Page 22 of A Hint of Scandal

Letty appeared sufficiently satisfied by her responses to turn her attention to Serafina. “Now, you’d better hurry up and change into your own gown for dinner,” she said, nodding to where Roberts had laid out a plain brown dress on Serafina’s bed. “And you can tell me about your afternoon with the Earl of Westbury’s younger brother.”

As she slipped out of her day gown, Serafina bit back a smile at Letty’s deliberate classification of Captain Aubrey as a mere younger brother.

“We’d better hurry,” Letty said. “Or Mama will be angry with us. You can tell me about your afternoon while you change. I want to know everything.”

But what to tell her? Araminta had expertly changed the way Serafina now saw her afternoon’s excursion with her hateful words, and no doubt Letty didn’t really want to hear that it had been the best day of Serafina’s life. Nor did Serafina want to tell her that. The shine had gone off the day, and she almost couldn’t bring herself to talk about it.

But Letty was a determined girl, possibly due to her inveterate selfishness and blindness to anyone else’s feelings. As Serafina pulled on her gown for the evening, she continued where she’d left off. “Did he really take you to a stuffy old museum?” Her tone implied that she didn’t think this a suitable location for a visit with a gentleman. Letty was not an intellectual by anyone’s standards. The only reading she did was of romantic novels that had filled her head with fanciful notions of true love that were probably far from the truth of reality. She’d recounted a few of the intricate plots to Serafina during some of the long cold nights at Milford. So Serafina was sufficiently au fait with the way her niece’s brain worked.

She turned so Letty could fasten the back of her dress. “Of course he did. That was the whole point of the outing. He knew I wanted to go there.”

Letty snorted with badly disguised disgust as she did up the buttons. “What a strange thing to want to do. In fact, you are such a strange thing yourself, it’s a wonder any man would want to call on you and take you out anywhere. If a man were to offer to take me to a museum, I would immediately cross him off my list of eligible suitors.”

She tutted over the gown. “I sometimes wish we could get you some nicer gowns to wear, you know. Goodness knows what Captain Aubrey thinks when he sees you in these dowdy things.” She stepped back. “Do you want me to try and do your hair or shall we just leave it like that?”

Serafina patted some stray curls back into place and peered into their dressing table mirror. “I think it will do like that. No one will notice me anyway.”

Letty giggled. “You’re quite right. Your hair hardly matters, does it?” She seemed to recall her previous question. “And as the captain did indeed take you there, was the museum as good as you’d hoped it would be? Although I’m sure I would be bored to tears if I’d had to go.”

Serafina nodded as she slipped her stockinged feet into a pair of worn slippers, suddenly glad to be able to talk even just a little bit about her afternoon, even though she knew Letty wasn’t really interested. “It was every bit as fascinating as I’d imagined. We went all over, but the best bit was the gallery with all the Egyptian antiquities in it. I saw the Rosetta Stone. Can you imagine? Something that old—over two thousand years old—and I saw it. Touched it. Put my fingers on the stone that real Egyptian hands had carved their language onto.”

Letty was unimpressed. “A stone? Really?”

Serafina nodded with vigor, finding it easier to talk about what she’d seen than to dwell on the reason for the outing. “It’s an important find. Someone French discovered it at a place called Rosetta, but after a treaty of some kind they had to hand it over to us, and we brought it back here to display in the museum.” She herded Letty to their shared dressing table. “Sit down and let me do your hair. Time is pressing on, and your mama is bound to notice if your hair looks messy, unlike mine.”

Letty sat down in front of the mirror, for once seeming interested. “Why is a stone so important?”

Serafina began to pin up her curls. “Because it has three sorts of writing on it. It has demotic script, which is an old Egyptian way of writing, Hieroglyphs which are symbols, like little pictures, rather than writing, and Greek on it. Scholars think that one day they’ll be able to work out how to read the Hieroglyphs thanks to this stone. Because they already know how to read the Greek bit of it and they think all three bits say the same thing but in different languages.”

Letty shrugged her slender shoulders. “Whatever do they want to do that for? It’s bad enough having to read in English without people thinking of new ways to read and write.” She was not a great scholar herself, nor even a mediocre one, and had no real mastery of the one her governess had tried to teach her – French. She twisted on her stool. “But tell me about Captain Aubrey. Hurry, before we have to go down to dinner.”

Was this interest more because Letty knew Louis Herbert was related to the captain? Probably. However, she couldn’t resist the invitation to talk about him. Just a little.

She got the last curl secured. “There, I think your hair will do. There’s not much to tell about Captain Aubrey. He was most kind and polite.”

Letty jumped up. “Fina, that’s not good enough. Do you like him is what I want to know.” Clearly Serafina had been forgiven, for the moment, for having upstaged Letty by receiving the day’s first caller.

Serafina’s legs suddenly gave way. Luckily she was near enough to the stool Letty had just vacated to land on it. She put her hands up to cover her face. “I liked him very much.”

Letty pulled her hands away, her face for once devoid of any hint of jealousy. “But that’s wonderful. If you can find someone as well as me, neither of us need ever return to Milford House and suffer another winter of chilblains. But most importantly, do you think he likes you?”

That was the question. Serafina bit her bottom lip. What to say? “I don’t know. I thought he liked my company. He was so solicitous and kind, and a most pleasant companion. He has a great deal of interesting knowledge…”

Letty stamped a foot in impatience, her hands on her hips. “Fina, stop hedging. Tell me if you think he liked you?”

Serafina raised sorrowful eyes to meet hers, remembering Araminta’s words. “I did think that perhaps he did, but now I’ve changed my mind. I fear that perhaps he was just being nice to me out of kindness.” She couldn’t mention Araminta’s other suggestion—that he’d taken her out for a bet with his friends. She gestured at herself with a resigned hand. “Look at me. Why would any man be interested in me, looking like this?”

Letty, careless of her coiffured hair, threw her arms around Serafina and hugged her tight, reminding Serafina of the impulsive child she used to know. “Because men are not all the idiots we think they are. Because your goodness and kindness shines out of you, dearest Fina. That is why he would like you. Because you’re the best person I know.”

Serafina took an unsteady breath, moved by the reappearance of her childhood friend. “Careful, Letty, or you’re going to make me cry. But thank you for saying that.”

Letty released her hold but didn’t step back. “If your captain has the sense he was born with, as our old nurse used to say, then he’ll have seen beyond these drab gowns Mama makes you wear. And he doesn’t look like an idiot to me.” She planted a kiss on Serafina’s cheek. “Now, come on. We’d better hurry or we’ll be in trouble for keeping dinner waiting.”

She caught Serafina’s hand and pulled her towards the door.

Serafina, her confidence rising, went with her.