It's In His Kiss

Chapter 19

The following Tuesday.

Everything important seems to happen on a Tuesday, doesn’t it?

“Look what I have!”

Hyacinth grinned as she stood in the doorway of Lady Danbury’s drawing room, holding aloft Miss Davenport and the Dark Marquis.

“A new book?” Lady D asked from her position across the room. She was seated in her favorite chair, but from the way she held herself, it might as well have been a throne.

“Not just any book,” Hyacinth said with a sly smile as she held it forth. “Look.”

Lady Danbury took the book in her hands, glanced down, and positively beamed. “We haven’t read this one yet,” she said. She looked back up at Hyacinth. “I hope it’s just as bad as the rest.”

“Oh, come now, Lady Danbury,” Hyacinth said, taking a seat next to her, “you shouldn’t call them bad.”

“I didn’t say they weren’t entertaining,” the countess said, eagerly flipping through the pages. “How many chapters do we have left with dear Miss Butterworth?”

Hyacinth plucked the book in question off a nearby table and opened it to the spot she had marked the previous Tuesday. “Three,” she said, flipping back and forth to check.

“Hmmph. I wonder how many cliffs poor Priscilla can hang from in that time.”

“Two at least, I should think,” Hyacinth murmured. “Provided she isn’t struck with the plague.”

Lady Danbury attempted to peer at the book over her shoulder. “Do you think it possible? A bit of the bubonic would do wonders for the prose.”

Hyacinth chuckled. “Perhaps that should have been the subtitle. Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron, or”-she lowered her voice dramatically-“A Bit of the Bubonic.”

“I prefer Pecked to Death by Pigeons myself.”

“Maybe we should write a book,” Hyacinth said with a smile, getting ready to launch into chapter eighteen.

Lady Danbury looked as if she wanted to clap Hyacinth on the head. “That is exactly what I’ve been telling you.”

Hyacinth scrunched her nose as she shook her head. “No,” she said, “it really wouldn’t be much fun past the titles. Do you think anyone would wish to buy a collection of amusing book titles?”

“They would if it had my name on the cover,” Lady D said with great authority. “Speaking of which, how is your translation of my grandson’s other grandmother’s diary coming along?”

Hyacinth’s head bobbed slightly as she tried to follow Lady D’s convoluted sentence structure. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, “how does that have anything to do with people being compelled to purchase a book with your name on the cover?”

Lady Danbury waved her hand forcefully in the air as if Hyacinth’s comment were a physical thing she could push away. “You haven’t told me anything,” she said.

“I’m only a little bit more than halfway through,” Hyacinth admitted. “I remember far less Italian than I had thought, and I am finding it a much more difficult task than I had anticipated.”

Lady D nodded. “She was a lovely woman.”

Hyacinth blinked in surprise. “You knew her? Isabella?”

“Of course I did. Her son married my daughter.”

“Oh. Yes,” Hyacinth murmured. She didn’t know why this hadn’t occurred to her before. And she wondered-Did Lady Danbury know anything about the circumstances of Gareth’s birth? Gareth had said that she did not, or at least that he had never spoken to her about it. But perhaps each was keeping silent on the assumption that the other did not know.

Hyacinth opened her mouth, then closed it sharply. It was not her place to say anything. It was not.

But-

No. She clamped her teeth together, as if that would keep her from blurting anything out. She could not reveal Gareth’s secret. She absolutely, positively could not.

“Did you eat something sour?” Lady D asked, without any delicacy whatsoever. “You look rather ill.”

“I’m perfectly well,” Hyacinth said, pasting a sprightly smile on her face. “I was merely thinking about the diary. I brought it with me, actually. To read in the carriage.” She had been working on the translation tirelessly since learning Gareth’s secret earlier that week. She wasn’t sure if they would ever learn the identity of Gareth’s real father, but Isabella’s diary seemed to be the best possible place to start the search.

“Did you?” Lady Danbury sat back in her chair, closing her eyes. “Read to me from that instead, why don’t you?”

“You don’t understand Italian,” Hyacinth pointed out.

“I know, but it’s a lovely language, so melodious and smooth. And I need to take a nap.”

“Are you certain?” Hyacinth asked, reaching into her small satchel for the diary.

“That I need a nap? Yes, more’s the pity. It started two years ago. Now I can’t exist without one each afternoon.”

“Actually, I was referring to the reading of the diary,” Hyacinth murmured. “If you wish to fall asleep, there are certainly better methods than my reading to you in Italian.”

“Why, Hyacinth,” Lady D said, with a noise that sounded suspiciously like a cackle, “are you offering to sing me lullabies?”

Hyacinth rolled her eyes. “You’re as bad as a child.”

“Whence we came, my dear Miss Bridgerton. Whence we came.”

Hyacinth shook her head and found her spot in the diary. She’d left off in the spring of 1793, four years before Gareth’s birth. According to what she had read in the carriage on the way over, Gareth’s mother was pregnant, with what Hyacinth assumed would be Gareth’s older brother George. She had suffered two miscarriages before that, which had not endeared her to her husband.

What Hyacinth was finding most interesting about the tale was the disappointment Isabella expressed about her son. She loved him, yes, but she regretted the degree to which she had allowed her husband to mold him. As a result, Isabella had written, the son was just like the father. He treated his mother with disdain, and his wife fared no better.

Hyacinth was finding the entire tale to be rather sad. She liked Isabella. There was an intelligence and humor to her writing that shone through, even when Hyacinth was not able to translate every word, and Hyacinth liked to think that if they had been of an age, they would have been friends. It saddened her to realize the degree to which Isabella had been stifled and made unhappy by her husband.

And it reinforced her belief that it really did matter who one married. Not for wealth or status, although Hyacinth was not so idealistic that she would pretend those were completely unimportant.

But one only got one life, and, God willing, one husband. And how nice to actually like the man to whom one pledged one’s troth. Isabella hadn’t been beaten or misused, but she had been ignored, and her thoughts and opinions had gone unheard. Her husband sent her off to some remote country house, and he taught his sons by example. Gareth’s father treated his wife the exact same way. Hyacinth supposed that Gareth’s uncle would have been the same, too, if he had lived long enough to take a wife.

“Are you going to read to me or not?” Lady D asked, somewhat stridently.

Hyacinth looked over at the countess, who had not even bothered to open her eyes for her demand. “Sorry,” she said, using her finger to find where she had left off. “I need just a moment to…ah, here we are.”

Hyacinth cleared her throat and began to read in Italian. “Si avvicina il giorno in cui nascerà il mio primo nipote. Prego che sia un maschio…”

She translated in her head as she continued to read aloud in Italian:

The day draws near in which will be born my first grandchild. I pray that it will be a boy. I would love a little girl-I would probably be allowed to see her and love her more, but it will be better for us all if we have a boy. I am afraid to think how quicklyAnne will be forced to endure the attentions of my son if she has a girl.

I should love better my own son, but instead I worry about his wife.

Hyacinth paused, eyeing Lady Danbury for signs that she understood any of the Italian. This was her daughter she was reading about, after all. Hyacinth wondered if the countess had any idea how sad the marriage had been. But Lady D had, remarkably, started to snore.

Hyacinth blinked in surprise-and suspicion. She had never dreamed that Lady Danbury might fall asleep that quickly. She held silent for a few moments, waiting for the countess’s eyes to pop open with a loud demand for her to continue.

After a minute, however, Hyacinth was confident that Lady D really had fallen asleep. So she continued reading to herself, laboriously translating each sentence in her head. The next entry was dated a few months later; Isabella expressed her relief that Anne had delivered a boy, who had been christened George. The baron was beside himself with pride, and had even given his wife the gift of a gold bracelet.

Hyacinth flipped a few pages ahead, trying to see how long it would be until Isabella reached 1797, the year of Gareth’s birth. One, two, three…She counted the pages, passing quickly through the years. Seven, eight, nine…Ah, 1796. Gareth had been born in March, so if Isabella had written about his conception, it would be here, not 1797.

Ten pages away, that was all.

And it occurred to her-

Why not skip ahead? There was no law requiring her to read the diary in perfect, chronological order. She could just peek ahead to 1796 and 1797 and see if there was anything relating to Gareth and his parentage. If not, she’d go right back to where she’d left off and start reading anew.

And wasn’t it Lady Danbury who’d said that patience most certainly was not a virtue?

Hyacinth glanced ruefully down at 1793, then, holding the five leaves of paper as one, shifted to 1796.

Back…forth…back…

Forth.

She turned to 1796, and planted her left hand down so that she wouldn’t turn back again.

Definitely forth.

“24 June 1796,” she read to herself. “I arrived at Clair House for a summer visit, only to be informed that my son had already left for London.”

Hyacinth quickly subtracted months in her head. Gareth was born in March of 1797. Three months took her back to December 1796, and another six to-

June.

And Gareth’s father was out of town.

Barely able to breathe, Hyacinth read on:

Anne seems contented that he is gone, and littleGeorge is such a treasure. Is it so terrible to admit that I am more happy when Richard isn’t here? It is such a joy to have all the persons I love so close…

Hyacinth scowled as she finished the entry. There was nothing out of the ordinary there. Nothing about a mysterious stranger, or an improper friend.

She glanced up at Lady Danbury, whose head was now tilted awkwardly back. Her mouth was hanging a bit open, too.

Hyacinth turned resolutely back to the diary, turning to the next entry, dated three months later.

She gasped.

Anne is carrying a child. And we all know it cannot be Richard’s. He has been away for two months.Two months. I am afraid for her. He is furious. But she will not reveal the truth.

“Reveal it,” Hyacinth ground out. “Reveal it.”

“Enh?”

Hyacinth slammed the book shut and looked up. Lady Danbury was stirring in her seat.

“Why did you stop reading?” Lady D asked groggily.

“I didn’t,” Hyacinth lied, her fingers holding the diary so tightly it was a wonder she didn’t burn holes through the binding. “You fell asleep.”

“Did I?” Lady Danbury murmured. “I must be getting old.”

Hyacinth smiled tightly.

“Very well,” Lady D said with a wave of her hand. She fidgeted a bit, moving first to the left, then to the right, then back to the left again. “I’m awake now. Let’s get back to Miss Butterworth.”

Hyacinth was aghast. “Now?”

“As opposed to when?”

Hyacinth had no good answer for that. “Very well,” she said, with as much patience as she could muster. She forced herself to set the diary down beside her, and she picked up Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron in its stead.

“Ahem.” She cleared her throat, turning to the first page of chapter Eighteen. “Ahem.”

“Throat bothering you?” Lady Danbury asked. “I still have some tea in the pot.”

“It’s nothing,” Hyacinth said. She exhaled, looked down, and read, with decidedly less animation than was usual, “The baron was in possession of a secret. Priscilla was quite certain of that. The only question was-would the truth ever be revealed?”

“Indeed,” Hyacinth muttered.

“Enh?”

“I think something important is about to happen,” Hyacinth said with a sigh.

“Something important is always about to happen, my dear girl,” Lady Danbury said. “And if not, you’d do well to act as if it were. You’ll enjoy life better that way.”

For Lady Danbury, the comment was uncharacteristically philosophical. Hyacinth paused, considering her words.

“I have no patience with this current fashion for ennui,” Lady Danbury continued, reaching for her cane and thumping it against the floor. “Ha. When did it become a crime to show an interest in things?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just read the book,” Lady D said. “I think we’re getting to the good part. Finally.”

Hyacinth nodded. The problem was, she was getting to the good part of the other book. She took a breath, trying to return her attention to Miss Butterworth, but the words swam before her eyes. Finally, she looked up at Lady Danbury and said, “I’m sorry, but would you mind terribly if I cut our visit short? I’m not feeling quite the thing.”

Lady Danbury stared at her as if she’d just announced that she was carrying Napoleon’s love child.

“I would be happy to make it up to you tomorrow,” Hyacinth quickly added.

Lady D blinked. “But it’s Tuesday.”

“I realize that. I-” Hyacinth sighed. “You are a creature of habit, aren’t you?”

“The hallmark of civilization is routine.”

“Yes, I understand, but-”

“But the sign of a truly advanced mind,” Lady D cut in, “is the ability to adapt to changing circumstances.”

Hyacinth’s mouth fell open. Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined Lady Danbury uttering that.

“Go on, dear child,” Lady D said, shooing her toward the door. “Do whatever it is that has you so intrigued.”

For a moment Hyacinth could do nothing but stare at her. And then, suffused with a feeling that was as lovely as it was warm, she gathered her things, rose to her feet, and crossed the room to Lady Danbury’s side.

“You’re going to be my grandmother,” she said, leaning down and giving her a kiss on the cheek. She’d never assumed such familiarity before, but somehow it felt right.

“You silly child,” Lady Danbury said, brushing at her eyes as Hyacinth walked to the door. “In my heart, I’ve been your grandmother for years. I’ve just been waiting for you to make it official.”