ill. There was nothing else for it. He loved her. She had accepted it. Now it was his turn to face it.
Valerian’s head came up and his shoulders straightened. His decision had been made, and it was final!
But he would do the asking, dammit, when he considered the time to be right! That’s what was wrong. That was why he felt so trapped. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. It was only that she wasn’t playing by the rules. If, as the saying went, it was best for one to begin in the way one planned to go on, it was time he took charge of the situation!
“While it is true enough that there were other avenues open to me—killing Bernardo was your suggestion, as I recall—a pretended betrothal merely seemed to be the thing to offer at the time,” he said at last, deliberately avoiding her eyes. “But as for loving you, imp—as for wishing to marry you—I’m afraid that I must be the one to tell you that—”
He never got to finish his poorly conceived confession, for Allegra was on her feet and running for the doorway, her hands tightly clapped to her ears. She had almost escaped him before he caught up with her, whirling her about to face him.
“Listen to me, imp,” he begged, seeing tears standing in her eyes once more. “You think I am rejecting you, when I am only trying to explain how I feel about—”
“No!” she exclaimed, pushing herself out of his embrace. “I have made the idiota of myself. You were kind to me, and in my foolish vanity I believed that this kindness came from love. Forgive me, Valerian, if I have abused that kindness. Addio!”
“Allegra, wait!”
But it was too late. Bernardo, with Isobel hanging from his arm like a limpet attached to a strong outcrop of solid rock, had appeared in the doorway, and all Valerian could do was watch helplessly as Allegra brushed by them and ran upstairs.
CHAPTER TEN
GIDEON HAD, in desperation, retreated to his bed, which was as far from his increasingly demanding creditors as he could conceivably hope to travel without applying to his uncle for funds—a consideration which by itself was enough to make the young man believe that, for once, he was really ill.
Adding to Gideon’s melancholy was the all-but-constant presence in the house of Conte Timoteo-and the Conte’s wardrobe Gideon found out very rapidly that it is extremely difficult to spend the entirety of one’s life believing that one is the most handsome, well-turned-out gentleman in the vicinity, only to have one’s own mother and sister fawn over some rosy-cheeked, vacant-eyed Italian who probably didn’t understand every third word spoken to him!
If watching his scrawny sister make a cake out of herself hadn’t been debilitating enough, his own mother—a woman who had clothed herself in half-mourning for the past sixteen years—had thoroughly sickened him by parading around the house waving an ivory-sticked fan boasting a hand-painted silk rendition of no less than the Coliseum itself!
Yet taking to his bed had not helped. Gideon coughed, and his mama sent Betty with the restorative tonic. Gideon moaned, and his mama told him to be a good little soldier and stuff a handkerchief in his mouth. Gideon asked if he could be set up on the settee in the drawing room, a blanket over his knees, and his mama refused, saying he might then give his latest illness to “our dear Conte, who had just endured an arduous sea voyage.”
Why, it was enough to make a grown man healthy.
“You! I know now what you were about. I saw your face when Uncle Denny turned me down. You tricked me. You were never going to marry me. And now you’ve come to crow over me!” he accused, turning his head toward the windows. “Well, I won’t have it, so you can just go away again. Go on—go away!”
Allegra closed the door behind her and walked across the room to the bed. “Poor bambino,” she sympathized, knowing that he had been at least partially correct. She had wanted Gideon to feel the rough side of her grandfather’s tongue. She had enjoyed it. But that was not why she had come to her cousin’s room.
She pulled up a straight-backed chair, taking from it the worn, velvet, floppy-eared rabbit that had been Gideon’s since childhood, and sat down, the rabbit in her lap. “Are you feeling very ill, cugino?”
Gideon rolled onto his back, his bottom lip jutting out in defiance. “Yes, I am—and a lot anyone around here cares, if I live or die! It’s all ‘the dear Conte this’ and ‘the dear Conte that.’ I’d like to take that stupid Italian and ship him straight back where he came from!”
“You do not like Bernardo, do you?” Allegra asked, knowing that it was not a brilliant question. “I fear I do not much like him either. He is too puffed up, too full of himself since he came to Brighton. He is a very different Bernardo from the one I knew in Milano. Perhaps you are right, Gideon. Perhaps if we two can between us discover some way to get him to go back to Milano, he will become the same old Bernardo again, and not un cane grosso—this big dog!”
She had, needless to say, succeeded in garnering Gideon’s undivided attention. He sat up, running a hand through his hair. “Get him to go back to Italy? We could do that? But—but the Conte doesn’t have any money!”
“I have money, cugino. Nonno has given me an allowance. I have one thousand pounds. We could give this to Bernardo. It is enough money, yes?”
Gideon’s eyes all but burst out of their sockets. “Uncle Denny gave you what? Then it’s true—he is dicked in the nob! His only nephew deep in dun territory, and he’s giving you a thousand pounds to buy hair ribbons!” His eyes retreated back into his skull as his eyelids narrowed speculatively. “You wouldn’t wish to make your dearest cousin a small loan, would you, Allegra? Say, ah, half your thousand?”
Allegra shook her head. “I am so sorry, Gideon. I know I should loan it to you, if just to make up for teasing you so with Nonno, but I cannot. I shall need it all for our passages, and until I am once more up on my toes in Italy.”
If Valerian had been privy to this conversation, he could have corrected Allegra by saying, “You mean back on your feet, imp.” Valerian might have said it, but it is doubtful that he would have done so. Instead, just as Gideon did now, he most probably would have exploded, “You’re going back to Italy!”
However, unlike Valerian’s explosion into speech, which would have doubtless carried more than a hint of incredulity, Gideon’s voice eloquently conveyed his elation—and his sudden and complete recovery from his latest “illness.”
Allegra shrugged, her fingers idly stroking one of the rabbit’s worn velvet ears. “I have no choice, cugino. Italy is my real home. Much as I am grateful to Nonno for asking for me, I now know I can never be really happy here. But I will need help, Gideon, to sneak away.”
Gideon passed over Allegra’s unhappiness without regret, concentrating on how this latest development would affect him. “All right,” he said, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress—which was not all that shocking, since he had been lying fully clothed beneath the satin coverlet.
“Give me a minute to think this thing out. You wish to return to Italy. Where you go, the Conte goes. If you go, Uncle Denny’s money reverts to Mama. If the Conte goes, Mama reverts to me. Isobel? Who cares where she goes?”
He snatched up the rabbit and began pacing the floor, rubbing the velvet animal’s hide against his cheek. “I know. Isobel will sink into a sad decline. Yes, and Uncle Denny will go tripping back to the Pavilion to act the toadeater. Mama will once more get to handle the family purse strings, and I—ah! I get to live again! I can pay my debts and maybe even buy a half share of that racehorse Georgie told me about! A real goer, Georgie said.”
He stopped and whirled about, pointing the rabbit at Allegra. “What about Valerian? Where does Fitzhugh come into this? Won’t Uncle Denny just send him out to drag you back here, like some damned hound faithfully retrieving a stick?”
Allegra shook her head. “Valerian is finished with me. I am a graceless disgrace in his eyes. He will be too busy rejoicing over my absence to follow me. But that does not mean that he will like it even a little bit if he discovers that I am leaving, for he went to a great deal of trouble to deliver me here in the first place. Gideon—I must be on my way at once. It has been two days since Valerian was last here, and I know he will be back soon, when he thinks I am done with throwing things.”
“You throw things?”
She hopped to her feet, wishing Gideon would keep his mind on the subject at hand. “Never mind, cugino. Are you going to help me or not? I would go to Isobel, who would dearly like to see the back of me, except that she believes herself so in love with Bernardo that she would perish before allowing him to return to Italy.” She made a face. “Isobel is so nice to me now. She is so nice to me that I have lost all my appetite and cannot eat. When I think of Valerian and the fool I made of myself with him, I cannot eat. Cugino, you must help me, before I fade into a small nothingness!”
Gideon stood in the middle of the room, hugging the velvet rabbit to himself in glee. “Help you, cousin? If you grow faint from hunger, why, I shall carry you aboard ship myself!”
MAX, ACTING AS Bernardo’s interpreter, had been haunting the Dugdale house for the past two days, trying for a word alone with Allegra, but she had proved so elusive that he had nothing to report to an anxious Valerian when he and Bernardo returned that night to the Fitzhugh estate.
“Playing least in sight, that’s what the little darlin’ is doing,” Max told Valerian when the two of them were finally alone, Bernardo having been tucked up in bed with a bowl of the sugarplums he favored (to be joined, unbeknownst to Valerian, not five minutes later by the Fitzhugh upstairs maidservant, who did not find her unfamiliarity with Italian to be an insurmountable barrier to a most intimate relationship with the handsome shoemaker).
“I don’t like this, Max,” Valerian said, downing the last of his brandy before refilling his glass from the decanter. “She refuses to see me. She sends back my notes, unread. I can’t get within ten feet of her. And Duggy—he’s no help at all. Says Allegra is devoting herself to him. She’s hiding from me, that’s what she’s doing!”
Max sat at his ease in the oak-paneled, study, his shrewd gaze concentrated on Valerian’s face. “And why would she be doin’ that, I want to know. You wouldn’t be tryin’ anythin’ nasty with the girl, would you? I had the two of you as good as wed.”
“And we would be, if I could only get the little imp to stay in one place long enough for me to propose to her properly!” Valerian exploded, collapsing into the leather high-backed chair facing Max’s. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to propose marriage to a young lady who has already told you—at least twice—that you love her and wish to marry her? I feel as if I’ve been thrust headlong into a farce and Allegra has stolen all my lines!”
“Took the teeth right out of your saw, did she?” Max took a deep drink of brandy. “Ah! Wonderful cellar you have, Valerian. Just like a torchlight procession going down my throat, don’t you know. Now, to get back to your problem, boyo. The colleen has told you all about you. Has she told you all about her, I’m wonderin’?”
Valerian’s head came up. “You mean, has she told me she loves me?” He frowned, considering the question. “She allowed me to kis
s her. She kissed me back.” He shook his head, dismissing what he’d just said. “She also told me, while we were still in Italy, that she would never forgive me for sending her to the back door of my hotel—but that seems so long ago. Surely she didn’t mean that.”
He looked worriedly at Max. “She wouldn’t still be holding a grudge, and trying to pay me out the same way she tricked Gideon into asking Dugdale for her hand. And she couldn’t really be angry with me for teasing her for all but asking me to propose to her. Could she?”
Max shrugged. “I’m not the one wearin’ this slipper, boyo. Don’t ask me where it pinches.”
“You want me to ask Allegra if she loves me—after she let me kiss her? I can’t do that. I might just as well accuse her of being a loose woman!” Valerian collapsed against the back of the chair. “You know, Max, I used to be considered a very intelligent, well-ordered man. Now my life is a shambles, and I cannot add two and two with any real hope of ending up with four. Is it love itself that causes this condition, or is it Allegra in particular? I vow, my life has been complete chaos since I met her. I cut short my travels, have dined with Prinny—which I vowed never to do—have a shoemaker turned Conte living under my roof, and am contemplating marriage to a woman who may either love me or be working some sort of bizarre Italian vendetta against me for rescuing her from poverty and that same shoemaker.”
Max lifted his glass in an impromptu toast “To love! What a delightful muddle!” He downed his drink, shivering as the brandy licked hotly at the back of his throat. “Drink up, boyo, for it’s a dry bed and a wet bottle you’re needin’ tonight, don’t you know. Drink until you lose the will to think. It’ll be time and enough tomorrow to go after that little colleen—and then don’t take no for an answer!”
It wasn’t a very original idea—and probably not even a very good one—but it was the only suggestion that appealed to Valerian at that moment. He raised his own glass and drank deep.