“I wasn’t particularly excited about my children carrying Lord St. Clair’s blood.” She shrugged, lifting her brows in a particularly Hyacinthish expression. “I’m happy for them to have his title—it’s a handy thing to possess, after all—but his blood is quite another thing. He’s remarkably bad-tempered, did you know that?”
Gareth nodded, a bubble of giddy emotion rising within him. “I’d noticed,” he heard himself say.
“I suppose we’ll have to keep it a secret,” she said, as if she were speaking of nothing more than the idlest of gossip. “Who else knows?”
He blinked, still a little dazed by her matter-of-fact approach to the problem. “Just the baron and me, as far as I’m aware.”
“And your real father.”
“I hope not,” Gareth said, and he realized that it was the first time he’d actually allowed himself to say the words—even, really, to think them.
“He might not have known,” Hyacinth said quietly, “or he might have thought you were better off with the St. Clairs, as a child of nobility.”
“I know all that,” Gareth said bitterly, “and yet somehow it doesn’t make it feel any better.”
“Your grandmother might know more.”
His eyes flew to her face.
“Isabella,” she clarified. “In her diary.”
“She wasn’t really my grandmother.”
“Did she ever act that way? As if you weren’t hers?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said, losing himself to the memories. “She loved me. I don’t know why, but she did.”
“It might be,” Hyacinth said, her voice catching in the oddest manner, “because you’re slightly lovable.”
His heart leapt. “Then you don’t wish to end the engagement,” he said, somewhat cautiously.
She looked at him with an uncommonly direct gaze. “Do you?”
He shook his head.
“Then why,” she said, her lips forming the barest of smiles, “would you think that I would?”
“Your family might object.”
“Pffft. We’re not so high in the instep as that. My brother’s wife is the illegitimate daughter of the Earl of Penwood and an actress of God knows what provenance, and any one of us would lay down our lives for her.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “But you are not illegitimate.”
He shook his head. “To my father’s everlasting despair.”
“Well, then,” she said, “I don’t see a problem. My brother and Sophie like to live quietly in the country, in part because of her past, but we shan’t be forced to do the same. Unless of course, you wish to.”
“The baron could raise a huge scandal,” he warned her.
She smiled. “Are you trying to talk me out of marrying you?”
“I just want you to understand—”
“Because I would hope by now you’ve learned that it’s a tiresome endeavor to attempt to talk me out of anything.”
Gareth could only smile at that.
“Your father won’t say a word,” she stated. “What would be the point? You were born in wedlock, so he can’t take away the title, and revealing you as a bastard would only reveal him as a cuckold.” She waved her hand through the air with great authority. “No man wants that.”
His lips curved, and he felt something changing inside of him, as if he were growing lighter, more free. “And you can speak for all men?” he murmured, moving slowly in her direction.