the Dowager Countess Melton was not a fool. She knew quite well that he was in disgrace; promising young officers in the good graces of their superiors were not sent to the arse-end of Scotland to oversee the renovation of small and unimportant prison-fortresses. But his brother Harold had told her that the trouble was an unfortunate affair of the heart, implying sufficient indelicacy to stop her questioning him about it. She likely thought he had been caught with his colonel's wife, or keeping a whore in his quarters.
The Dowager Countess Melton was a perceptive woman who understood that her acquaintance was in a position of disgrace. She recognized that promising young officers generally would not find themselves assigned to remote prisons in Scotland unless they had fallen out of favor with their superiors. Her suspicions were fueled by information from her brother Harold, who hinted that the young officer's situation stemmed from a personal scandal involving romantic entanglements, suggesting something more scandalous than mere professional missteps.
