The chaotic Miss Crispino

by Kasey Michaels

  The maid, who had spent the last hour chasing Allegra around the room in order to divest her of her gown, and who had been trying without success since then to get her mistress to bed, at last collapsed onto the mattress herself, saying, “Yes, missy, you can tell me. You have been telling me, over and over again. And if you don’t stop gallopin’ about the place singing little bits of that foreign stuff, you’ll be telling the whole household!”

  Allegra abandoned the bedpost to dance across the room and snatch a flower from a nearby arrangement. She sniffed of its delicate fragrance, then tucked its dripping stem into the top of her chemise as she looked at the drowsy maid. Betty, it would appear, was becoming bored. Well, Allegra would soon put an end to that! “Ah, you terrible grouchy person, I refuse to listen to you. But did I tell you of my assignation—I think that is the correct word—with Mister Valerian Fitzhugh in one of the small salons?”

  “Your what?”

  Allera hopped up onto the mattress, sitting on her knees. “Ah, I had thought not,” she teased, grinning mischievously. “He kissed me, Betty,” she whispered confidentially, leaning toward the bug-eyed maid. “He kissed me twice. He dragged me off to a private salon and we were all alone, just the two of us, in the beautiful Pavilion. It was most delightful! And I had not yet even sung for him!”

  Betty rolled her eyes, sighing deeply. “Oh, laws, now what? Does your grandfather know?”

  Allegra collapsed onto her back on the bed, her ebony tresses splayed out fanlike on the pillow, her fingers lightly stroking the deep pink flower petals lying against her breasts. “Nonno? No, he does not know. It is our secret, Betty. I wish to hug it to myself for a while longer. You do understand, don’t you?”

  Betty sniffed derisively, her common-sense mind far from clouded with rosy romantic images. “I understands it all right, missy. You’ve gone and compromised yourself good. And to think I always thought that Mister Fitzhugh fella to be a fine gentleman. He should be ashamed of himself!”

  Allegra turned her head on the pillow, her eyes shining with mischief. “Oh, I think Valerian is very much ashamed with himself, Betty. I turned to him when my aria was done and caught him looking at me in that strange way I told you about, the one that makes my toes curl up in my slippers. That look used to worry me, but now I like it very much, as my toes curled up the same way tonight, when he kissed me.”

  Betty clapped her hands over her ears. “Please, missy, I don’t think I want to hear any more about this kiss.”

  “Two kisses, Betty. Betty? Valerian barely had a word for me all the way home, except to tell me he will be coming by tomorrow to take me walking on the Steine. He will propose marriage to me then, yes?”

  Betty made a great business of pulling the bedclothes up over Allegra’s slim body. “He’ll be proposing somethin’, missy. I’ve lived long enough to be sure of that! Now you’d best get to sleep or it will soon be time to get up.” She walked to the door, blowing out candles as she went, only to turn back and say, “You know, missy, you shouldn’t be in such a big hurry to wed. You’ll have plenty of gentlemen to choose from before you’re done. Why, I heard it below-stairs when I went down for tea that Master Gideon is planning to ask for your hand.”

  “Gideon!” Allegra sat up, her smile wide. “Oh, yes, Betty, I can see Gideon now, down on one knee in front of me in the drawing room, begging to be allowed to make passionate love to my inheritance.” She collapsed once more onto the pillows and gave way to another attack of the giggles. “Gideon for my nonno’s fine fortune and, I am thinking, sad, silly Isobel for poor Valerian, whom she is so sure she loves. Oh, My. Prendi due piccioni con una fava, Betty. Zia Agnes, I think, wishes to catch two pigeons with one bean! Now I am even more impatient for tomorrow to arrive so that I can tell the other pigeon!”

  VALERIAN’S DISPOSITION, as he continued pacing the length of his study two hours after arriving back at his estate just outside Pyecombe, was not quite so carefree as Allegra’s.

  His mind insisted upon spinning backward in time, trying in vain to discover just where it was that he had made a small turning in the road, leading himself unwittingly, unknowingly, into quite the most confusing, confounding, intriguing chapter of his life.

  Had he sealed his fate the day he had opened the missive from Baron Dugdale enlisting his aid in locating his lordship’s long-lost granddaughter? Or had he set the stage for his downfall only after agreeing to act as Good Samaritan for the Baron?

  He swallowed the last of his fireside-warmed brandy and ran a hand distractedly through his hair. Perhaps it had been the moment Allegra, barefoot, smelling of sausages, and clad in her soiled, peasant-like dress, had turned to him and announced quite clearly that she would not sleep with him.

  He poured another snifter and rubbed the glass between his palms, warming it.

  Failing that memorable moment in Florence, he knew he would always remember their departure from Naples and the way Allegra had cried so brokenheartedly against the front of his greatcoat, her slim arms wrapped tightly about his waist as if he were the only remaining solid thing in life that she had to cling to.

  Or could he have taken the fatal step that first day in Brighton when, against his better judgment, he had remained at the Dugdale residence, impatiently awaiting Allegra’s summons to her bedchamber, rather than following his inborn self-protective masculine instincts and taking to his heels just as fast as he could?

  He took a deep sip of the brandy, grimacing as it burned the back of his throat. No, it had been none of those times. Yes, they all had something to do with his current pitiful condition, that he acknowledged, but none of them were the single, telling blow, the final determination that, for good or ill, he would never be the same man he had been before Allegra Crispino had come literally crashing into his heretofore neat, orderly life.

  It was arriving home at his estate after first delivering Allegra to her grandfather that had done it for him, finally made him realize he had crossed the river to real love for the first time in his life and then, without ever once considering the danger, had proceeded to burn all his bridges behind him.

  Everywhere he looked, in each room of his house, in his gardens, while riding across his budding fields, he had seen Allegra, envisioned how she would look if she were there, sharing each moment with him. Without her, without Valerian being able to see his surroundings the way she would see them, through eyes shining with innocent wonder, his whole world had turned to a lifeless gray, and he would not have been able to stay away from Brighton another moment, with or without the Baron’s request that he attend him.

  He sank into his favorite chair, smiling ruefully at the memory of that day.

  The time spent with Allegra, hunting down elusive hothouse cherries for the Baron, walking and talking as they wove their way together through the streets of Brighton, had only served to prove once and for all that he, Valerian Fitzhugh, was a doomed man.

  But he had still secretly held out hope that he could be wrong, that he was only suffering from a temporary delusion that had him dreaming wistfully of carefree days listening to Allegra’s chatter while he feasted on her beauty, and of quiet nights spent in front of the fire, Allegra’s dark head trustingly pressed against his shoulder.

  And then there would be the travel, the places he would take her to just so that he could see them again through her eyes, and the children they would have, sapphire-eyed, dark-haired girls and little boys who had their father’s features and their mother’s unquenchable spirit…

  “Damn it!” Valerian’s fist came down on the arm of the chair, making a loud, smacking sound in the quiet room. He shouldn’t have kissed her! No matter what his excuse, no matter how terrible the temptation, he should never have kissed her!

  He threw back his head and laughed out loud at his own foolishness. He shouldn’t have kissed her? No! He shouldn’t have stopped kissing her! He should have kissed her, and held her, and loved her, until he was so lost, so completely at her me
rcy, that he would have dared there and then to ask this most delightful, beautiful creature to do him the supreme honor of becoming his wife.

  But Max, blast his interfering Irish soul to Perdition, had put an end to all that.

  Now it was too late. Now she had become the newest sensation in a society that lived for the next sensation. From this night on she would be fêted and pursued and fawned upon from the mighty on down. Now he would have to bide his time, allow her to bask in the full glow of her triumph at the Pavilion, and hope that she would deign to allow him some few small crumbs of her attention.

  Only when she had been allowed to indulge herself in her newly found popularity, only after she had had her well-deserved Season as a Diamond of the First Water at the Assembly Rooms in Brighton and the ballrooms of London, only then could he in clear conscience dare ask her to become his wife.

  He sat slumped in his favorite leather chair and stared into the dying fire. Yes, that was what he would have to do now. He would have to play a waiting game. Unless, of course, he thought—rallying slightly as he remembered Max’s appearance at the Pavilion—some other, less painful way was to present itself!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  VALERIAN WAS going quietly out of his mind. It seemed as if he and Allegra could advance no more than three feet in any one direction before they were stopped by someone who wished to issue an invitation to her, speak to her, praise her, be seen with her.

  As he smiled, and bowed, and tipped his hat, his eyes kept darting in every direction, endlessly searching for some sign of Maximilien Murphy, who was, by Valerian’s pocket watch, a full twenty minutes late for their appointment.

  Not that he seriously expected the wily Irishman to show his face in the midst of this crush. Was there no one left in London? Had every fool and his wife come to Brighton to be with the Prince? Valerian looked about him for a convenient side street down which, hopefully with Max watching, from some not too-distant vantage point, he and Allegra might some how escape this ridiculous crush of humanity.

  Finally, just as Allegra was floundering badly in a rather one-sided conversation with Lady Bingham, who was imploring Allegra to attend a “small party in your honor on any evening of your choosing,” Valerian mumbled some vague excuse, bowed to her ladyship, and all but pushed his companion around the corner and onto St. James’s Street.

  “You were rather rude, weren’t you, Valerian?” Allegra questioned, tugging her arm free of his hold as they began walking down the nearly deserted street. “I have always much preferred someone to ask my permission before pulling me along as if I were no more than a sack of tomatoes on the way to market.”

  Valerian smiled down at her. “I stand corrected, imp. From now on I shall be sure to gain your agreement before I pull you along like a sack of tomatoes. Now, if you have done with accepting applause for your performance last night, perhaps I might drag your thoughts back to the project at hand?”

  Allegra’s full bottom lip jutted out as she made a great show of pouting before once more taking Valerian’s arm and giving it a friendly squeeze. “I am very bad, am I not, Valerian? But I did so enjoy myself, with everyone complimenting me on my singing.” She shook her head. “There were even flowers delivered from the Regent himself this morning. Did I tell you that? Yes, I suppose I did.”

  “Counting now, Allegra, you have told me four times,” Valerian answered tightly, wishing he had had the presence of mind to send a bouquet himself.

  “And to think I had worried that I should not be liked. I am very popular, yes?”

  “I refuse to answer that, imp, or else your head might succeed in outgrowing that fetching bonnet. Now, did you see Max anywhere?”

  Allegra instantly sobered, shaking her head. “I looked for him, but I could not find him anywhere, and then there were all those people around us, so that I could not see anything. Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, suddenly understanding. “He could not dare to approach us while we were surrounded by all my new friends, could he? Valerian, do you think he has taken fright and gone away?”

  “Max, frightened? Allegra, he dared to come inside the Pavilion last night, no doubt serving up vegetables to three dozen lords and ladies he had talked into parting with a good deal of their money at one time or another. My only concern right now is finding him so that we may discover what brought him to Brighton when he promised Candie he would stay in Italy.”

  “He’s got something boiling in the pot,” Allegra declared, nodding. “I think perhaps Max has heard of some trouble concerning me. Or else Erberto has returned, to give me back my wages, and Max has brought my money to me. Pooh! That cannot be it. Erberto would never do such a thing. Ah, but only to say his name is to see him!” She began, alternately clapping her hands and pointing down the street. “L’uomo del giorno! It is the man of the day! Isn’t he wonderful?”

  Valerian looked in the direction Allegra was pointing, frowned, then looked again. “Max?” he asked as a short, stout woman approached them, leaning heavily on a battered cane, her other arm encumbered by a wicker basket filled with small bouquets of rapidly wilting flowers. “Good Lord, man, is it really you?”

  “Violets! Violets! Who’ll buy my sweet violets?” Max called loudly, drowning out both Allegra’s delight and Valerian’s question. He sidled up to them and lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “Of course it is Max. Who was it you was expecting, boyo, the Queen of the May? And, Allegra, much as you are delighted by my presence, m’darlin’, I would ask you to stop kicking up such a devil of a wind about it, please. I’d like to be seeing this day.”

  Valerian covered his mouth to stifle his laughter. He could barely believe Max’s peasant-woman appearance, and the gray wig that covered the man’s head could only be termed a master stroke. “Max,” he said, grinning, “my compliments. You, as you Irish say, make a fine doorful of a woman.”

  Max ignored this insult, turning to concentrate his full attention on Allegra. “Quite the rising comet you are, m’darlin’. Yes, it’s watching you I’ve been, lugging these posies about—made m’self a few pennies doing it, by the by—and I’m here to warn you not to take all this boot-licking to heart. The sheep only go where Prinny leads ’em, and he’ll be leading ’em somewhere else before the cat can lick her ear, so you keep that in mind and make the most of it for yourself while you can.”

  “Ah, sage words of wisdom from the Bog Lander in the petticoats. Allegra, mayhap you should embroider them on a pillow for your bed.” Valerian turned to Max, frowning. “What would you have the imp do, Max, charge a fee for gracing their parlors and end up in disgrace? Is that why you’ve come here, to set yourself up as her new manager? Allegra’s singing career is over. She’s an heiress now, and has no need of your help in that direction.”

  Max lifted a bunch of violets and pressed them into Allegra’s hands. “That’ll be twopence, sir, and the lady thanks you very much,” he said, holding out his upturned palm to Valerian for payment. “Didn’t sleep well last night, did you, boyo? You’re showing a mean streak I never saw before, don’t you know?”

  Valerian had the good grace to feel ashamed of himself and said as much to Max, adding, “It’s just that I’ve been waiting all day for this meeting. What has happened that you felt the need to come to Brighton? Is Allegra in any danger?”

  Max pocketed the coins, sneaking a look out of the corners of his eyes as if to make sure no one was close enough to overhear his next words. “It was bored I was, watchin’ as Tony and my Candie billed and cooed, so I amused myself a bit by keepin’ an eye on that Bernardo fellow. Besides, after sendin’ m’dear Louisa—that’s Miss Shackleford to you, Fitzhugh—along to chaperon Allegra, I thought I might just as well drop myself over here for a space and see how she’s doin’.”

  “Uncail Max? You and Miss Shackleford are in love? I didn’t know. Valerian, isn’t that wonderful? Will there be a wedding?”

  “Don’t be daft, girlie. Max Murphy will never wed. My wife’s intended mother died
an old maid. No, it’s a warning I’ve come to deliver to the both of you. The handsome shoemaker is on his way. Thanks to my generous Candie, I was able to take a faster ship, but he’ll be here any time now, to claim his bride.”

  “His bride? How could he continue to believe that I would ever—oh, no!” Allegra rounded on Valerian, shaking the bouquet of violets in his face. “This is all your fault! You were the one who said I should wave to the fool as the ship left the dock. He probably thought I was sorry to leave him behind and wished for him to follow me. Oh! We are in a lovely pie now!”

  “It would seem so. Persistent fellow, isn’t he?” Valerian mused, shaking his head, oblivious to Allegra’s anger. He had wondered if Bernardo’s impending arrival could be the problem Max had alluded to last night, but he hadn’t been quite able to bring himself to believe the Italian’s devotion would cause him to do anything so desperate. But then, he mused further, Allegra was a difficult woman to forget.

  “Don’t be beating on Valerian, m’darlin’, for it’s needing him again you’ll be, I’ll be thinking,” Max interrupted just as Allegra looked about to deliver a punch to Fitzhugh’s middle. “Bernardo comes alone, which evens up the odds a bit, but unless you wish to have the man serenading you outside your window at midnight, you’ll have to find some way to convince the shoemaker you will never be his.”

  Allegra, who had been feeling much abused, rallied. “You’re right, Uncail Max. Valerian is a true ark of science—very smart. He will figure out just what we are to do. Something must be done. I cannot live my life with that foolish Timoteo forever chasing behind me like some hungry dog after a bone.”