“But it is.”
“I know.”
“I love you,” he said.
“I know.”
And really, what more could she want?
Meanwhile, six feet away…
Isabella was quite used to the antics of her parents. She accepted the fact that they tugged each other into dark corners with far more frequency than was seemly. She thought nothing of the fact that her mother was one of the most outspoken women in London or that her father was still so handsome that her own friends sighed and stammered in his presence. In fact, she rather enjoyed being the daughter of such an unconventional couple. Oh, on the outside they were all that was proper, to be sure, with only the nicest sort of reputation for high-spiritedness.
But behind the closed doors of Clair House…Isabella knew that her friends were not encouraged to share their opinions as she was. Most of her friends were not even encouraged to have opinions. And certainly most young ladies of her acquaintance had not been given the opportunity to study modern languages, nor to delay a social debut by one year in order to travel on the continent.
So, when all was said and done, Isabella thought herself quite fortunate as pertained to her parents, and if that meant overlooking the occasional episodes of Not Acting One’s Age-well, it was worth it, and she’d learned to ignore much of their behavior.
But when she’d sought out her mother that afternoon-to acquiesce on the matter of the white gown with the dullish green trim, she might add-and instead found her parents on the washroom floor pushing a bathtub…
Well, really, that was a bit much, even for the St. Clairs.
And who would have faulted her for remaining to eavesdrop?
Not her mother, Isabella decided as she leaned in. There was no way Hyacinth St. Clair would have done the right thing and walked away. One couldn’t live with the woman for nineteen years without learning that. And as for her father-well, Isabella rather thought he would have stayed to listen as well, especially as they were making it so easy for her, facing the wall as they were, with their backs to the open doorway, indeed with the bathtub between them.
“What do you plan to do now?” her father was asking, his voice laced with that particular brand of amusement he seemed to reserve for her mother.
“I’m not sure,” her mother replied, sounding uncharacteristically…well, not unsure, but certainly not as sure as usual. “Check the floor, I imagine.”
Check the floor? What on earth were they talking about? Isabella leaned forward for a better listen, just in time to hear her father ask, “You haven’t done so already? In the fifteen years since you moved here?”
“I’ve felt along the floor, of course,” her mother retorted, sounding much more like herself. “But it’s just not the same as a visual inspection, and-”
“Good luck,” her father said, and then-Oh, no! He was leaving!
Isabella started to scramble, but then something must have happened because he sat back down. She inched back toward the open doorway-carefully, carefully now, he could get up at any moment. Holding her breath, she leaned in, unable to take her eyes off of the backs of her parents’ heads.
“I could buy you a diamond necklace,” her father said.
A diamond necklace?
A diamond…
Fifteen years.
Moving a tub?
In a washroom?
Fifteen years.
Her mother had searched for fifteen years.
For a diamond necklace?
A diamond necklace.
A diamond…