Until he was, suddenly. Here. Today.
What the dickens was Allegra going to do?
Chapter 5
“Obviously, you can’t wear that,” Dorcas said.
The trio stood in the middle of Portia’s dressing room, which was larger than Allegra’s entire servant quarters. She slept in a maid’s room between her cousin’s bedchambers, as she had done for most of their lives. What need had she of a dressing room full of armoires when everything she owned could fit into a small valise?
At the moment, her younger cousins were poking at her. As though Allegra were a butterfly about to be pinned into eternal compliance, the mirror of its lifeless neighbors.
“Why can’t I wear this?” Allegra said. “It is one of the five dresses I own, and Captain L’Amour has already seen me in it.”
“Exactly,” Portia said with feeling. “Your reunion with your lost love should be as magical as the first time he laid eyes on you.”
“I looked like me the first time he saw me,” Allegra answered, no longer certain if she referred to her fictitious suitor or the inexplicable stranger. “And the last time.”
“However,” interjected ever-practical Dorcas, “the master of ceremonies shall not allow you in the door looking like a dowd.”
“Is that true?” Allegra asked in surprise. “I’ve gone everywhere else looking like I always do.”
“We’ve never rubbed shoulders with Polite Society before,” Portia reminded her.
“I don’t know if that will change tonight either,” said Dorcas. “The London season won’t properly end until Parliament concludes a month from now. It shall probably be the same old—”
Portia trod on her sister’s toe. “The point is, a few lords and ladies might be here, which is why assembly rooms employ a supervisor to keep ton standards. And the even more important point, is that Captain L’Amour will be there, and he is the only one Allegra wishes to impress.”
Allegra, as it is happened, did not wish to make any further impressions upon Not-Captain L’Amour. Nor did she believe the gorgeous man would venture anywhere near the Castle Inn tonight, having been forewarned the three madwomen from earlier would be in attendance.
He was an innocent bystander who by now wished he’d remained standing innocently by. Rather than leap to her defense only to tangle himself in her web of lies.
Despite Allegra’s certainty that she and the Not-Captain would both undertake every precaution in their power never to cross paths again, she nonetheless had to keep up appearances, lest her cousins suspect the truth.
“Very well,” she said with a sigh. “I will wear whatever you think best.”
Portia let out a squeal that shook the windows and dashed to open her wardrobe.
Dorcas was right behind her.
“This is so exciting,” Portia gushed. “It’s like we’re living the legend.”
“The legend of…Captain L’Amour?” Allegra enquired.
“The legend of Siren’s Retreat!” Portia held different gowns up to Allegra’s face to gauge the effect of their colors. “Mrs. Cartwright, the proprietress of this lovely property, fell in love at first sight within these very walls.”
“Not this dressing room,” Dorcas explained. “But somewhere in the house.”
Portia gave a romantic sigh. “The first banns were read the very next day, and they lived in bliss forever after.”
“Until Mr. Cartwright died,” Dorcas added. “That’s when the widow split the erstwhile family home into comfortable apartments for tourists.”
“So clever of her,” Portia said. “Along with the three bungalows closer to the beach, I should think it provides her a tidy income.”
“I hope so,” Dorcas answered. “I heard Mr. Cartwright’s will gave her the property, but there was no money saved to support it.”
“For a happy ending,” Allegra ventured, “this story is missing a great deal of ‘happy.’”
Portia hung a celestial blue gown over the back of a tall chair. “No one could have foreseen a deathly reaction to a simple walnut, and as to the widow… Mrs. Cartwright not only made Siren’s Retreat profitable, she’s been bringing love into the lives of her tenants ever since!”
Dorcas’s eyes softened. “True love like Allegra and Captain L’Amour found.”
“Hopefully a little truer,” Allegra muttered.
The young women did not hear her. Footmen had arrived to deliver hot baths.
Allegra sank into the scented water gratefully. She closed her eyes and pretended they had gone anywhere but Brighton for their holiday.
She wished she were at home with the piano. Or that there was a conveniently located piano for the exorcising of personal demons here at the inn. Even better, she wished she could magically turn into a piano. At least then she needn’t deal with dresses and dances and balls and beaux anymore.
On the rare occasions Uncle Townsend hosted a dinner party, Allegra accompanied the dancers on the pianoforte rather than on the dance floor. Allegra liked it that way. She preferred music to machinations. The piano was her one true joy.
But here in Brighton, there was no piano to escape to. Thus for her, it was not a holiday, but an exile from the thing she loved most.
Without music, Allegra felt lost. At loose ends. Incomplete. The piano was where she invented her wildest creations. She had never been able to do outrageous things, so instead she said them and played them, pouring her heart into the ivory keys.
Until today, the fantasies in her mind came to life at her fingertips, not on a seaside pedestrian walkway.
How could it be otherwise? She was the peculiar, dowdy, unappealing, upper-servant poor relation. Her dowry wasn’t generous enough to attract fortune hunters, therefore Allegra had attracted no one at all.
Or perhaps Uncle had kept her indoors, tucked away in the servants’ quarters or behind a piano, because losing her would necessitate the hiring of actual employees to take her place.
The fragrant bathwater began to cool long before Allegra was ready to consider attending a ball. She had never properly attended any event as an invited guest before, but rather as chaperone to one or both of her cousins. Tonight felt magical.
Usually, the role of lady’s maid also fell to Allegra. But today, her charges were far more invested in transforming their spinster cousin into a princess than minding their own toilettes.
Once they were all bathed and in their chemises, Dorcas and Portia fussed about Allegra like chirping birds. Pinning this, pinching that, smoothing this, smushing that.
In little more than an hour, Allegra found herself standing before a tall looking-glass, staring at the reflection of a stranger. Light blue puffed sleeves, a matching bodice and underdress, a flowing overskirt of white silk embellished with flounces of lace.
“I…” she breathed in wonder. “I look like…”
“A princess,” Dorcas said with confidence, at the same time Portia said with equal confidence, “A captainess.”
Dorcas whirled on her sister. “What, pray tell, is a captainess?”
“The wife of a captain?”
“The wife of a captain is called wife.”