“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.”
“Are you certain?” Hyacinth asked, reaching into her small satchel for the diary.
“That I need a nap? Yes, more’s the pity. It started two years ago. Now I can’t exist without one each afternoon.”
“Actually, I was referring to the reading of the diary,?
?? Hyacinth murmured. “If you wish to fall asleep, there are certainly better methods than my reading to you in Italian.”
“Why, Hyacinth,” Lady D said, with a noise that sounded suspiciously like a cackle, “are you offering to sing me lullabies?”
Hyacinth rolled her eyes. “You’re as bad as a child.”
“Whence we came, my dear Miss Bridgerton. Whence we came.”
Hyacinth shook her head and found her spot in the diary. She’d left off in the spring of 1793, four years before Gareth’s birth. According to what she had read in the carriage on the way over, Gareth’s mother was pregnant, with what Hyacinth assumed would be Gareth’s older brother George. She had suffered two miscarriages before that, which had not endeared her to her husband.
What Hyacinth was finding most interesting about the tale was the disappointment Isabella expressed about her son. She loved him, yes, but she regretted the degree to which she had allowed her husband to mold him. As a result, Isabella had written, the son was just like the father. He treated his mother with disdain, and his wife fared no better.
Hyacinth was finding the entire tale to be rather sad. She liked Isabella. There was an intelligence and humor to her writing that shone through, even when Hyacinth was not able to translate every word, and Hyacinth liked to think that if they had been of an age, they would have been friends. It saddened her to realize the degree to which Isabella had been stifled and made unhappy by her husband.
And it reinforced her belief that it really did matter who one married. Not for wealth or status, although Hyacinth was not so idealistic that she would pretend those were completely unimportant.
But one only got one life, and, God willing, one husband. And how nice to actually like the man to whom one pledged one’s troth. Isabella hadn’t been beaten or misused, but she had been ignored, and her thoughts and opinions had gone unheard. Her husband sent her off to some remote country house, and he taught his sons by example. Gareth’s father treated his wife the exact same way. Hyacinth supposed that Gareth’s uncle would have been the same, too, if he had lived long enough to take a wife.
“Are you going to read to me or not?” Lady D asked, somewhat stridently.
Hyacinth looked over at the countess, who had not even bothered to open her eyes for her demand. “Sorry,” she said, using her finger to find where she had left off. “I need just a moment to…ah, here we are.”
Hyacinth cleared her throat and began to read in Italian. “Si avvicina il giorno in cui nascerà il mio primo nipote. Prego che sia un maschio…”
She translated in her head as she continued to read aloud in Italian:
The day draws near in which will be born my first grandchild. I pray that it will be a boy. I would love a little girl—I would probably be allowed to see her and love her more, but it will be better for us all if we have a boy. I am afraid to think how quickly Anne will be forced to endure the attentions of my son if she has a girl.
I should love better my own son, but instead I worry about his wife.
Hyacinth paused, eyeing Lady Danbury for signs that she understood any of the Italian. This was her daughter she was reading about, after all. Hyacinth wondered if the countess had any idea how sad the marriage had been. But Lady D had, remarkably, started to snore.
Hyacinth blinked in surprise—and suspicion. She had never dreamed that Lady Danbury might fall asleep that quickly. She held silent for a few moments, waiting for the countess’s eyes to pop open with a loud demand for her to continue.