She reached in.
“Please. Oh, please.”
She touched something. Something soft. Like velvet.
With shaking fingers she drew it out. It was a little bag, held together with a soft, silky cord.
Hyacinth straightened slowly, crossing her legs so that she was sitting Indian style. She slid one finger inside the bag, widening the mouth, which had been pulled tight.
And then, with her right hand, she upended it, sliding the contents into her left.
Oh my G-
“Gareth!” she shrieked. “Gareth!”
“I did it,” she whispered, gazing down at the pool of jewels now spilling from her left hand. “I did it.”
And then she bellowed it.
“I DID IT!!!!”
She looped the necklace around her neck, still clutching the bracelet and ring in her hand.
“I did it, I did it, I did it.” She was singing it now, hopping up and down, almost dancing, almost crying. “I did it!”
“Hyacinth!” It was Gareth, out of breath from taking four flights of stairs two steps at a time.
She looked at him, and she could swear she could feel her eyes shining. “I did it!” She laughed, almost crazily. “I did it!”
For a moment he could do nothing but stare. His face grew slack, and Hyacinth thought he might actually lose his footing.
“I did it,” she said again. “I did it.”
And then he took her hand, took the ring, and slipped it onto her finger. “So you did,” he said, leaning down to kiss her knuckles. “So you did.”
Meanwhile, one floor down…
“Gareth!”
Isabella looked up from the book she was reading, glancing toward the ceiling. Her bedchamber was directly below the nursery, rather in line with the washroom, actually.
“I did it!”
Isabella turned back to her book.
And she smiled.
About the Author
JULIA QUINN started writing her first book one month after finishing college and has been tapping away at her keyboard ever since.
The New York Times bestselling author of fifteen novels for Avon Books, she is a graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges and lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest.
Please visit her on the web at www.juliaquinn.com.
