Her uncle’s sharp voice cut across the murmur of the crowd. Both Allegra and her aunt tensed as George Mason strode towards them, his narrow features sharpened by dislike as he glanced at his niece.
‘Barbara, you should see to your guests,’ he commanded tersely, and Barbara offered Allegra a quick, defeated smile of apology. Allegra smiled back.
‘It was good to see you, Allegra,’ Barbara murmured. ‘We don’t see enough of you,’ she added with a shred of defiance. George motioned her away with a shooing gesture, and Barbara went.
There was a moment of tense silence and Allegra swivelled the slick, moisture-beaded stem of her champagne flute between her fingers, wondering what to say to a man who had ordered her from his house seven years ago. The few times she’d seen him since, at increasingly infrequent family gatherings, they’d avoided each other.
Now they were face to face.
He looked the same as ever, she saw as she slid him a glance from beneath her lashes. Thin, grey-haired, well-dressed, precise. Cold eyes and a prim, pursed mouth. Absolutely no humour.
‘Thank you for inviting me, Uncle George,’ Allegra finally said. ‘It was good of you, considering.’
‘I had to invite you, Allegra,’ George replied. ‘You’re family, even though you’ve hardly acted like it in the last seven years.’
Allegra pressed her lips together to keep from uttering a sharp retort. She wasn’t the one who had ordered so-called family out of his house, and who had made it increasingly difficult for Allegra to stay in touch.
Running away had been her only crime, and her uncle never failed to remind her of it.
For in running away she’d shamed him. Allegra still remembered her uncle’s fury when she’d shown up, terrified and exhausted, on his doorstep.
‘You can stay the night,’ he’d said grimly, ‘and then you need to be gone.’
‘He does business with Stefano Capozzi,’ her aunt had explained, desperate for Allegra to understand and not to judge. ‘If he’s seen sheltering you, Capozzi could make life very unpleasant for him, Allegra. For all of us.’
It had been an unpleasant insight into her former fiancé’s character. She had wondered then if Stefano would come for her, find her. Make life unpleasant for her.
He hadn’t, and as far as she knew he’d never made life unpleasant for her uncle. She wondered sometimes whether that had been a convenient excuse for George Mason to wash his hands of her, especially when her own defection had been followed so quickly by her mother’s.
Her mother…another person, another life, Allegra chose not to remember.
Now she met her uncle’s cold gaze. ‘I needed help and you gave it to me,’ she said levelly. Her fingers tightened on the stem of her glass. ‘I’ll always be grateful for that.’
‘And you’ll show it by keeping out of my way,’ George finished coolly. ‘And Daphne’s. Her nerves are strung high enough as it is.’
Allegra felt a flush creeping up her throat, staining her face. She kept her chin high. ‘I certainly don’t want to cause any dismay to my cousin. I’ll pay my respects and leave as soon as possible.’
‘Good,’ he replied shortly before moving off.
Allegra straightened proudly. She felt as if every eye in the faceless crowd was focused on her, seeing, knowing, condemning, even though she knew no one cared.
Except her uncle and his family.
A waiter passed and Allegra placed her nearly untouched champagne on his tray.
Murmuring her excuses as she moved through the crowd, she found a secluded corner of the ballroom and took her position there, half hidden behind a potted palm.
She took a deep breath and surveyed the circulating crowd. No one was paying any attention to her, she knew, because she wasn’t important. Her flight from Italy seven years ago was little cause of concern or even gossip these days.
She’d kept her head down and well out of society’s glare these last years, working two jobs to pay for her schooling. She was far, far from this glamorous crowd, the glittering lifestyle. Yet the people who knew her, who were supposed to love her…what had happened seven years ago still mattered to them. And it always would.
It didn’t bother her on a day-to-day basis. She didn’t need these people. She had a new life now, a good one. When she’d left that night, she’d gained her freedom, but the price for that freedom had been, quite literally, everything.
It had been a price worth paying.
The music died down and Allegra saw everyone heading to the tables. Dinner was about to be served.
Taking another deep breath, she moved through the crowds again and found her place card. She was at a table tucked in the back with a motley handful of guests who looked to be nearly as out of place as she was. Distant, vaguely embarrassing relatives, colleagues and friends who necessitated an invitation yet were not an asset to the sparkling and successful party George Mason intended for his daughter.
An art therapist with a disreputable past certainly fitted into that category, Allegra thought ruefully.
With a murmured hello, she took her place between an overweight aunt and a weedy looking businessman. The meal passed in stilted conversations and awkward silences as eight misfits attempted to get along.
Allegra let the conversation wash over her in a meaningless tide of sound and wondered just how soon she could leave.
She wanted to see Daphne but, with the cold, ambitious Charles Edmunds at her cousin’s side, Allegra wasn’t expecting a cosy cousinly chat.
The plates were cleared and her uncle stood up to speak. Allegra watched him posture importantly, talking about how he knew Charles Edmunds, cracking business jokes. At one point he pontificated on the importance of family and she smothered the stab of resentment that threatened to pierce her composure.
Soon after, the music started up again and Allegra excused herself from the table before anyone could ask her to dance. The junior from Charles’s office had been eyeing her with a determined expression.
She moved through the crowds, her head held high, her eyes meeting no one else’s.
Daphne stood apart with her husband, pale and luminous in a designer wedding gown that hugged her slight figure before flaring out in a row of ruffles.
‘Hello, Daphne,’ Allegra said.
Her cousin—the cousin she’d shared summers in Italy with, swimming and laughing and plaiting each other’s hair—now turned to her with a worried expression.
‘Hh… Hello, Allegra,’ she said after a moment, her apprehensive gaze flicking to her husband. ‘Have you met Charles?’
Charles Edmunds smiled coolly. ‘Yes, your cousin came to our engagement party.
