It was just…it was just…
Hyacinth chewed on her lip, horrified by how close to tears she was.
It was just that she’d thought her first kiss would be magical. And she’d thought that the gentleman in question would emerge from the encounter if not impressed then at least a little bit pleased by her performance.
But Gareth St. Clair had been his usual mocking self, and Hyacinth hated that she’d allowed him to make her feel small.
“It’s just a kiss,” she whispered, her words floating through the empty room. “Just a kiss. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
But she knew, even as she tried so hard to lie to herself about it, that it had been more than a kiss.
Much, much more.
At least that was how it had been for her. She closed her eyes in agony. Dear God, while she’d been lying on her bed thinking and thinking, then rethinking and thinking again, he was probably sleeping like a baby. The man had kissed—
Well, she didn’t care to speculate on how many women he had kissed, but it certainly had to have been enough to make her seem the greenest girl in London.
How was she going to face him? And she was going to have to face him. She was translating his grandmother’s diary, for heaven’s sake. If she tried to avoid him, it would seem so obvious.
And the last thing she wanted to do was allow him to see how upset he had made her. There were quite a few things in life a woman needed a great deal more than pride, but Hyacinth figured that as long as dignity was still an option, she might as well hang on to it.
And in the meantime…
She picked up his grandmother’s diary. She hadn’t done any work on it for a full day. She was only twenty-two pages in; there were at least a hundred more to go.
She looked down at the book, lying unopened on her lap. She supposed she could send it back. In fact, she probably should send it back. It would serve him right to be forced to find another translator after his behavior the night before.
But she was enjoying the diary. Life didn’t toss very many challenges in the direction of well-bred young ladies. Frankly, it would be nice to be able to say she had translated an entire book from the Italian. And it would probably be nice to actually do it, too.
Hyacinth fingered the small bookmark she’d used to hold her place and opened the book. Isabella had just arrived in England in the middle of the season, and after a mere week in the country, her new husband had dragged her off to London, where she was expected—without the benefit of fluent English—to socialize and entertain as befitted her station.
To make matters worse, Lord St. Clair’s mother was in residence at Clair House and was clearly unhappy about having to give up her position as lady of the house.
Hyacinth frowned as she read on, stopping every now and then to look up an unfamiliar word. The dowager baroness was interfering with the servants, countermanding Isabella’s orders and making it uncomfortable for those who accepted the new baroness as the woman in charge.
It certainly didn’t make marriage look terribly appealing. Hyacinth made a mental note to try to marry a man without a mother.
“Chin up, Isabella,” she muttered, wincing as she read about the latest altercation—something about an addition of mussels to the menu, despite the fact that shellfish made Isabella develop hives.
“You need to make it clear who’s in charge,” Hyacinth said to the book. “You—”
She frowned, looking down at the latest entry. This didn’t make sense. Why was Isabella talking about her bambino?
Hyacinth read the words three times before thinking to glance back up at the date at top. 24 Ottobre, 1766.
1766? Wait a minute…
She flipped back one page.
1764.
Isabella had skipped two years. Why would she do that?
Hyacinth looked quickly through the next twenty or so pages. 1766…1769…1769…1770…1774…
“You’re not a very dedicated diarist,” Hyacinth murmured. No wonder Isabella had managed to fit decades into one slim volume; she frequently went years between entries.
Hyacinth turned back to the passage about the bambino, continuing her laborious translation. Isabella was back in London, this time without her husband, which didn’t seem to bother her one bit. And she seemed to have gained a bit of self-confidence, although that might have been merely the result of the death of the dowager, which Hyacinth surmised had happened a year earlier.