Page 60 of A Hint of Scandal

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.”