Page 26 of A Hint of Scandal

Chapter Thirteen

Watkins 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.”