“I’m not trying to impress you,” he replied, glancing up at the front of the room. “Gads,” he said, blinking in surprise. “What is that?”
Hyacinth followed his gaze. Several of the Pleinsworth progeny, one of whom appeared to be costumed as a shepherdess, were milling about.
“Now that’s an interesting coincidence,” Gareth murmured.
“It might be time to start bleating,” she agreed.
“I thought this was meant to be a poetry recitation.”
Hyacinth grimaced and shook her head. “An unexpected change to the program, I’m afraid.”
“From iambic pentameter to Little Bo Peep?” he asked doubtfully. “It does seem a stretch.”
Hyacinth gave him a rueful look. “I think there will still be iambic pentameter.”
His mouth fell open. “From Peep?”
She nodded, holding up the program that had been resting in her lap. “It’s an original composition,” she said, as if that would explain everything. “By Harriet Pleinsworth. The Shepherdess, the Unicorn, and Henry VIII.”
“All of them? At once?”
“I’m not jesting,” she said, shaking her head.
“Of course not. Even you couldn’t have made this up.”
Hyacinth decided to take that as a compliment.
“Why didn’t I receive one of these?” he asked, taking the program from her.
“I believe it was decided not to hand them out to the gentlemen,” Hyacinth said, glancing about the room. “One has to admire Lady Pleinsworth’s foresight, actually. You’d surely flee if you knew what was in store for you.”
Gareth twisted in his seat. “Have they locked the doors yet?”
“No, but your grandmother has already arrived.”
Hyacinth wasn’t sure, but it sounded very much like he groaned.
“She doesn’t seem to be coming this way,” Hyacinth added, watching as Lady Danbury took a seat on the aisle, several rows back.
“Of course not,” Gareth muttered, and Hyacinth knew he was thinking the same thing she was.
Matchmaker.
Well, it wasn’t as if Lady Danbury had ever been especially subtle about it.
Hyacinth started to turn back to the front, then halted when she caught sight of her mother, for whom she’d been holding an empty seat to her right. Violet pretended (rather badly, in Hyacinth’s opinion) not to see her, and she sat down right next to Lady Danbury.
“Well,” Hyacinth said under her breath. Her mother had never been known for her subtlety, either, but she would have thought that after their conversation the previous afternoon, Violet wouldn’t have been quite so obvious.
A few days to reflect upon it all might have been nice.
As it was, Hyacinth had spent the entire past two days pondering her conversation with her mother. She tried to think about all the people she had met during her years on the Marriage Mart. For the most part, she had had a fine time. She’d said what she wished and made people laugh and had rather enjoyed being admired for her wit.
But there had been a few people with whom she had not felt completely comfortable. Not many, but a few. There had been a gentleman during her first season with whom she’d been positively tongue-tied. He had been intelligent and handsome, and when he’d looked at her, Hyacinth had thought her legs might give out. And then just a year ago her brother Gregory had introduced her to one of his school friends who, Hyacinth had to admit, had been dry and sarcastic and more than her match. She’d told herself she hadn’t liked him, and then she’d told her mother that she thought he seemed the sort to be unkind to animals. But the truth was-
Well, she didn’t know what the truth was. She didn’t know everything, much as she tried to give the impression otherwise.
But she had avoided those men. She’d said she didn’t like them, but maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe she just hadn’t liked herself when she was with them.
She looked up. Mr. St. Clair was leaning back in his seat, his face looking a little bit bored, a little bit amused-that sophisticated and urbane sort of expression men across London sought to emulate. Mr. St. Clair, she decided, did it better than most.
“You look rather serious for an evening of bovine pentameter,” he remarked.
Hyacinth looked over at the stage in surprise. “Are we expecting cows as well?”
He handed the small leaflet back to her and sighed. “I’m preparing myself for the worst.”
Hyacinth smiled. He really was funny. And intelligent. And very, very handsome, although that had certainly never been in doubt.
He was, she realized, everything she’d always told herself she was looking for in a husband.
Good God.
“Are you all right?” he asked, sitting up quite suddenly.
“Fine,” she croaked. “Why?”
“You looked…” He cleared his throat. “Well, you looked…ah…I’m sorry. I can’t say it to a woman.”
“Even one you’re not trying to impress?” Hyacinth quipped. But her voice sounded a little bit strained.
He stared at her for a moment, then said, “Very well. You looked rather like you were going to be sick.”
“I’m never sick,” she said, looking resolutely forward. Gareth St. Clair was not everything she’d ever wanted in a husband. He couldn’t be. “And I don’t swoon, either,” she added. “Ever.”
“Now you look angry,” he murmured.
“I’m not,” she said, and she was rather pleased with how positively sunny she sounded.
He had a terrible reputation, she reminded herself. Did she really wish to align herself with a man who’d had relations with so many women? And unlike most unmarried women, Hyacinth actually knew what “relations” entailed. Not firsthand, of course, but she’d managed to wrench the most basic of details from her older married sisters. And while Daphne, Eloise, and Francesca assured her it was all very enjoyable with the right sort of husband, it stood to reason that the right sort of husband was one who remained faithful to one’s wife. Mr. St. Clair, in contrast, had had relations with scores of women.
Surely such behavior couldn’t be healthy.
And even if “scores” was a bit of an exaggeration, and the true number was much more modest, how could she compete? She knew for a fact that his last mistress had been none other than Maria Bartolomeo, the Italian soprano as famed for her beauty as she was for her voice. Not even her own mother could claim that Hyacinth was anywhere near as beautiful as that.
How horrible that must be, to enter into one’s wedding night, knowing that one would suffer by comparison.
“I think it’s beginning.” She heard Mr. St. Clair sigh.
Footmen were crisscrossing the room, snuffing candles to dim the light. Hyacinth turned, catching sight of Mr. St. Clair’s profile. A candelabrum had been left alive over his shoulder, and in the flickering light his hair appeared almost streaked with gold. He was wearing his queue, she thought idly, the only man in the room to do so.
She liked that. She didn’t know why, but she liked it.
“How bad would it be,” she heard him whisper, “if I ran for the door?”
“Right now?” Hyacinth whispered back, trying to ignore the tingling feeling she got when he leaned in close. “Very bad.”
He sat back with a sad sigh, then focused on the stage, giving every appearance of the polite, and only very slightly bored, gentleman.
But it was only one minute later when Hyacinth heard it. Soft, and for her ears only:
“Baaa.
“Baaaaaaaaa.”
Ninety mind-numbing minutes later, and sadly, our hero was right about the cows.
“Do you drink port, Miss Bridgerton?” Gareth asked, keeping his eyes on the stage as he stood and applauded the Pleinsworth children.