And then—thank God—it was over, and the girls were nodding and making their curtsies, three of them looking quite pleased with themselves, and one—the one on the cello—looking as if she might like to hurl herself through a window.
Gareth turned when he heard his grandmother sigh. She was shaking her head and looking uncharacteristically sympathetic.
The Smythe-Smith girls were notorious in London, and each performance was somehow, inexplicably, worse than the last. Just when one thought there was no possible way to make a deeper mockery of Mozart, a new set of Smythe-Smith cousins appeared on the scene, and proved that yes, it could be done.
But they were nice girls, or so he’d been told, and his grandmother, in one of her rare fits of unabashed kindness, insisted that someone had to sit in the front row and clap, because, as she put it, “Three of them couldn’t tell an elephant from a flute, but there’s always one who is ready to melt in misery.”
And apparently Grandmother Danbury, who thought nothing of telling a duke that he hadn’t the sense of a gnat, found it vitally important to clap for the one Smythe-Smith girl in each generation whose ear wasn’t made of tin.
They all stood to applaud, although he suspected his grandmother did so only to have an excuse to retrieve her cane, which Hyacinth Bridgerton had handed over with no protest whatsoever.
“Traitor,” he’d murmured over his shoulder.
“They’re your toes,” she’d replied.
He cracked a smile, despite himself. He had never met anyone quite like Hyacinth Bridgerton. She was vaguely amusing, vaguely annoying, but one couldn’t quite help but admire her wit.
Hyacinth Bridgerton, he reflected, had an interesting and unique reputation among London socialites. She was the youngest of the Bridgerton siblings, famously named in alphabetical order, A-H. And she was, in theory at least and for those who cared about such things, considered a rather good catch for matrimony. She had never been involved, even tangentially, in a scandal, and her family and connections were beyond compare. She was quite pretty, in wholesome, unexotic way, with thick, chestnut hair and blue eyes that did little to hide her shrewdness. And perhaps most importantly, Gareth thought with a touch of the cynic, it was whispered that her eldest brother, Lord Bridgerton, had increased her dowry last year, after Hyacinth had completed her third London season without an acceptable proposal of marriage.
But when he had inquired about her—not, of course because he was interested; rather he had wanted to learn more about this young lady who seemed to enjoy spending a great deal of time with his grandmother—his friends had all shuddered.
“Hyacinth Bridgerton?” one had echoed. “Surely not to marry? You must be mad.”
Another had called her terrifying.
No one actually seemed to dislike her—there was a certain charm to her that kept her in everyone’s good graces—but the consensus was that she was best in small doses. “Men don’t like women who are more intelligent than they are,” one of his shrewder friends had commented, “and Hyacinth Bridgerton isn’t the sort to feign stupidity.”
She was, Gareth had thought on more than one occasion, a younger version of his grandmother. And while there was no one in the world he adored more than Grandmother Danbury, as far as he was concerned, the world needed only one of her.
“Aren’t you glad you came?” the elderly lady in question asked, her voice carrying quite well over the applause.
No one ever clapped as loudly as the Smythe-Smith audience. They were always so glad that it was over.
“Never again,” Gareth said firmly.
“Of course not,” his grandmother said, with just the right touch of condescension to show that she was lying through her teeth.
He turned and looked her squarely in the eye. “You will have to find someone else to accompany you next year.”
“I wouldn’t dream of asking you again,” Grandmother Danbury said.
“You’re lying.”
“What a terrible thing to say to your beloved grandmother.” She leaned slightly forward. “How did you know?”
He glanced at the cane, dormant in her hand. “You haven’t waved that thing through the air once since you tricked Miss Bridgerton into returning it,” he said.
“Nonsense,” she said. “Miss Bridgerton is too sharp to be tricked, aren’t you, Hyacinth?”
Hyacinth shifted forward so that she could see past him to the countess. “I beg your pardon?”
“Just say yes,” Grandmother Danbury said. “It will vex him.”
“Yes, of course, then,” she said, smiling.
“And,” his grandmother continued, as if that entire r
idiculous exchange had not taken place, “I’ll have you know that I am the soul of discretion when it comes to my cane.”