Page 1 of A Hint of Scandal

Chapter One

The two gently bred ladies sitting opposite Captain Max Aubrey were both staring at him with expectant expressions on their faces. This, not unnaturally, was making him feel most uncomfortable. In fact, the close scrutiny of anyone was likely to do that to him nowadays, ever since he’d been invalided out of the 20th Light Dragoons, the cavalry regiment that had been his life for almost ten years, and sent back to England to recuperate. Not that recuperation was ever going to do him any good. His regiment would never have him back now he was in this state.

That one of the aforementioned ladies was his mother made no difference to Max’s discomfort. Georgiana, Dowager Countess of Westbury, was a formidable lady in her sixties who’d never been inclined to shower affection or compassion on either of her two sons. Not even when one of them, Max himself, had fallen off his pony at their home of Bratton Park and broken his arm in not one but two places. Her reaction then had been to sternly advise him to get straight back on again and not be a baby. The fact that he’d returned badly wounded from Portugal had not brought about any change in her attitude.

Max’s sister-in-law, the dainty Maria, current Countess of Westbury and wife of Max’s older brother, was an altogether gentler creature than his mother. Nevertheless, she was equally determined in what she was demanding of him. Against the joint onslaught of the two chatelaines of Bratton Park, Max was feeling decidedly besieged. As well he might do.

“You understand, don’t you, that it would be too much for Julian’s fragile health if he were to have to come up to Town with us,” Maria said, at her most persuasive. At fifty-one, she could still be classed as a pretty woman, although nowadays with a somewhat faded air about her that wasn’t unattractive. Her wide hazel eyes beseeched her much younger brother-in-law as only a spaniel’s eyes should have the right to do.

That her words were probably true was inarguable. Max’s older brother, the present earl, hadn’t enjoyed good health for the last ten years. Since just after Max had taken up his commission, he’d put on a lot of weight in pouchy flesh, and old Dr. Ellison had pronounced some time ago that he was suffering from a congested heart and required a quiet life. Which was why, instead of being a part of this conversation, he was hiding in his first-floor study, taking one of his increasingly more regular naps. In fact, all of the rooms Julian used were on that level, as he could no longer manage the stairs alone.

As Max had always been very fond of his older brother, he was inclined to agree with Dr. Ellison and also with Lady Maria. Or he would have done, had it not been for what the two ladies had just asked him to do.

“If you escort us instead of Julian,” Maria said, in what she must have considered her most appealing tones, “then he will be able to remain here at Bratton under Dr. Ellison’s care. I would rather that than he should suffer the long journey up to Westbury House in Town and have the upheaval of us having to find him another doctor to attend him. You know he’s used to Dr. Ellison and doesn’t like change and that he needs to see him every day. Besides which, the upset of traveling would set him back in his recovery.”

Which also was true. Dr. Ellison had been caring for the Aubreys for as long as Max could remember, including having dealt with his own broken arm as a boy. The whiskery-chopped old fellow walked with a stick and a decided stoop nowadays, and if he hadn’t still been clinging to the old-fashioned habit of wearing a horsehair wig, no doubt whatever hair that remained on his head would be white as snow. When Max had still been a boisterous youngster, he’d made it his goal to dislodge that wig and take a peek underneath it. As indeed he’d once done to his father’s man of business, who most satisfactorily had proved to possess a scalp as hairless as an egg, save for a wart right on the top.

“Have you not thought,” Max said, in the vain hopes of appealing to their common sense, “that if you were to bring Julian up to Town and find him a different physician, you might happen upon one with some newer, more up-to-date methods of treatment for his heart? Someone who might be able to effect some actual good?”

The dowager tutted her tongue, as she’d been wont to do when either of her sons had been brought before her for some misdemeanor when they were small. Such as the dislodging of the man of business’s wig with a fishing line and hook. “It is most unlikely that any of the jumped up nincompoops in London who call themselves physicians will know more than Dr. Ellison with his extensive experience gained through years of treating this family.” As though treating one particular family made you an expert in heart care. Max frowned at her logic, uncomfortably aware that it matched Maria’s foolish belief that Julian was going to get better.

His mother’s grip on the teacup in her hand tightened. “He was your father’s physician and now he is your brother’s. And yours if you would only allow him to look at your arm.”

She fixed a hard stare on Max’s right arm, which hung useless in a sling, and had done ever since the aftermath of the Battle of Vimeiro, back in August. A cavalry officer needed both arms working.

Max heaved a sigh. “I’ve been poked about more than enough, Mama, and I refuse to believe that a country quack can know more than the best doctors in the army, who are used to dealing with wounds like this.”

“Intractable,” his mother snapped, to no one in particular. “Just like his father.”

Lady Maria, ever the appeaser, hurriedly interceded. Perhaps she’d noticed the heavy frown settling on Max’s forehead as he glared at his mother. “You would be doing me the most enormous favor, Max, my dear. I really think that without a man to escort us to London for the Season, we won’t be able to go. I would not be confident enough to go alone. And Arabella has been so looking forward to her coming out.” Those spaniel eyes sent him a fresh appeal.

Max had never been able to resist his sister-in-law, a woman he’d known since he was a boy of ten, and who’d been more of a mother to him than his own had ever been. He heaved a second sigh. “Would you expect me to attend balls and routs and soirées?”

Maria appeared to be fighting with herself about whether to be honest or not. Compromise won. “Well… a few, I should think. I really don’t think I could take Arabella out on my own, after all. You know how headstrong she can be. If I have to go alone then who knows what sort of a fortune hunter she might end up with. Preventing that is the whole point of you accompanying us.”

What she really meant was that she, personally, didn’t want to go alone. Women had been known to present their daughters in society without a husband or male relative as an escort. But not Maria. She was a woman for whom the presence of a man was essential, or she felt incomplete. Or that was the impression she liked to maintain.

His mother interrupted his thoughts. “And of course, it will be the ideal opportunity for you to secure yourself a bride. What better way than to attend the social gatherings of London where all the most eligible young women will be on parade. Perfect.”

Max’s frown returned. So that was really what all this was about. Might Julian himself be behind their subterfuge? Max cringed inside at the thought of having to go out in public and make himself be polite to people he didn’t know and didn’t want to know. He tapped his useless arm. “Like this? How much good do you envisage me being if I can’t dance with anyone?”

He used to like dancing. Prided himself on being good at it, in fact. Not any more though. Those days were long gone.

“Oh, you won’t need to dance,” Maria said, clearly a little flustered. “Just your presence is required. In lieu of Julian’s. In the way of moral support, so to speak. You would be most welcome to spend the evenings in the card room if you prefer.”

Max forbore from telling her how much he abhorred the card room and the sort of false male camaraderie to be found in there. It paled into insignificance compared with the bond between officers in the mess room, and between each of those officers and their men. Something he was never going to get back again. You couldn’t be a cavalry officer if you only had one working arm, and neither could you be an infantry officer, nor even just an ordinary soldier. Two hands were essential for carbines. Well, for almost everything, as he was rapidly discovering. Even such mundanities as eating and dressing.

“This is quite ridiculous,” his mother snapped, sounding as though she was allowing her temper to take control. “If you don’t agree to go with Maria, then Julian will feel he has to drag himself up to Town and do his duty by Arabella. And we don’t want that, do we? Who knows what it might do to him.”

Maria bridled, perhaps because she believed Julian was not so ill as they were making out. “And of course, as you are now nearing your thirtieth birthday, it is quite essential that you find yourself a bride.” She paused. “Or you will not receive your inheritance.”

Max sighed. The nub of the matter. His father had died when Max had been at Harrow. Julian, already married and with two children and another on the way, had inherited the earldom and everything that went with it. But the old earl had decided, in his wisdom, that his much more wayward younger son had needed an incentive to settle down. He’d left him the property his own mother had brought into the Aubrey family, everything else having been entailed to the heir, but only as long as Max married before the age of thirty. Otherwise it would revert to his brother.

Max had kicked over the traces when he left school and, to spite his dead father, had persuaded Julian to purchase a commission for him with the 20th Light Dragoons, thinking he could forge himself a career as a soldier. Until a French musket ball had put a stop to that. And now he was back, living on his brother’s charity rather than at the house he would only inherit if he chose to marry. In the next four months.

As if any girl in their right mind would have him with this arm—or rather, without it. Not that he imagined he possessed any propensity for love, for it was something he’d never experienced so far, despite his fair share of encounters with women.

However, the last thing Max wanted was for his beloved older brother to do something that might be detrimental to his fragile health. But still… why couldn’t bloody Maria just take the bull by the horns and go by herself with Arabella? Plenty of society mamas did just that, if they’d been widowed, for example. But no. This was all a plan to marry him off.