“I thought you said it was,” he said, clearly exasperated.
“I said my brother thought it was,” she returned. “Do you know how many languages there are in central Europe?”
He cursed under his breath.
“I know,” she said. “It’s very frustrating.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “That’s not why I swore.”
“Then why-”
“Because you are going to be the death of me,” he ground out.
Hyacinth smiled, pointing her index finger and pressing it right against his chest. “Now you know why I said my family was mad to get me off their hands.”
“God help me, I do.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Can we go tomorrow?”
“No?”
“The next day?”
“No!”
“Please?” she tried.
He clamped his hands on her shoulders and spun her around until she faced the door. “I’m taking you home,” he announced.
She turned, trying to talk over her shoulder. “Pl-”
“No!”
Hyacinth shuffled along, allowing him to push her toward the door. When she could not put it off any longer, she grasped the doorknob, but before she turned it, she twisted back one last time, opened her mouth, and-
“NO!”
“I didn’t-”
“Very well,” he groaned, practically throwing his arms up in exasperation. “You win.”
“Oh, thank-”
“But you are not coming.”
She froze, her mouth still open and round. “I beg your pardon,” she said.
“I will go,” he said, looking very much as if he’d rather have all of his teeth pulled. “But you will not.”
She stared at him, trying to come up with a way to say, “That’s not fair,” without sounding juvenile. Deciding that was impossible, she set to work attempting to figure out how to ask how she would know he’d actually gone without sounding as if she didn’t trust him.
Botheration, that was a lost cause as well.
So she settled for crossing her arms and skewering him with a glare.
To no effect whatsoever. He just stared down at her and said, “No.”
Hyacinth opened her mouth one last time, then gave up, sighed, and said, “Well, I suppose if I could walk all over you, you wouldn’t be worth marrying.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “You’re going to be a fine wife, Hyacinth Bridgerton,” he said, nudging her out of the room.
“Hmmph.”
He groaned. “Good God, but not if you turn into my grandmother.”
“It is my every aspiration,” she said archly.
“Pity,” he murmured, tugging at her arm so that she came to a halt before they reached his sitting room.
She turned to him, questioning with her eyes.
He curved his lips, all innocence. “Well, I can’t do this to my grandmother.”
“Oh!” she yelped. How had he gotten his hand there?
“Or this.”
“Gareth!”
“Gareth, yes, or Gareth, no?”
She smiled. She couldn’t help it.
“Gareth more.”
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.”