Page 29 of A Hint of Scandal (The Mismatched Lovers #2)

I t was a very different two people who emerged from the taproom an hour later. Not much more food had been eaten, but a great deal of gazing had gone on. Eventually, though, reality had forced its rude and unwanted way back into their freshly discovered rapture in the form of the urgency of their investigation. Max, while paying for their barely touched food, elicited from the landlord a list of potential places where a presumably impecunious actress might have taken lodgings for the night.

Serafina, who had paid little attention to any of this, was walking on air, every footstep buoyed up by the wonderful sensation that Max was actually, unexpectedly and as far as she could tell, deeply, in love with her. She’d suspected for some time that she might have been in love with him, but that he could have been with her had come as such a glorious surprise she kept having to replay that kiss over and over again inside her head. He’d kissed her. He hadn’t said the word ‘love’ yet, and neither had she, but that was surely what the kiss had meant. The world was the right way up again.

Only it wasn’t.

“We’ll start with The King’s Head,” Max said, bringing her back to their present predicament. “From what the landlord of The Angel said to me, that sounds like the sort of place an actress might stay.” And, offering his arm, he set off down the street with her having to skip along to keep up with his long strides. Not that she minded one bit having to do so.

Glancing up at his handsome and determined profile, Serafina gave herself a little metaphorical hug of delight. But for the moment, thoughts of what had just gone on between them needed pushing aside. They had a strange woman and her son to locate and interrogate. “She may well be going under an assumed name,” she said, as determined as Max to concentrate on the matter in hand. “We have only her appearance to go on. About five feet six inches tall, my height, with hair that was once blonde but is probably now gray, and noticeably blue eyes. I think the eyes might be the means by which we will recognize her.”

Max nodded without looking at her, for they were now arriving at The King’s Head. He held the door open for her and they entered the tap room. An elderly man behind the bar nodded a greeting to them. “Good afternoon to you, sir and madam. And how might I be of service to you?” His wispy gray hair stood out around his head like a halo, and indeed, with his white shirt, this gave him the appearance of an angelic being.

Max set out their mission in as cautious a way as possible, leaving out any details that might betray who this pertained to. Instead, he told the man they were searching for an attractive lady of perhaps nearly fifty years of age traveling with a young man some twenty years her junior who would have arrived by stagecoach either that day or the one before.

The angelic landlord shook his head sadly as though it pained him to be unable to help them. “I’m right sorry, sir, but there’re no ladies residing in any of my rooms here. A few gentlemen only, and them not of the sort someone like you would be friendly with.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But you could try The Sun. People what come in on the stagecoaches from London often choose to stay there. Tis a bit smarter than my humble hostelry, you’ll see.”

That hardly mattered, but Max said nothing so Serafina stayed silent. She’d reached the point where just listening to Max speak and watching him was taking over her entire being. Their mutual discovery had brought on the feelings she’d been fighting to control in a great leap of satisfaction which she could now no longer fully control. She really must concentrate. A lot depended on her keeping her head and not allowing herself to become distracted. But oh, how much she wanted Max to kiss her again…

Having thanked the angelic landlord for his help, they repaired to The Sun Inn, an altogether larger establishment but also lacking in producing anyone who might resemble the couple they were looking for. So on they went.

The next hostelry was called The Royal Oak. It had about it a rather splendid appearance with the rooftop hidden behind an elaborate facade, as was the current architectural custom. Sadly, yet again, this produced no possible suspects, as the only lady staying there turned out to be the wife of a prosperous farmer who happened to make her appearance while they were consulting the landlord. She turned out to be both at least seventy years old and possessed of none of the attributes one would have expected a once beautiful young actress to have laid claim to. Especially not the blue eyes.

At this point, Serafina confessed herself surprised by how many inns one small town could produce.

“Well, it is on the Great West Road,” Max said, by way of explanation. “Every coach heading west, or nearly every one, stops here to change horses and to pick up or drop off passengers. And the inns need to cater for a wide range of different types of customers. As well as those that have nothing to do with the stagecoaches but perhaps come in just for the market.”

Serafina nodded as though this meant something to her, although, in truth, it didn’t. Having led such a sheltered life, the idea of people traveling in such numbers up and down the breadth of England was alien to her. Information to be explored at a later date. There were some places in England she’d read about in her father’s old library that she’d love to visit. Why not? If she could persuade Max then she would do it. And travel the length and breadth of England in some of these coaches. Another little shiver of pleasure ran through her. Yes, she and her husband would travel. They would explore the mysterious reaches of her native land. Her husband. That this now meant a lot more than it had a few short hours ago had her succumbing to yet another metaphorical hug of her torso. She really must concentrate on the matter in hand. She and Max had the rest of their lives to be together.

As if her thoughts had caused it to appear, a stagecoach came rumbling up the street from the east at that very moment. Recognizable by its red livery and the six matching gray horses drawing it, the equipage came to rest right outside the very establishment where they’d taken their meal. The Angel.

As they were right now opposite The Angel and about to enter the next inn on their list, Max’s attention was fixed on their next destination. Serafina paused for a moment to watch it as the guard jumped down from his seat at the rear.

The rooftop passengers, who numbered five and were all men, well-wrapped up against the cold, scrambled down in a hurry, and the driver, having to duck to do so, guided his horses with consummate skill through the low archway towards the stables at the back of The Angel.

Four of the rooftop passengers hastened into the tap room but the fifth, a short, sturdy young man with a mop of unruly sandy hair, lingered on the pavement as though waiting for someone. After a couple of minutes, a woman emerged from the archway. She must have been traveling inside the coach while her partner had been forced to take a seat on the roof in the cold.

Serafina stared at her. She wore a plain brown pelisse over what looked to be a matching dull brown gown, and a straw bonnet covered her gray hair. She was clearly some years older than the man awaiting her.

Serafina tugged Max’s arm. “There. Look.”

He turned his head.

The man and woman were talking, and as they talked, an untidily dressed fellow, who might have been one of the inn’s ostlers, arrived carrying two bags which he dropped on the floor in front of them, then stood there, waiting to be tipped.

The younger traveler picked up the two bags and turned his back on the man. There would be no tipping going on there. Together, the two travelers began to cross Marlborough’s wide main street, heading for the same establishment as Max and Serafina. The disgruntled ostler, unseen by the couple, raised a single finger at them in a gesture Serafina knew to be rude and disrespectful. Then he turned on his heel and stomped back through the archway to the stableyard.

“Well spotted,” Max said. “It could be them.”

“Wait,” Serafina whispered. “Let them go in first, and then follow them.”

He gave her a brief nod, and for a moment they stood pretending to look in the window of a milliners shop, admiring the array of hats on sale.

The two travelers disappeared inside the doors of The White Hart Inn and Max and Serafina followed hot on their heels.

The White Hart appeared to be of the same sort as The King’s Head, but without the cheery and angelic landlord. Instead, a thin, sharp-faced woman with her hair scraped back in so tight a bun the skin on her face looked stretched, inhabited the space behind the bar. The taproom was empty but for her.

The travelers had already approached her.

Serafina pulled Max close enough to hear what was being said.

“We require two rooms for the night, possibly for two nights,” the woman said. She had a faint trace of an accent, but was trying hard to disguise it, which made her voice sound forced and overly refined.

Behind her, the man hung back a little, as though accustomed to her being in control.

“Names?” The sharp-faced woman said, as though no one who entered her inn could possibly be trustworthy. Perhaps she was correct on that.

“Mrs. Aubrey,” the woman said, a note of satisfaction in her tone. “Mrs. Abigail Aubrey.”

They’d found her. Serafina’s heart skipped a beat, not, this time, from nearness to Max.

“And him?”

This caused the woman to hesitate. Might she be considering gracing her son with a title? What would it be if she did? Viscount something or other that Serafina couldn’t remember. Julian’s son’s title. Would she dare?

“Mr. Quentin Aubrey. My son.”

Beside her, she felt Max’s body stiffen. That the woman and her son were using his family’s name must hurt. But it seemed likely the woman had a right to do so. As far as they knew, they were watching the true countess booking herself into the inn.

The sharp-faced landlady nodded her head. “Rooms one and two. Top of the stairs.”

Max released Serafina’s arm and stepped forward. “Mrs. Aubrey? Mrs. Abigail Aubrey?”

The woman swung around and Serafina obtained her first proper view of her. A trifle shorter than George Paynter had described her, and now in possession of a stout and matronly body, it was her face that struck Serafina the most. She must be approaching fifty, but the lines on her face suggested she was older. They deeply incised her cheeks to either side of her nose, and beneath her jaw, badly concealed by a scarf, a crepey neck hung like chicken skin. Thin lips, thin eyebrows, a nose that jutted from her face. No hint of any beauty remained to her.

She frowned, already suspicious. “What’s that to you?”

Serafina stepped closer and peered more closely.

Her eyes were not blue. Not even pale blue or gray. They were an unmistakable muddy brown. As was what remained of the color of her hair.

“It’s not her,” she said, before she could stop herself, looking up at Max.

“What?” He seemed to have been struck almost insensible by this meeting with the woman his brother had married and scorned. “What do you mean?”

“Her eyes. Look at her eyes.”

The woman, Mrs. Aubrey as she claimed, narrowed those same eyes at them both, but particularly at Serafina. “What d’you mean? What’s wrong with my eyes? And who’re you to say I’m not who I’ve said I am?” Behind her, the young man hung back, his own eyes, also brown, wide with what had to be fear, his mouth hanging open. Guilt was written across every part of him.

After a long moment, Max nodded. “They’re not blue,” he said, addressing both Serafina and the woman before them. “You can’t be Abigail Lewis. And you’re certainly not Abigail Aubrey.”

“I told you—” began the son, but the woman shot him a ferocious glare that shut him up. He hung his head, well and truly cowed.

“I’ve never had blue eyes,” the false Mrs. Aubrey snapped. “And what’s it to you, anyway?”

“My name is Aubrey. Max Aubrey, and the Earl of Westbury happens to be my brother,” Max retorted. “And as for your eyes, you may not have blue ones, but the woman who married my brother twenty seven years ago did. So much so the men who witnessed the wedding have never forgotten them.”

“Then they’re mistaken,” she almost snarled. “If they’re still alive now, then they’re old and addled and have made that up to please you. They couldn’t possibly remember the color of my eyes after all these years.”

Max shook his head. “I think you’ll find you’re wrong there. But even if their memories could be faulty, my brothers’ won’t be. He’ll be able to recognize if you’re Abigail or not. He won’t have forgotten the color of her eyes.”

“He’s on his deathbed,” the woman snapped. “I have reliable information that he’s about to die.”

“He might be dying, but he’s far from dead yet,” Max said. “And he’s very much looking forward to meeting you.”

Her mouth hung open and she gulped air in. It didn’t look as though she’d expected to be brought face to face with the man she was claiming as her husband. Might that be why she’d delayed until now? When she’d heard the Earl of Westbury was on his last legs? When she’d thought she could stake her claim without anyone being able to recognize her as an imposter?

Behind the bogus Mrs. Aubrey, her son, if he was indeed even that, took another step backwards. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I couldn’t stop her…”

She swung round on him and dealt him a resounding slap across the face that made him reel. “Shut up, you bloody fool.” Her accent had slipped.

Max nodded to the sharp-faced landlady who’d been listening in open fascination. “Send for the Constable. I want these two clapped in irons for fraud.”

She needed no second telling.

The young man began to cry.

The woman, however, was made of sterner stuff. Serafina had to give her that. “You can’t prove nothing,” she managed, although she was supporting herself on the countertop of the bar now. The threat of the Constable and prosecution must have hit home.

“On the contrary, I can,” Max said. “My brother has the fraudulent letter you sent him. I have the witness testimony from George Paynter in Oxford. You have tried to lie your way into a fortune.” He paused.

Outside, Serafina caught a glimpse of the town constable running along the road in pursuit of the sharp-faced landlady. He must have been very close for her to have found him so swiftly.

She looked back at the woman. “If you’re not Abigail Aubrey, then who are you?” She glanced up at Max. “She’s certainly someone who knows about Abigail’s and your brother’s marriage.”

The town constable staggered in through the inn doors, puffing and red-faced. “What’s going on here, then?”

Max turned to him. “These two are attempting to blackmail my brother, the Earl of Westbury, out of his fortune. They have arrived here solely for this purpose. I need you to apprehend them and confine them to the town lockup.”

“Fraud means deportation to the Colonies, all right,” the constable said, between attempts to catch his breath. “Not been much crime going on lately so they’ll go before the magistrates this week.”

This was too much for the son. Tears running down his cheeks, he dropped to his knees in front of them all. “Oh no. Please don’t do this to me. It wasn’t my fault. She made me do it. I’ll tell you everything.”

His mother, if that was what she was, aimed a kick at him but was restrained by the constable and the landlady, against whom she could not fight. Even her fiercest glare couldn’t keep the young man silent, though.

“The Abigail my ma’s pretending to be was my aunt,” he stammered, in between sobs. “She was married to your brother, your lordship, like we said, but when he up and left her, she came back home to my ma and grandma. Ma says she soon found out she was expecting his child. Ma said as she had the baby and died. The baby a bit later.”

He sniffed and wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his coat. “This all happened before I was born. I’m only twenty-one, and my name isn’t Quentin. That was the baby’s name. Mine’s Tom. Tom Trafford.” He threw a terrified glance at his mother, who was scowling furiously at him as though she wished him dead. “She said as Aunt Abbie’s husband was an earl now, and he was old and ill and going to die any day soon, and if we said we was my aunt and her baby, all grown up, he’d not be well enough to see us and know her for a fraud, and we’d get what we wanted. All his money and a big house. Just for me. She made me do it.”

“Honor amongst thieves is clearly not a real thing,” Max said, a trifle wryly. “Constable, you may take these two away. What you do with them is entirely up to you, but I don’t wish to have to see them ever again. And neither does my brother, the earl. He will be very grateful to you.”

His face flushed with self-importance at having arrested two such ruffians, the constable escorted the two fraudsters out of the inn.

The sharp-faced lady retreated back behind the bar and fished out a bottle of brandy. “Well I never,” she said with a considerable thawing of her attitude. “When I got up this morning I didn’t think the day would end like this. That I didn’t.” She produced three glasses. “Will you join me? It’s Captain Aubrey, isn’t it? You look just like your brother the earl used to when he came to town as a young man. I should’ve recognized you sooner, only he’s not graced us with his presence for a good few years now.”

She poured generous measures of the brandy and Max and Serafina both took a glass.

Serafina, feeling much in need of sustenance, didn’t sip hers but gulped it down in a way Araminta would have condemned as being most unladylike, and heaved a sigh of relief. “And now,” she said with a shaky smile for Max, and still feeling a little shocked after the confrontation, “I think we’d best go and get me measured by the Misses Sedgewick, or Elsie will wonder what we’ve been up to, and I won’t have a gown to wear for the wedding.”