Page 3 of How to Start a Scandal

What was she to do?

Seth Sinclair, the Earl of Dalton, entered the town house located on Grosvenor Street for the first time in nearly six years. In his absence, the old brick front had been stuccoed over, the layer of plaster smoothing out all the chinks and seams.

He had left as a second son with little purpose beyond his purchased military commission. He now grudgingly returned, fresh out of a major battle, as an unqualified earl who would rather continue his life as a soldier. Especially when he’d been only months away from being promoted to major, a rank he’d worked damn hard to achieve.

Gibbons was still the same, the old butler not looking a day over ninety as he always had. Pleasure flushed the aged man’s cheeks as he offered a warm welcome.

Despite the external alterations to the town house, the interior was unchanged with a shining marble floor in a checked pattern and a pale green silk brocade on the walls. Paintings from centuries of Sinclair ancestors stared down at him with bland expressions. Disappointed with him, no doubt. Most Sinclairs generally were.

Though everything was as it had always been, Seth did not have the sense of having returned home. But then Dalton Place never truly had felt like a home should. At least not for him.

His feet echoed on the hard floor as he made his way back to the morning room where Gibbons had informed him his mother was taking tea. Seth stopped in front of the grand double doors, loathing the trepidation tightening the back of his neck. He had sent his mother a missive to inform her of his impending arrival. No doubt she was expecting him.

‘Seth?’ Lady Dalton’s voice came from the other side of the door, pitched with what almost sounded like desperation.

He opened the door at last and stepped inside. His mother had already risen from her favourite blue-velvet sofa and stood poised with a foot set forward as if she’d meant to go to the door herself. Though it had been over a year since William’s death, she still wore a black gown, indicating her full mourning.

Of course she did.

Had Seth been the son to have died, doubtless she would be outfitted in a pastel sprigged muslin.

‘Are you injured?’ she whispered.

For that one moment—that wrenching and sadly fleeting moment—she actually appeared to care. He hated the wrench in his chest. After all these years, he should be beyond hope.

‘No, I’m not injured,’ Seth replied steadily. Many of his brethren at Waterloo, however, had sustained debilitating injuries of those who had the good fortune to even come away with their lives.

But he couldn’t think of Waterloo. Not now. Not when it had been less than a fortnight since the battle and the stink of gunpowder and blood still clung to his nostrils. Not when the images left were lodged like nightmares in his mind.

He clenched his teeth.

His mother straightened and, all at once, her expression smoothed. ‘You are home then? For good.’

‘I’m selling my commission,’ he replied. He had to, lest he be tempted to return. The life of a soldier had suited him far better than one wiled away tediously in drawing rooms and Almack’s. ‘I am home.’

She nodded and considered him for a long moment. No doubt comparing him against William. Seth would come up short. He always had.

Her forehead crinkled and he almost thought she might express some concern for his well-being during the six years he had been away fighting. First on the Peninsula, and then at Waterloo.

Many of his fellow soldiers had died in that time. Though Waterloo had easily claimed the most lives, wreaked the most carnage.

The beginnings of sweat prickled along his brow. He clenched his hand into a fist.

Stop thinking of it.

‘It’s been over a year,’ his mother said, emotion clogging her voice for the first time in perhaps Seth’s entire life. She swallowed. ‘It’s been over a year since William—’ Her words choked off and she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief she pulled from her long, black sleeve. ‘You didn’t attend his funeral.’

‘I was escorting Napoleon to Elba when it occurred and was then required to attend the Vienna Congress.’ Seth kept his response absent of emotion despite the ire nipping at his nerves. ‘I didn’t even receive notice of his death until well after the funeral had passed.’

‘And yet still you did not return home.’ Her words were accusing as her tears fell in earnest.

‘I was fighting for England,’ he countered.

‘You were fighting for glory,’ she scoffed and pushed past him, not bothering to close the door behind her as she left.

Seth sighed into the empty space. That had gone exactly as poorly as he had anticipated.

‘Seth?’ a soft feminine voice spoke up from behind him.