Page 31 of A Hint of Scandal (The Mismatched Lovers #2)

T he Common License from the Bishop of Salisbury was waiting for them on the table in the entrance hall, so, having tucked it away in the inside pocket of his coat. Max escorted Serafina upstairs to Julian’s study with the intention of revealing the outcome of their investigation.

They found Julian seated at his desk, surrounded by piles of papers and open textbooks, a tray of untouched food by his side. He looked up as Max ushered Serafina through the door, raising anxious, bloodshot eyes and tossing down his pen. It left a string of inky blots across the page he’d been writing on. “Well? Do you have news?” There was an unmistakable tremor in his voice. The last few days of what must have been terrible worry had wrought changes upon him, and not for the better.

Better put his mind at rest straightaway. “You may rest easy,” Max began with. As a soldier he’d learnt that hedging around a subject never helped. You had to get to the nub of the matter straightaway. “She wasn’t the woman you married, and she’s gone. Crisis averted.” He pulled out the one chair for Serafina, who sat in it, a thoughtful expression on her face.

“She wasn’t?” Julian asked, relief flooding his face. “She wasn’t Abigail?”

Max nodded. “I’m sorry, or perhaps glad, to have to tell you that Abigail Aubrey died not long after you two parted, in giving birth to her… your… child. Who also died. The woman we met in Marlborough today, who was fully intending to hoodwink our entire family, was her sister, to whom she must have confided the whole sordid story before she died. The young man she was going to pass off as your son is that woman’s own son. They are both now in the custody of the constable. For fraud. I had the impression he’s delighted to have made such an arrest.”

Julian’s mouth had fallen open and his chest was heaving for his scanty breath. “She’s dead? You’re sure?”

Max grit his teeth and nodded. This was not the brother he’d looked up to all his life. This was a man who’d lied to the young actress he’d married in order to bed her, then left her, and married a second wife in the full knowledge that the first was probably still alive but thinking herself not legally wed. A glance at Serafina’s face told him she shared his opinion. Would he ever look at Julian the same way again?

“I can’t believe it,” Julian said. “She’s dead? And the child? I just can’t believe it.” He hung his head. Were those tears? “She was so vital, so alive. I would not wish death on her or her child. I would not.”

He rose a fraction in Max’s estimation at these words.

“Nevertheless, whatever you would not wish on her,” Max said, determined to rub in the wrongdoing, “if she were living, you would be in a monumental mess. A scandal that would ruin this family and any prospects your children might have had. And nothing about this result detracts from what you did to that girl, and then went on to do to Maria.”

“I’m sorry for what I did,” Julian said, shaking his head. “Sorry I married her, sorry I lied to her and left her, sorry for what I could have been doing to Maria and our children.” He looked up, his eyes brimming with anguish. “And without you, Max, the scandal would have become real.”

Max dropped a hand onto Serafina’s shoulder. “It’s not me you have to thank, but my betrothed. It was her astuteness which brought about the denouement of the fraudsters. She has a bent for investigation like no other I’ve ever met.” He let his fingers caress her shoulder and she tipped her head to settle her cheek against his hand. This did not go unnoticed.

Julian coughed into his handkerchief, but his eyes appeared to be taking in the rather bedraggled appearance of his two investigators. “Thank you, Miss Gilbert—Serafina—with all my heart. You are undoubtedly the savior of this family’s… no, of my honor.” A faint smile ghosted across his face. “And even I can see that the pursuit of these vagabonds has brought you two closer together than I could have hoped for.”

Max couldn’t help the smile. “It has indeed.”

As it was late in the day, Max put off visiting the vicar in the village to arrange the wedding until the next morning. Their luck held, and the day dawned bright and clear, as only the earliest of spring mornings can, with dew sparkling on every blade of grass and only a few clouds left in the sky when the morning mist had cleared.

Arm in arm, Max and Serafina strolled down to the village, having shunned the idea of taking the landau. As Max said, they’d both had enough of being cooped up in a carriage over the last few days. Fresh air would be much nicer. They passed the busy Home Farm and the estate manager’s house, crossed the wide, tree-dotted parkland, and followed the gravel driveway where it wound through the woods with just the glint of the ornamental lake in the distance.

At the vicarage, a square built house beside the church in the center of the village, they found the vicar, Reverend Bentley, at home. His housekeeper brought them tea in his study, and Max explained the circumstances at Bratton pertaining to Julian’s condition and therefore to the carrying out of the marriage. He brought out the Common License from his coat pocket, and Mr. Bentley, the same bewigged incumbent Max had known since boyhood, happily agreed to perform the marriage service in the estate chapel on the following Saturday. The elderly vicar shook hands with Max and kissed Serafina’s hand, obviously delighted to be able to marry one of the Aubrey family. “It won’t be the first marriage I’ve conducted in that little chapel, as so many of his lordship’s tenants choose to marry there. But I think it will be the first for one of you Aubreys.”

With that sorted, Max and Serafina wandered back through the village and into the park together, neither of them in much of a hurry to return to the castle. This was ground Max had roamed over as a boy and very young man, and he somehow felt more at home out here than he did within the confines of the castle. In the same way he’d felt at home while on campaign in foreign lands.

He unhooked his arm from Serafina’s and instead took her hand in his. “I could walk here with you forever on this idyllic spring morning. It’s as if nature knows of our love and has sent this day as a special gift just for us.”

For a moment, she pulled away, but only to remove her gloves. Once she’d done that, she took his hand again, skin on skin, warm and comforting. “I could too.” The throaty quaver in her voice had the immediate effect of rendering Max’s breeches once more most uncomfortable. Damnit—how did she succeed in doing this to him just with two words?

He stopped, where a chestnut tree overhung the road, and turning, pulled her into his embrace, his one arm holding her close. “It’s no use. I have to do this.” And he bent and kissed her. Her response was immediate. Her mouth opened beneath his, and her body melted into his as though made of putty. If only he had two arms with which to hold her.

Eventually, they had to come up for air, though, both of them gasping. She laughed, the sound music in Max’s ears. So much so that he had to kiss her again. For longer.

When they finally parted this time, somehow, Serafina’s demure bonnet had come undone and fallen to the ground, and Max was thinking longingly of their wedding night in just four days’ time.

She picked up her bonnet, dangling it by its ribbons. “I think we’d better keep walking before someone comes along and catches us like this.” There was no reprimand in her words though. She was not a coy miss out to tease him.

Max seized her hand again, and, not hurrying their steps, they continued. All around, the hint of bluebells to come showed, where their pointy leaves were pushing up out of the ground. No sign of the flowers as yet, of course, but a solemn promise of the color to come. Max lifted his chin and looked upwards at the sweep of the greening branches overhead. “Spring is coming.”

She nodded. “I think it’s already here.”

“When I was a boy, I used to roam all over this estate. I know every corner of it. Sometimes with some of the boys whose fathers worked for mine. Often alone. I wasn’t a boy who had to be part of a group, either here at home or at school.”

“And yet you became part of a group when you joined the army.” Her breasts were rising and falling as if she’d been running. He couldn’t take his eyes off the shape of them beneath her gown. So tantalizing. Did she feel as aroused as he did? The color in her cheeks told him yes. What would it be like to…? No. He mustn’t think of that… not yet, anyway. Time enough in four days’ time. Four days. God, that was a lifetime.

With difficulty, he gathered his wits. “I know. But it didn’t feel the same. The army is one large group of which everyone is a member, yet within that group there’s scope for individuality. I hung onto mine. And it taught me to rely on the friends I had.” He paused, remembering the shades of the men he’d known and lost. “But it inures you to loss, I think.”

Any other person might have pushed him to say more. Not Serafina. She just tightened the grip she had on his hand as though in comfort. And it was comforting. More comforting than any words could have been. Unfortunately it did nothing for his state of arousal.

She stared ahead of herself, continuing with their conversation as though she hadn’t noticed the prominent bulge in his breeches. A bulge he couldn’t hide. “Did you have any favorite places on the estate? I did, as a child. A place I would go to when I was sad and missing my father, and Araminta had been nasty to me.” She shrugged. “Which I have to admit was quite often, especially at first. After a while, I learned to keep out of her way and avoid things that would anger her. And to make myself useful so she might appreciate me.” She paused, as if reflecting. “Not that she ever did. Or not much at any rate.”

“Where did you go?”

“When my brother took over the estate after my father’s death, he decided to take back some of the farms from our tenants. Not that we had many. He said he wanted to make the estate more efficient, and they weren’t paying enough money. I found this out when I was older. At the time, I was too young to recognize what was happening. But I did wonder why the farmhouses were empty where before there’d been families and children I’d played with.”

She stopped and shaded her eyes as a shaft of sunlight slanted through the branches. It brought out the gold in her hair, making it shimmer.

“And did it make your brother richer? Taking away those people’s livelihoods?”

She frowned. “I have no idea. The way he and Araminta scrimp and save you’d think they were paupers. My one hope is that when Ogden dies, little Teddy will become a spendthrift and run through all his father’s hoarded money. I believe children raised in such a parsimonious fashion often do.” She gave a guilty chuckle. “Am I wicked to think like that?”

“No. But where did you go? You haven’t said.”

“I went to one of the farmhouses. I knew where the key was kept, under a plant pot at the back door. The farmer’s wife had shown me when she still lived there, and my father and I would visit, and she’d give me cakes hot from her oven. With her gone, I would let myself in and pretend it was my house and that I lived there with my papa…” Her voice trailed off.

“You pretended he was alive, still?”

“Yes. It helped me. I would have long conversations with him. He was my support.”

“Good to have a support. And a place to go where you could be alone.”

Her smile was radiant. “Oh, I was never truly alone. I had my father.”

His heart could have burst with love for that lost and lonely little girl who’d conjured back her father’s ghost for a companion because she’d had no other. Well, now she had him and she’d never be alone again. Nor unloved.

She tugged at his hand. “But what about you? You haven’t told me if you had anywhere special you went to?”

He halted, turning towards her. “I did. Would you like to see it? It’s not far from here.”

Those wide gray eyes gazed back up at him so full of love he could hardly breathe. So this was what true love was, this breath-snatching, heart-hammering, limb-melting cauldron of longing to protect her forever mixed with an almost crippling desire for her physical body to be his.

She nodded. “I would. Very much so.”

The longing to take her in his arms again and kiss her all over had to be controlled. Instead, he turned off the driveway and into the woodland to their left, heading down towards the ornamental lake some long-gone ancestor of his had caused to be dug. Hidden from the main house, open parkland ran down to it on three sides, and on the fourth a white limestone folly stood, close by the water’s edge. It was to this that he led Serafina.

The folly itself, constructed in the style of a small Greek temple, complete with a pillared portico, nestled in its woodland setting as though it had always been there. As Serafina surveyed it, Max slipped his arm about her shoulders. “My grandfather had it built for my grandmother, nearly a century ago. They used to come here when they wanted to escape the pressures created by being an earl and a countess and having a huge estate to run. Julian showed it to me when I was very small. And when he was gone to Oxford and London, and I was lonely, I used to come here by myself.”

They crossed the grass, mown short by deer and sheep, of which there was no sign, and approached the folly. Four Doric pillars on a small terrace supported an overhanging, sloping, tiled roof. Beyond, a doorway opened into the inner sanctum. Max pushed the door open and led Serafina inside.

It was much as he remembered it from the last time he’d been here. Dusty, a few cobwebs, but he could have left it yesterday instead of more than ten years since.

“It’s beautiful,” Serafina said, on a breath of admiration. “I think your hideaway is far superior to mine.”

A dusty chaise longue stood away from the back wall; a rug covered the marble floor, a few dead leaves had found their way inside; sunlight slanted in through the cobwebby windows to left and right.

Max brushed the dust off the chaise longue and coughed. “In need of a clean, I fear.”

She’d followed him and was standing very close. “Not at all. This is just as it should be. If anyone had cleaned it, we’d know someone else was using it. Like this, it’s ours and ours alone. It’s meant to be a secret and now it’s ours.”

“I like that.” He bent his head and kissed her, and as he did, she put her arms around him, hugging him close, pressing her body against his so hard she must have been able to feel the suddenly springing arousal that had accompanied the kiss.

Her fingers were in his hair, pulling his head closer to hers. Her lips were as hungry as his. He pulled her harder against him as they sank down onto the chaise longue together. Drat that bloody arm for getting in the way.

As soon as they stepped into the folly, Serafina had known what would happen there. Heat had flooded through her body in a tidal wave of pure desire as unexpected as it was alien to her. As he’d kissed her, she’d felt her knees buckle, and together they’d half-fallen, half-sat on the chaise longue. His tongue was on hers, his hand touching her breast through the stout covering of gown and stays, and all she knew was that she wanted more. And she wanted it now. Saturday was too far away.

As though driven by something far from common sense, as Max leaned over her, she wrapped her legs around his body, drawing him in ever closer, feeling that glorious throbbing object he had in his trousers that was thrilling her to her core as it pressed against her through the thin cotton of her gown and making her almost squirm with desire.

Nothing else mattered. They were here, in this moment, and it was the right moment. He was leaning his weight on his arm, unable to do anything more than kiss her. What did four days matter? She was ready to give herself to him right now in this secret hiding place he’d shown her. To make it theirs forever by the consummation of their love. She pulled her skirts up and out of his way as he pressed himself against her.

His lips sent fiery trails through her body as his kisses descended from her lips to her neck to her breasts. The buttons of her bodice flew undone and a deep groan of pleasure exploded from her lungs. She wanted him with all her being. With her body and her soul.

But reason and conscience must have seized him. He pulled back, pushing himself upright, hair tousled and eyes uncertain yet still smoldering with passion. “We shouldn’t.” He didn’t sound all that convinced.

She shook her head. “We should.”

His eyes widened. She could see the longing in them, but also the doubt and the guilt. “You want this? I would not force myself on you.”

“I can assure you that you’re not. I want this as much as you do.”

“You’re sure?”

Lying on the chaise longue, her skirts around her waist, she nodded. “I am. Now is the right time. I know it. I can’t wait four days for this. I want you now.”

“Then stand up. I’m not making love to you in a hurry as though we were yokels in a hedge.”

She got to her feet, a tiny part of her wishing they were indeed yokels in a hedge, free to rut as and when the fancy took them.

“Turn around.”

She did as he said. Breathing heavily, he stood behind her, his fingers fumbling with the fastenings of her gown, but he had them undone at last and the gown pooled at her feet on the rug. He moved on to the petticoat and stays. He seemed to know how they worked and was surprisingly good at it with one hand. She’d ask him about that later. They came off, leaving her in just her slip and stockings, still with her back to him.

She heard the rustle as he removed his own clothing, but stood resolute, nervous anticipation crackling through her body, unquenchable desire burning in her core.

“Sit down.”

She turned. He was wearing just his shirt. Dark hair curled below his throat and across the part of his chest she could see. His eyes were hot with desire. The nervous anticipation turned to liquid fire at her core, and she sat, her hands automatically going to cover her breasts under the almost transparent fabric of her chemise.

He knelt before her, his hand on her left ankle. “These need to come off too.”

“My legs?” She couldn’t resist a giggle. Perhaps a nervous one. Definitely a nervous one. She’d seen enough on the farms of Milford to know what must be coming next, and it frightened her a little, despite the longing for it to happen.

“Your stockings. Let me.”

He ran his hand up her calf, over her knee to where her garter secured her left stocking. The touch of his fingers sent shivers through her body, starting in her toes and cascading up to the top of her head, where it felt as though her scalp had tightened. He undid the garter and slid the stocking down her leg, his touch firm and confident. Lifting her foot to his mouth, he gently sucked first one toe, then each in turn. Good heavens. The sensation that cascaded through her had her panting with something that had to be lust. That touching such a simple, useful thing as a toe, but in this way, with his lips and tongue, could do this to her…

Then he reached up to do the same to the other stocking.

This was almost too much for Serafina. As his hand slid over her thigh, she leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. His fingers froze on her leg as the garter came undone and he kissed her back. Then his hand slid up her thigh towards the center of her longing. Upwards, his fingers exploring until she could bear it no longer. With a gasp of pleasure she released his mouth and fell back on the chaise longue, eyes closed, her body and his hand the only things that existed. Those fingers. That touch.

How had she never known this sort of pleasure could exist? As if by themselves, her legs parted as he continued his exploration, touching, teasing, goading her body into responses she’d never known it possessed. She arched her back and as she did so, she felt him enter her at last. A strangled cry escaped her lips, partly from shock and partly from pleasure, as for the first time in her life she discovered carnal love.

His lips were on hers again, his body on top of hers, her legs wrapped around his torso as though she never wanted him to stop. Pleasure shivered through her, throbbing, pulsating, driven into her until she could almost bear it no longer. The pleasure was painful, sharp, tender. Everything she might have dreamed of, had she known it existed. She never wanted it to stop, but as she felt his body tense, it did. It was over. She was his and he was hers. Forever. More so than any marriage ceremony could ever have made them.

After a few moments, Max rolled to one side. “Now you’ll have to make an honest man of me.”

She chuckled. “I’m glad our first time was here.”

He nodded, his cheek against hers. “I am too. This is my special place. I feel it won’t be the first time we do this here.”

“I think you might be right.”

He turned her head to face his. “I always am.” And he kissed her again.

THE END