Page 81 of A Scandal at Stonecliffe

“Oh, um...it was quite pleasant.” Nathan glanced at his mother a little apprehensively.

“Ow.” Marcus cast a wounded look at Lady Lockwood and reached down to rub his shin. “Why did you ki—oh...”

Verity brought her napkin up to her mouth to muffle the laugh that threatened to tumble out. Clearly Sloane had not inherited his skill at deception from his father. Verity glanced down the table to see that Annabeth was focused intently on her plate, her shoulders shaking a little. Sloane closed his eyes in a resigned way.

Under Lady Lockwood’s fierce gaze, Marcus scrambled to cover his mistake. “Now, Brighton is the place to visit for me. Don’t you agree, my de—um, Eugenia?”

Before Lady Lockwood could respond, Rose Dunbridge said, “Scotland?” She looked at her son in surprise. “Did you go to Scotland, dear? I didn’t know that.”

“Briefly, yes. Went to, um, visit a friend of mine.”

“Oh.” His mother looked disappointed. “I hoped you might have gone to meet your half brother.”

Nathan dropped his fork, and everyone at the table froze, staring at Rose. Finally Nathan choked out, “You—how—you knew about Malcolm Douglas?”

“Why, yes, dear, of course. I’m sorry. Were you not aware? I assumed your father had told you.” Rose glanced around the table at all the startled faces. “I thought everyone knew the story.”

“I never knew it,” Lady Lockwood said in an affronted tone.

“No, Father didn’t tell me,” Nathan said. “I had no idea.”

“Oh, dear.” Rose looked guilty. “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have—though I don’t know why George would—”

Nathan broke into his mother’s floundering words. “How did you know, Mother?”

“Why, George told me, of course,” Rose replied, as if the matter should have been obvious. “He wouldn’t have married me without telling me everything about his first marriage.”

Verity stifled a groan. Nathan looked bereft of speech.

“Well, don’t just sit there, Rose,” Lady Lockwood barked. “Tell us what happened.”

Rose quickly obeyed. “It was a tragic story, really. Quite romantic.” She turned to her sister-in-law. “Did you not know either, Jossy?”

“No, I didn’t.” Aunt Jocelyn sounded as offended as Lady Lockwood. “I knew there was some sort of trouble with a Scottish girl, but that is all.”

“George went to visit a friend who had a lodge in Scotland. Goodness, I can’t remember his name,” Rose said. She looked again to Jocelyn. “The fellow he knew from school—you remember him, don’t you? Had some sort of accident when he was still young.”

“Never mind him,” Lady Lockwood said sharply. “Stay with the story, Rose.”

“Yes, of course. George was quite young, only nineteen, and he met a Scottish girl there. Their ancestral home was near Duffy’s lodge—Duffy—yes, that was his name.”

Lady Lockwood cleared her throat loudly.

Rose hurried on, “Her name was Margaret, and she came from a good family, but her parents were dead set against the English. And I must say, that seems terribly unfair. George didn’t have anything to do with all that. He didn’t even know what Culloden was. Anyway, her parents forbade her to see him. But that sort of thing never works out the way one intends, does it? The two of them simply met in secret. After a time, well, you know...” Her cheeks turned pink.

“Yes, yes, she became pregnant,” Lady Lockwood put in. “We’re all aware of that. What happened? He married her?”

“Not then. When he left Scotland, they didn’t know about the baby. He was madly in love with her, though. They sent letters to each other through Duffy, but then George stopped receiving any from her, and Duffy told him that Margaret had gone somewhere with her mother. George believed that she no longer loved him. He was quite sad, of course, but he accepted it.”

“But he must have found her,” Annabeth said, clearly caught up in the story. Verity had to admit the whole thing sounded much like a novel—one of those where the woman who’d sinned suffers a terrible life full of tragedies and dies at the end. Which seemed, really, rather unfair.

“Yes, George saw Margaret one evening at a party. Apparently she had not been well since the birth of the baby. I think it was that she was wasting away from grief—losing the man she loved and then her son.”

“The baby died?” Jocelyn interrupted. “But you said Nathan had a half brother.”

“No, the boy didn’t die, but to avoid the shame of her daughter bearing a child out of wedlock, her mother, Flora, moved them to some remote place in the Highlands for the birth, and when they went back to Edinburgh, they pretended that it was Flora who had borne a child. Margaret had to appear to be only his sister, and of course it grieved her. But what else was she to do? Label her child illegitimate?”

“I would think she would have fought to keep her child,” Annabeth said with all the emotion of impending motherhood.