Page 58 of A Hint of Scandal

He tightened his hold on her hand but she made no move to escape his grasp. Encouraging. “I-I am finding your company in this investigation both helpful and extremely pleasant.” Oh no. That was not the way he wanted to go. Far too formal. This situation didn’t need formal.

Her eyes widened in expectation. Clearly she didn’t think he’d finished.

He cleared his throat. “I asked you to marry me because I liked you.” That was a little better. “I like you a lot.”

She nodded, that air of expectation shining out of her. “And I said yes because I liked you. And like you still.”

“I think you’re the cleverest young lady I’ve ever met.” He paused. “Perhaps the cleverest person, and with a brother as clever as Julian, that’s a compliment. I knew it from the moment I met you in that blasted summerhouse in the cold. And when I made you an offer, it was because I knew you would always be a good companion to me. We would never be bored together.” This still wasn’t quite what he wanted to say.

She was staring at him so earnestly he could barely breathe. How had he ever thought her plain? Tendrils of her rich chestnut hair had escaped their confines to frame her face. Her skin possessed an inner glow. Her lips, slightly apart, were suddenly the most kissable lips he’d ever seen. A wild impulse seized him. Actions might well speak louder than the words that wouldn’t cobble together for him into coherent sentences. On an impulse, he half rose and leaning across the table, pressed his lips to hers.

For a moment, he felt her flinch, and then her lips parted a little under his as though in acquiescence. She couldn’t be angry.

The kiss, such as it was, was over in a moment. He sat back down again, a little breathless and aware that even more heat had flooded his face. “I’m sorry. I could think of no other way to show you how I’ve been feeling. How I feel about you all of the time.” And indeed, that twisting in his stomach had renewed itself with a vengeance. “I must beg your pardon for my impetuosity.” This time when he glanced over his shoulder one or two of the customers raised their tankards of beer to him as if in salute, and two men gave him a thumbs up. It seemed his actions had been approved of by more than just Serafina.

As for her, her lips were still parted and her bosom rose up and down as though she’d been running hard. “You have no need to apologize, Max, for I did not mind at all.” A little smile flickered across her face. “In fact, I find I quite liked it.” She frowned. “No one has ever kissed me before, and I have always wondered what it would be like.”

Confidence welled. “I am glad, then, that I was the first.”

She chuckled. “And I am too.” Her pretty blush deepened, no doubt a lot more attractive than the way he must look. “And you are the only one who will ever do so, I hope.” Her hand turned over in his and she slipped her slender fingers between his own. “I think we have discovered the cause of our lack of appetite… don’t you? Perhaps the cause of a lack of appetite that has been going on for several days.”

He nodded. “You are the cause.”

She chuckled. “And so are you.”

Max’s heart soared as though it might break free of his chest and go careering out through the window of the Angel Inn never to be seen again. His cheeks almost ached from smiling. How could he not have realized that what he’d been feeling was love? How was it, indeed, that love felt like this? So different from his usual way of being. He gripped Serafina’s hand. “Do you think we might forget the rather foolish notion I had of our marriage being a business arrangement?”

More blushing. She lowered her eyes for a moment to their clasped hands. “I think we might. I should like that very much.”

Their nearest observer, an elderly, unshaven old countryman, gave a shout of delight. “Give the lass a kiss, why don’t you? Any fool can see she loves you.”

So Max kissed Serafina again, to the rousing cheers of the company in the Angel that afternoon.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It 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 façade, 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.