Page 13 of A Hint of Scandal (The Mismatched Lovers #2)

W atkins had just helped Max out of his coat and cravat and was laying out his nightshirt for him when a timid knock came at the bedroom door. Watkins opened it to reveal the sallow visage of Willis, Maria’s middle-aged lady’s maid. “If you please,” she said, bobbing a curtsey to Max, “but Lady Westbury has asked if you would be kind enough to come to her room.”

Max glanced at the clock on the mantlepiece, a mahogany and fan inlaid eight-day timepiece by John Horn. Just gone ten. Well, he wasn’t tired yet, and it appeared Maria wasn’t either. What might she want to talk about at this hour? He’d better go.

Watkins, who must have been hoping to be able to retire to bed soon, passed him his banyan, and, wrapping it one-handed about his torso, Max strode along the landing in his stockinged feet to the room that Maria shared with the absent Julian’s.

A fire was blazing in the hearth making the room cozy and welcoming. Maria, sitting up in bed looking jaunty, with a warm peignoir about her shoulders and a lacy cap on her graying curls, waved Willis away. “I won’t need you again tonight, thank you, Willis. Max can blow out the candles when he leaves.”

Willis, luckier than Watkins, departed.

Maria waved an airy hand at a rather-too-pink upholstered chair by the window. “Bring that over here by the bed and sit down, Max.” She sounded very much as she had done when he’d been a boy of eleven and she’d wanted a heart-to-heart with him about his unwise decision to let the sheep from Home Farm into the churchyard and one of them had fallen into an open grave and needed rescuing by Old Rushworth, the sexton.

Should he feel worried? Had he done something last night that he shouldn’t have? Good heavens. What was he thinking? He was a man grown now, not a small boy.

His curiosity aroused, as well as a sort of nameless guilt that insisted on returning him to his childhood, he did as he was told, and settled himself in the seat, a little annoyed that he’d forgotten to put his sling on in his haste to obey her summons. His right arm hung like a dead weight that he had to physically pick up so he could lay his hand in his lap, something that made him acutely self-conscious of his disability, even in front of Maria. “What can I do for you?” The words emerged a little more gruffly than he’d intended.

Maria glanced down as she smoothed the bedcovers with dainty fingers, before raising her eyes and fixing him with something that could easily have been described as a hard stare. “How did your afternoon go?”

Immediately on the defensive, Max bridled. “I spent an interesting few hours at the British Museum. As I told my mother.”

Maria’s eyes twinkled. “Come now, Max. Tell me the truth. You went there with a young lady.”

How on earth did she know? Did she have psychic powers? He’d once had a discussion along those lines with a friend at school, and they’d come to the conclusion that mothers and schoolmasters could well have been possessed of magical intuition. But he’d been a boy then. However, even now the urge to deny everything was strong. Luckily, honesty got the better of him. “I did.” He wasn’t about to impart more than that though. It wasn’t any of her business who he went where with, after all.

She smiled, her resemblance to her pretty daughter noticeable. “There’s no need to look so forbidding, you know. I’m a woman, and we have our ways of finding things out.”

A mind reader, too.

Max heaved a sigh. “I can believe that. How on earth did you find out, though? You have to tell me.” Was he going to be questioned about everyone he met here in London? Every woman, that was. If he hadn’t been so fond of Maria he’d have thought her intrusive. That her interest was purely due to her concern that he should receive his inheritance, he acknowledged, but it didn’t make her nosiness any more bearable. Nosiness had always been something he’d found abhorrent.

She chuckled. “Louis told me, of course. Have you forgotten he and Henry went to call upon the Gilbert girl this afternoon? She told them where you’d gone. Or rather, she told them where her aunt had gone and in whose company. I don’t think she knew they were related to you. Not at first, anyway. I imagine the younger Miss Gilbert was glad to share such a juicy piece of gossip.”

Of course. No use denying it now. Best to come clean. “I encountered her at the ball last night, and discovered our mutual interest in all things Egyptian. She told me she’d never been to the British Museum, but had always longed to visit. So I said I’d take her.” His words came out in more of a hurry than he’d intended. A little flustered by the defensive way he was feeling, he frowned in an effort to put Maria off further enquiry.

It didn’t work.

Maria, who’d long suffered the vagaries of her husband where Egyptology was concerned, wrinkled her nose. “Not a very romantic place to take a young lady.”

Max shifted in his seat. “It was not meant to be romantic.”

She sighed. “Oh, Max, you ask a lady to step out with you and then you take her to a stuffy old museum? How very like dear Julian you are. If I didn’t know you were brothers before this, I most certainly would now. She must surely have been expecting something a little less dry and dusty?”

Max laughed. “You’re mistaken, I’m afraid. It was Miss Gilbert, Miss Serafina Gilbert, who told me she’d always wanted to go there. So I said I would take her. I had no intention of our outing being in any way romantic.” But was he telling her the truth? Heat he couldn’t control rose to his cheeks. He had nowhere to hide. Maria pounced.

“Aha. I see you have found her company felicitous or you would not now be blushing like a maiden.”

This only made him blush more furiously. Max scowled at her. “Thank you for drawing attention to my condition.”

Maria chuckled. “It seems even the most hardened and experienced of soldiers cannot hide their feelings when pressed.”

Max stayed silent. Denying he had feelings would play into her hands.

She blew out her lips. “Well, perhaps you could tell me a little about your Miss Serafina Gilbert. Julian will be expecting to hear all about her in my next letter home to him.”

Clearly he wasn’t about to escape Maria’s clutches until she’d extracted every detail of the afternoon from him. Max sighed. “She is a nice girl but from a not so nice family.”

Maria huffed. “Such an evocative turn of phrase. And Louis already told me his opinion of the family, gained from an afternoon spent with the niece. And of course, I’m aware that Miss Serafina is only a half-sister to the present Baronet. If you imagine I will not know your young lady’s connections, then you are very wrong.”

“She is not my young lady.”

Maria tapped the side of her nose and bestowed her most knowing smile upon him. “So you say, my dear Maxim. So you say.”

Deciding to ignore her intimation that she didn’t believe him, Max shifted on his seat uncomfortably, groping for something else to say to distract her, and failing. What he itched to do was to question her, but he controlled himself. Raising a false hope in her would raise a matching one in him, and as far as he could make out, Serafina was not attracted to him. Although… perhaps Maria might be the one who could give him some advice. He’d confided in her on numerous occasions throughout his youth, and every time she’d fulfilled her promises not to share his secrets, small though they might have been. Unlike his mother who’d been known to announce them to all and sundry at dinner parties and the like. He’d learned early on not to confide in his mother. She had no sense of what should remain private.

“Maria…”

Her gaze sharpened. “Yes?”

He fidgeted. Confiding in anyone came hard to him nowadays. He was no longer a hapless boy. “I’m very aware that if I don’t marry, I won’t receive my inheritance, as you know.”

She nodded.

“And I think you know that I feel I have little to offer a young lady with my arm like this. It makes me feel…” He paused. “It makes me feel like I’m only half a man. And on top of that, I don’t think I have it in me to fall in love. Not now, at any rate.”

She opened her mouth to protest this, but he held his hand up, wanting to continue before his natural reticence silenced him. He’d heard her and Julian’s arguments to this before.

“I cannot deny that Miss Serafina Gilbert interests me. We have our love of Egyptian relics in common, at least. She is most knowledgeable on the subject. I think Julian would love to converse with her. But… I don’t think she’s interested in me.” He glanced down at his arm. “Why would she be? When I am like this.”

Maria pursed her lips for a moment. “Max, she is a girl in a difficult situation. She’s an orphan who has lived in the household of her brother for a number of years, and from her appearance—yes, I studied her for a short time at the ball—it does not appear that it is a happy home for her. She has more the appearance of a governess, or perhaps even a lady’s maid or unpaid companion. She’s too young to be condemned to that sort of life. Her niece, Arabella’s new friend, I had more leisure to observe, and a more spoilt and demanding young lady I’ve yet to meet.”

“She loves her niece unconditionally.”

Maria shook her head. “That’s as may be. I doubt the girl has any true affection for her aunt. Really, I’m quite surprised Arabella has taken to her like this, but they were somewhat thrown together at the ball. A superficial acquaintance I suspect, not to be continued.”

“And what did you think of Serafina?” Max asked, keen to shift the subject back to her, his tongue loosened now he’d found someone with whom to talk about her. He didn’t give a jot about the niece.

“I think she needs to escape that house and that family who are sucking her dry like a set of leeches, or she’ll end up a dry, withered husk of an old lady treated like a servant all her life. I’ve seen that happen to unmarried sisters before. It’s a half-life only, and from the look of her, she doesn’t deserve that.”

One thing you could rely on with Maria was her tendency to speak her mind, at home if not in public. A small smile twitched the corners of Max’s mouth. “I think you have it there.”

“Then why not offer for her?”

Yes, why not? “A lot of reasons, the main one being my arm, or rather my lack of it. Also throw in the fact that neither of us love each other. Although you might say that is the most important point.”

“A problem that’s entirely in your head,” Maria retorted. “And it’s also a problem, if you want it to be counted as one, that will be exactly the same with any young lady you consider. At least you like this one and have found common ground. And if she is interested in Egypt and its history, surely that means she is a girl in possession of a brain?”

Did he like her? Or was there something more? “I don’t know if she likes me though.”

“Did she talk to you?”

He nodded.

“Smile at you?”

He nodded.

“Did she enjoy herself?”

He nodded a third time. “But you can’t equate those reactions with her having liked me.”

Maria sighed as though she were dealing with a recalcitrant puppy. “Tell me, Max, do you look in the mirror when you shave in the mornings?”

Max frowned. “You know I have to have Watkins shave me nowadays.”

She frowned back at him. “I forgot. What about when you do up your cravat? Or comb your hair? Surely you look in the mirror when you’re doing that?”

“I do when I comb my hair.”

“Well then. What do you see? No. Don’t answer me. The man looking back at you is one of the handsomest men in London. Forget your arm, for once. You wear it like a ball and chain and need to get out of that habit. Having it in a sling gives you the attractive air of a wounded soldier.”

“I am a wounded soldier.”

“Exactly. Just because you find your arm unpleasant does not mean women will. You’re tall. Taller than Julian and much more handsome.” She pulled a wry face. “Especially now he’s got so bald and fat. Not that I love him any less like that, but one has to be realistic. You, on the other hand, are a positive adonis.”

Max burst out laughing. “An adonis I am not, I can assure you.”

She shook her head. “Nonsense. You are making the mistake of considering yourself from the point of view of a man. I see you with a woman’s eyes and I find you most attractive.”

Max fidgeted. “Should I be worried?”

She laughed. “No, you shouldn’t. A woman can find a man attractive without following through. My love for your brother is steadfast, but I can see what other women must see in you. And I can assure you that your Miss Gilbert, Serafina, will not have been blind to your attributes.”

He frowned. “I don’t know. Perhaps you’re right. She was charming company.” He remembered her nervous demeanor as they’d neared the house in Great Titchfield Street. “And she’s clearly unhappy in her situation. But whatever you say, I don’t think she would agree. And not just because of my disability.”

“Your mama and I would very much like to see you married, Max, and I know Julian has asked you to marry before he… before he has to leave us.” Her voice faltered. This was the nearest she’d ever come to saying Julian’s time was limited.

Max reached out and covered her hand with his own. “I know I have to marry. I’m not such an idiot as to deliberately give up my inheritance out of contrariness. And I do like Miss Gilbert, but I feel knowing her for such a short time, I’m not in a position to decide whether to offer for her. And nor is she in a position to decide to say yes or not. In fact, what I fear is that she might choose to accept my offer just to escape her situation and then regret it afterwards.”

Maria shrugged. “She might, but an arranged marriage can develop into true love, you know. And I’m well aware that you don’t wish to attend the ‘marriage mart’ as other eligible gentlemen do.”

He nodded. “Not being able to dance is a handicap to begin with.”

She chuckled. “That and being as miserable as sin. Your expression last night was enough to put off anyone from approaching you. You didn’t circulate but instead kept close attendance on your mama. It’s a wonder you didn’t frighten off Arabella’s possible suitors.”

“I can’t help it if I feel as though everyone is staring at my arm.”

Maria huffed. “For goodness sake, forget about your arm. It means nothing. If you want my advice, you should pursue your Miss Gilbert. And invite her here for tea, but without her dreadful sister-in-law if possible. I’d like to meet her.”

He snorted. “Inspect her, you mean.”

“That as well. When are you seeing her next?”

He rubbed his forehead. “Thursday. I said I’d take her out in the carriage to the park. For some air.”

Her mouth widened in a triumphant smile. “Perfect. I see you need no directing from me. Perhaps you could bring her here for tea afterwards?”

He couldn’t be angry with her. She was far too well-meaning and loveable for that. “Very well, but no inquisition. Just be friendly.”

“As if I was ever anything else. Now. Off you go to bed and blow out my candles on your way out. I need my beauty sleep.” She dimpled at him. “And so do you in your new role as suitor.”