The chaotic Miss Crispino

by Kasey Michaels

  Allegra, remembering Tweed, Valerian’s one-eyed coachman, was hard-pressed not to be carried along on the flood tide of her emotions. She would give anything to help other people. She would give anything to please Valerian. But she was not so simpleminded that she did not recognize that Isobel was purposely directing her along a path she, Isobel, had chosen.

  “Please, cugina, go on,” she begged, for she did long to hear exactly what was on the other girl’s mind. It appeared that Gideon was not the only devious Kittredge in the household.

  Isobel smiled in unholy glee, which was truly a painful thing to watch. “Then you are interested in my idea! How wonderful! What I have in mind is for you to give a performance—just a single performance—at the Theatre Royal in the New Road.”

  It was becoming clear now, Isobel’s plan. “But cugina, if I were to charge money I would be singing professionally again. Valerian has most expressly requested that I do not do that.”

  Isobel hastened to reassure her. “No, no, Allegra. Listen to me! It would not be that way. You would not be keeping the money. It would go for the poor soldiers, the widows, the orphans. You would be a saint!”

  She would be ruined for life! She would be thrown out of Society, her grandfather would cut her off without a penny, and a life spent with Bernardo behind his little shoemaker shop would begin to seem a blessing. Allegra leaned forward, smiling. “A saint, Isobel? I would so like to be a saint.”

  “Then you’ll do it?”

  Isobel, Allegra thought, would starve if she ever chose to go on the stage, for the girl had no talent for playing a part. Her greed and her envy and her longing to destroy her cousin were all quiet clearly stamped on her thin face.

  Allegra rose, turning toward the door. “I will think about it most carefully, Isobel,” she promised, then turned back to her cousin as inspiration, suddenly her friend, struck yet again. If it had worked once, she reasoned quickly, would it not work twice? “Yes, dear cousin, I will think about it—but only if you go to my nonno and ask him for me if the performance would be all right with him.”

  “Me?” Isobel’s smile disappeared in a heartbeat. “You want me to ask him? But, Allegra, Uncle Denny barely even speaks to me!”

  Allegra set her chin defiantly. “As I told your dear brother just a few minutes ago, I do nothing without my nonno’s blessing, no matter how much I may wish it.” She unbent a little and leaned down to look Isobel squarely in the eye. “You will do this for me, cugina? Besides,” she added just for good measure, “I do so wish to please Valerian.”

  Hearing Allegra speak Fitzhugh’s name lent new starch to Isobel’s spine. That, and the mention of her hated brother’s name in almost the same breath.

  “Gideon is going to approach Uncle Denny—for your hand?” she guessed, knowing that if the Baron agreed to the match, she would no longer need to destroy Allegra’s chances with Valerian by making her a laughingstock in front of all of Brighton. Not that she had much faith in her mama’s estimation of Gideon’s ability to talk Allegra around to marrying him—which was why she had felt it imperative that she come up with a plan of her own. “And then you will accept him? If he gets Uncle Denny’s permission?”

  Allegra’s sapphire eyes all but danced in her head as she leaned even closer and asked, “You can keep a secret, dearest Isobel?”

  “Yes, yes! Anything!” Isobel answered, her heart pounding with excitement.

  “You will swear it on your eyes?” Allegra persisted. “Think, cugina, for this is a very dangerous curse to wish on yourself. Italian curses often are, you know.”

  Isobel shivered, crossing her fingers behind her back. “I swear. On my eyes,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “Then I will tell you,” Allegra answered brightly. “Yes, Gideon is going to ask Nonno for his permission to woo me. And no, I shall not marry him. I could not do this, you see, because I have already decided to marry Valerian.”

  Isobel’s eyes all but popped out of her head at exactly the same time that her stomach plummeted to her toes. “Valerian! Do not tell me Valerian has asked you to be his wife?”

  Allegra dismissed this question with a wave of her hand. “No. But he will. He loves me, sotto sotto—deep down. He just does not know it yet, I think, poor man.”

  This was all very confusing to Isobel, whose full concentration had been on her own plan, so that she could not see that Allegra was playing out a small stratagem of her own. “Then I truly don’t understand. Why did you allow Gideon to hope in the first place? It seems very cruel.”

  “I did it because Gideon does not love me, but only the plum I will receive when I marry. I did it, dearest Isobel, because I wish to watch as your silly brother puffs himself up to a great height, only to collapse into a great airless heap. I think Nonno will not be so nice to him either, and that also pleases me. Does it please you?”

  “Oh, yes,” Isobel responded earnestly, rubbing her hands together. If Allegra didn’t stand in the way of her happiness with Valerian, Isobel might even think she was beginning to like her Italian cousin. “And it serves him right too, trying to use you to pay off his horrible gambling debts.”

  Then she sobered, realizing that Allegra’s admission took them both back to the question of Valerian. She would have no choice but to continue with her plan to disgrace Allegra if Gideon’s suit was destined to be denied. But even Isobel was not so thick as to overlook the obvious. “And why are you sending me to Uncle Denny, Allegra? Are you hoping he will not be nice to me either?”

  Allegra did her best to appear puzzled by the question. “And why would that be, Isobel? You said yourself that I would be doing a great thing, singing for all those widows and the tiny bambinos. Surely Nonno will not object to your most wonderful idea. But you see, because Nonno loves me and wishes to make up for leaving me abandoned all these years, he may give his agreement just to please me, which is something I could not let him do. So you must ask him for me, just as if I knew nothing about the plan.

  “Besides,” she added, in case her reason hadn’t completely convinced Isobel, “your English, um, she is so much better than mine. Comprende? And Nonno does admire you so much for your great intelligence—as well as your beauty. I have seen it in his eyes when you talk to him.”

  “Yes,” Isobel answered hesitantly, preening a bit at the inferred compliment, “I suppose you’re right about all that, but—”

  “Then it is settled!” Allegra bent to kiss Isobel on both cheeks. “I shall be so eager to hear that you have done me this small favor so that I might give my concert. We must devise a special invitation for the Regent, don’t you think?”

  “Missy?”

  Leaving Isobel to muddle through everything that had gone on, Allegra turned to see Betty standing by the open doors, looking decidedly nervous. “You said for me to tell you when your new bonnet got here.”

  Her new bonnet? Allegra didn’t have the faintest notion of what Betty was telling her. She looked at the maid and asked carefully, “And which bonnet would that be, Betty?”

  Betty spoke through clenched teeth, surreptitiously motioning with her right hand—the one that held a folded sheet of paper. “The Irish green bonnet, missy, if you take my meaning. It’s at the servants’ door right now, waiting on you.”

  Allegra shot a quick look at Isobel, who seemed lost in a brown study. She would have loved to stay a while and watch her cousin attempt to puzzle out what had happened in the past ten minutes, but she had more important things to do now than to amuse herself by turning the tables on Isobel and Gideon Kittredge’s plans for her future.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Isobel?” she asked, already heading for the hallway.

  “Yes, yes, you go on now,” Isobel answered vaguely, her mind concentrating on precisely how she was going to present her plan for the Baron’s permission and at the same time make him think the whole thing had been her mother’s idea.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BETTY WAS still occupied in helping Al
legra don her cherry-red cloak as the younger woman entered the kitchens.

  “I cannot believe it. He is arrived so soon?” Allegra questioned, seeing Max seated at his ease at the table, a fresh strawberry tart in his hand, the bottom half of his face hidden behind a truly glorious red beard.

  “Love sails on wings, I suppose, m’darlin’,” Max answered, holding out his arm as he rose and began walking toward the servants’ entrance.

  “Missy!” Betty cried, wringing her hands as she watched her mistress leaving on the Irishman’s arm. “Whatever am I to say to the Baron iffen he should ask for you?”

  “Lock my door and tell everyone who asks that I am lying down with the headache,” Allegra offered quickly, turning to face down a lingering scullery maid and the Dugdale cook. “And if anyone is heard to say differently, Betty, give me their names and I will call down a most terrible curse upon their heads, so that their betraying tongues fall out and all their fingers tie themselves into knots. I am Italiana, and I can do these things!”

  The Dugdale servants, one of them visibly quaking while the other quickly made the sign against the evil eye, both promised not to breathe a word of what they had seen, and as Max chuckled his delight at her ingenuity, Allegra quit the house for the alleyway.

  “Where is Bernardo now? Have you sent a messenger to Valerian? He has gone back to his estate, yes? I am sure he has, as we did not expect the shoemaker so soon as this. Have you put Bernardo where no one can see him? Do you think anyone will recognize me with my hood pulled down this way? Yesterday I should not have worried, but today I am famous, you know. Oh, everything is happening so quickly!”

  Max was huffing and puffing, having some difficulty keeping up with both the pace Allegra was setting and her rapid-fire questions. “Bernardo is safely tucked up in my room at a small inn near Chapel Street, though it wasn’t an easy thing, don’t you know, to talk him out of running up and down every street in Brighton, calling your name. It’s a determined fellow he is, your shoemaker.”

  “He is not my shoemaker, Uncail Max,” Allegra corrected, ducking her head as a familiar face passed by. “But you have not told me about Valerian. Will he be meeting us at this inn?”

  Max would have laughed, but he was rapidly getting out of breath. “And thereby hangs a tale! Valerian was the one what brought Bernardo to me. It’s underestimating the boy I’ve been doin’, I think. Not only did he ferret out the place where I’m staying, but he beat me to Bernardo as well. And, bless him, the fellow already has cooked up a plan to explain the shoemaker’s presence until we might straighten this thing out once and for all. It’s a very good plan it is, too, if only we can pull it off, which I’ve no doubt we can. Do you think, mayhap, there might be a drop of the Irish in Valerian? Yes, a fine broth of a boy!”

  They were nearing the waterfront and Max prudently took a quick peep behind them before pulling Allegra into a narrow alleyway and entering the third door on the left.

  Together they tiptoed down the hall past the inn’s common room and climbed the staircase to the top of the high narrow house, to come to Max’s room. The Irishman knocked twice, waited, then knocked twice more before Valerian opened the door to allow Max and Allegra to step inside.

  Instantly all was chaos.

  Bernardo, who had been slumped dejectedly beside a sloping wooden table, his elbows on his knees, spotted the love of his life and leapt to his feet, his smile so wide and blightingly white that Valerian felt obliged to turn away.

  Allegra, in her turn, espied the shoemaker and instantly burst into a scathing stream of Italian that had a lot to do with the great disrespect with which she regarded Bernardo’s brainpower and little to do with greeting a fellow countryman who had come to the English shore.

  As Bernardo stood there, a glorious, sad-eyed angel whose wrists stuck out a full two inches from the bottom of his coat sleeves, Allegra continued her assault, her musical voice rising and falling as she berated the shoemaker with a barrage of insults, her entire body taking part in the tongue-lashing as she gave emphasis to her words with expressive hand gestures and eloquent shrugs.

  She finally ran down, ending her scolding with a stern warning to Bernardo that if he so much as tried to utter a single word in his own defense she would personally see to it that her good friend, the Prince Regent, had him hauled to the very top of the Marine Pavilion and then deposited, rump down, on the extreme tip of the largest, most pointed onion dome on the entire building.

  Max collapsed onto the side of the narrow bed, wiping his brow. “Ah, and it’s grand to listen to her when she’s in a rage, isn’t it? Takes the cockles off m’heart, don’t you know.”

  Exhausted by her own vehemence, Allegra subsided into the chair Bernardo had vacated and began fanning herself with a handkerchief she had pulled from the pocket of her gown.

  “Brava! Brava!” Valerian applauded from the vantage point he had taken up in front of the single window in the small, meanly furnished room. “I begin to think, imp, that you give your most impassioned performances in ramshackle inns, although I see your months in civilization have robbed you of the ability to spit in order to lend credence to your threats. I hesitated to point that out, but I find that, since meeting you, I must take my pleasures where I might find them.”

  “Valerian!” Allegra ran to him, throwing herself against his broad chest, and tightly wrapped her arms about his waist. She had temporarily forgotten Fitzhugh in her sudden, overwhelming anger upon seeing Bernardo standing in the room big as life, grinning as if she would actually be pleased to see him.

  From his position in the middle of the room, Bernardo began to growl low in his throat, one hand going beneath his shirt in search of his metal mallet—the same metal mallet Valerian had prudently demanded the man put into his keeping earlier, before he would agree to allow Max to fetch Allegra.

  “Arrah now, do sit down, you beautiful dolt,” Max ordered from the bed. “You’re becoming a bloody nuisance one way or the other, don’t you know? And what are you glowering at in the first place? Can’t you see you’ve lost her? All that remains now is to ship you straight home again before anybody here becomes the wiser, for it’s a fine mess you could make for this sweet colleen, and no mistake, even if Fitzhugh here has a plan, which I’m thinkin’ now might not be so good as it first seemed.”

  As if the words had conjured up the deed, the door to the room burst open and Gideon Kittredge stepped inside to look about, his avid gaze taking in all of the occupants. “My, my, and what do we have here, hmm? I thought I saw you pass by the coffeehouse, and I was right. That’s ten pounds Georgie Watson owes me.” He put a hand to his ear. “Listen? Do you hear that, cousin? Ah, what a pity. It’s the sound of my dear uncle’s bellow, calling for his solicitor so that he can change his will yet again.”

  It was Max who spoke first, shaking his head sadly. “Candie is right, boyo, and it’s getting past it I must be. I had no idea we were being followed. It’s that sorry I am, don’t you know.”

  “Valerian?” Allegra questioned quietly, her eyes wide with apprehension as she looked up at him. Everything was becoming so confused.

  “Just be very quiet, imp, and we may wriggle out of this yet. It’s time to put my plan, such as it is, into action,” he answered softly as he gently disengaged her death grip around his waist and stepped forward, his hand outstretched, to welcome Gideon to their little gathering.

  Gideon’s hand came out automatically, although his eyes remained puzzled as he stared at Bernardo, who, unbelievably, appeared to be even prettier than he, as if that were possible. “Fitzhugh,” he said blankly. “What are you doing here? Who are these people? Isn’t m’cousin here for an assignation with that bearded fellow over there? I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t understand, do you?” Max sniffed indelicately, although it had to have pleased him that Gideon believed that he, who would never again see the sunny side of fifty, might be having an “assignation” with a young, beautifu
l colleen like Allegra. “And there’s nothing so surprising in that, I’ll be thinking, you miserable buckeen, for you have the look of one what has a great deal of knowledge outside his head.”

  “Quiet, Max,” Valerian warned softly, motioning Gideon to a chair. A lot depended on these next minutes and he disliked having his concentration broken by the Irishman’s wit. “Now, Gideon, I suppose you’d like to know what’s going on here. Of course you would, as would I if our positions were reversed.”

  “Yes, well, I suppose so!” Gideon sat briefly, made to rise, then sat down once more, all the time staring at Bernardo. “Is that fellow real, Valerian? He looks like a painting.”

  The shoemaker, who had been blessedly silent for so long, took it into his head at this moment to add his mite to the conversation. “Il mio nome é,” he announced proudly, rising to his full, impressive height and jabbing one long forefinger into his chest as he introduced himself, “Bernardo Sansone Guglielmo Alonso Timoteo—”

  “Conte Timoteo to you, Gideon,” Valerian broke in quickly, unceremoniously pushing Bernardo back down into his chair and stepping in front of the shoemaker before the fool totally destroyed Allegra by adding “premier shoemaker of Milano!”

  Gideon peered past Valerian to take in Bernardo’s humble garb. “Conte Timoteo? Shouldn’t he dress better than that? Not that my tailor would have him, of course. He has far too many muscles to allow a jacket to lie smoothly. And look at his thighs. They’re positively obscene. As a matter of fact, Valerian, I think the only thing good about him is those boots. Magnificent work, don’t you think?”

  Bernardo, whose command of the English language thankfully remained somewhat limited, stuck out one boot and beamed a smile at Gideon. “My stivali? Sì. He is magnifico!”

  A sharp explosion of rapid-fire Italian from Allegra silenced the shoemaker and he lowered his head, giving in once more to the overwhelming sorrow of at last acknowledging that the single great love of his life refused to love him back. He was lost, at sea—adrift without a hint as to what would become of him now. His hope gone, his brother and cousin calling him mad and deserting him to return to the shoemaker shop, Bernardo had nowhere to go, nothing to live for, and nothing—considering the sad, empty state of his pockets—to live on even if he should wish to go on living, which, of course, he did not.