He was protecting her. Shielding her so that if the closet door was opened, his would be the only body seen.
Hyacinth heard the footsteps approach. The doorknob was loose and rattly, and it clattered when a hand landed on it.
She grabbed on to Gareth, clutching his coat along the side darts. He was close, scandalously close, with his back pressed up against her so tightly she could feel the entire length of him, from her knees to her shoulders.
And everything in between.
She forced herself to breathe evenly and quietly. There was something about her position, mixed with something about her circumstance-it was a combination of fear and awareness, and the hot proximity of his body. She felt strange, queer, almost as if she were somehow suspended in time, ready to lift off her toes and float away.
She had the strangest urge to press closer, to tip her hips forward and cradle him. She was in a closet-a stranger’s closet in the dead of night-and yet even as she froze with terror, she couldn’t help but feel something else…something more powerful than fright. It was excitement, a thrill, something heady and new that set her heart racing and her blood pounding, and…
And something else as well. Something she wasn’t quite ready to analyze or name.
Hyacinth caught her lip between her teeth.
The doorknob turned.
Her lips parted.
The door opened.
And then, amazingly, it closed again. Hyacinth felt herself sag against the back wall, felt Gareth sag against her. She wasn’t sure how it was they hadn’t been detected; probably Gareth had been better shielded by the clothing than she’d thought. Or maybe the light was too dim, or the man hadn’t thought to look down for feet peeking out from behind the gowns. Or maybe he’d had bad eyesight, or maybe…
Or maybe they were just damned lucky.
They waited in silence until it was clear that the man had left the baroness’s office, and then they waited for a good five minutes more, just to be sure. But finally, Gareth moved away from her, pushing through the clothes to the closet door. Hyacinth waited in back until she heard his whispered, “Let’s go.”
She followed him in silence, creeping through the house until they reached the window with the broken latch. Gareth leapt down ahead of her, then held out his hands so that she could balance against the wall and pull the window shut before hopping down to the ground.
“Follow me,” Gareth said, taking her hand and pulling her behind him as he ran through the streets of Mayfair. Hyacinth tripped along behind him, and with each step a sliver of the fear that had gripped her back in the closet was replaced by excitement.
Exhilaration.
By the time they reached Hay Hill, Hyacinth felt as if she was almost ready to bubble over with laughter, and finally, she had to dig in her heels and say, “Stop! I can’t breathe.”
Gareth stopped, but he turned with stern eyes. “I need to get you home,” he said.
“I know, I know, I-”
His eyes widened. “Are you laughing?”
“No! Yes. I mean”-she smiled helplessly-“I might.”
“You’re a madwoman.”
She nodded, still grinning like a fool. “I think so.”
He turned on her, hands on hips. “Have you no sense? We could have been caught back there. That was my father’s butler, and trust me, he has never been in possession of a sense of humor. If he had discovered us, my father would have thrown us in gaol, and your brother would have hauled us straight to a church.”
“I know,” Hyacinth said, trying to appear suitably solemn.
She failed.
Miserably.
Finally, she gave up and said, “But wasn’t it fun?”
For a moment she didn’t think he would respond. For a moment it seemed all he was capable of was a dull, stupefied stare. But then, she heard his voice, low and disbelieving. “Fun?”
She nodded. “A little bit, at least.” She pressed her lips together, working hard to turn them down at the corners. Anything to keep from bursting out with laughter.
“You’re mad,” he said, looking stern and shocked and-God help her-sweet, all at the same time. “You are stark, raving mad,” he said. “Everyone told me, but I didn’t quite believe-”
“Someone told you I was mad?” Hyacinth cut in.
“Eccentric.”
“Oh.” She pursed her lips together. “Well, that’s true, I suppose.”
“Far too much work for any sane man to take on.”
“Is that what they say?” she asked, starting to feel slightly less than complimented.
“All that and more,” he confirmed.
Hyacinth thought about that for a moment, then just shrugged. “Well, they haven’t a lick of sense, any one of them.”
“Good God,” Gareth muttered. “You sound precisely like my grandmother.”
“So you’ve mentioned,” Hyacinth said. And then she couldn’t resist. She just had to ask. “But tell me,” she said, leaning in just a bit. “Truthfully. Weren’t you just a tiny bit excited? Once the fear of discovery had worn off and you knew we would be undetected? Wasn’t it,” she asked, her words coming out on a sigh, “just a little bit wonderful?”
He looked down at her, and maybe it was the moonlight, or maybe just her wishful imagination, but she thought she saw something flash in his eyes. Something soft, something just a little bit indulgent.
“A little bit,” he said. “But just a little bit.”
Hyacinth smiled. “I knew you weren’t a stick.”
He looked down at her, with what had to be palpable irritation. No one had ever accused him of being stodgy before. “A stick?” he said disgustedly.
“In the mud.”
“I knew what you meant.”
“They why did you ask?”
“Because you, Miss Bridgerton…”
And so it went, the rest of the way home.
Chapter 10
The next morning. Hyacinth is still in an excellent mood. Unfortunately, her mother commented upon this so many times at breakfast that Hyacinth was finally forced to flee and barricade herself in her bedchamber.
Violet Bridgerton is an exceptionally canny woman, after all, and if anyone is going to guess that Hyacinth is falling in love, it would be her.
Probably before Hyacinth, even.
Hyacinth hummed to herself as she sat at the small desk in her bedchamber, tapping her fingers against the blotter. She had translated and retranslated the note they’d found the night before in the small green office, and she still wasn’t satisfied with her results, but even that could not dampen her spirits.
She’d been a little disappointed, of course, that they had not found the diamonds the night before, but the note in the curio cabinet seemed to indicate that the jewels might still be theirs for the taking. At the very least, no one else had reached any success with the trail of clues Isabella had left behind.
Hyacinth was never happier than when she had a task, a goal, some sort of quest. She loved the challenge of solving a puzzle, analyzing a clue. And Isabella Marinzoli St. Clair had turned what would surely have been a dull and ordinary season into the most exciting spring of Hyacinth’s life.
She looked down at the note, twisting her mouth to the side as she forced her mind back to the task at hand. Her translation was still only about seventy percent complete, in Hyacinth’s optimistic estimation, but she rather thought she’d managed enough of a translation to justify another attempt. The next clue-or the actual diamonds, if they were lucky-was almost certainly in the library.
“In a book, I imagine,” she murmured, gazing sightlessly out the window. She thought of the Bridgerton library, tucked away at her brother’s Grosvenor Square home. The room itself wasn’t terribly large, but the shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling.
And books filled the shelves. Every last inch of them.
“Maybe the St. Clairs aren’t much for reading,” she said to herself, turning her attention once again to Isabella’s note. Surely there had to be something in the cryptic words to indicate which book she had chosen as her hiding spot. Something scientific, she was fairly sure. Isabella had underlined part of her note, which led Hyacinth to think that perhaps she was referring to a book title, since it didn’t seem to make sense in context that she’d have been underlining for emphasis. And the part she’d underlined had mentioned water and “things that move,” which sounded a bit like physics, not that Hyacinth had ever studied it. But she’d four brothers who had attended university, and she’d overheard enough of their studies to have a vague knowledge of, if not the subject, at least what the subject meant.