Good gracious, she had a difficult enough time with faults she did possess.
“Why don’t you look it up in your Italian dictionary?”
“It’s not listed,” she lied. It wasn’t really such an egregious fib. The dictionary had listed several possible translations, certainly enough for Hyacinth to truthfully claim an imprecise understanding.
She waited for him to speak—probably not as long as she should have done, but it seemed like an eternity. And she just couldn’t keep quiet. “I could, if you wish, write to my former governess and ask for a more exact definition, but she’s not the most reliable of correspondents—”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I haven’t written to her in three years,” Hyacinth admitted, “although I’m quite certain she would come to my aid now. It’s just that I have no idea how busy she is or when she might find the time to reply—the last I’d heard she’d given birth to twins—”
“Why does this not surprise me?”
“It’s true, and heaven only knows how long it will take her to respond. Twins are an uncommon amount of work, or so I’m told, and…” Her voice lost some of its volume as it became apparent he wasn’t listening to her. She stole a glance at his face and finished, anyway, mostly because she’d already thought of the words, and there wasn’t much point in not saying them. “Well, I don’t think she has the means for a baby nurse,” she said, but her voice had trailed off by the end of it.
Gareth held silent for what seemed an interminably long time before finally saying, “If what you say is correct, and the jewels are still hidden—and that is no certainty, given that she hid them”—his eyes floated briefly up as he did the math—“over sixty years ago, then surely they will remain in place until we can get an accurate translation from your governess.”
“You could wait?” Hyacinth asked, feeling her entire head move forward and down with disbelief. “You could actually wait?”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re there. Because—” She cut herself off, unable to do anything other than stare at him as if he were mad. She knew that people’s minds did not work the same way. And she’d long since learned that hardly anyone’s mind worked the way hers did. But she couldn’t imagine that anyone could wait when faced with this.
Good heavens, if it were up to her, they’d be scaling the wall of Clair House that night.
“Think about this,” Hyacinth said, leaning forward. “If he finds those jewels between now and whenever you find the time to go look for them, you are never going to forgive yourself.”
He said nothing, but she could tell that she’d finally got through to him.
“Not to mention,” she continued, “that I would never forgive you were that to happen.”
She stole a glance at him. He seemed unmoved by that particular argument.
Hyacinth waited quietly while he thought about what to do. The silence was horrible. While she’d been going on about the diary, she’d been able to forget that he’d kissed her, that she’d enjoyed it, and that he apparently hadn’t. She’d thought that their next meeting would be awkward and uncomfortable, but with a goal and a mission, she’d felt restored to her usual self, and even if he didn’t take her along to find the diamonds, she supposed she still owed Isabella thanks for that.
But all the same, she rather thought she’d die if he left her behind. Either that or kill him.
She gripped her hands together, hiding them in the folds of her skirt. It was a nervous gesture, and the mere fact that she was doing it set her even more on edge. She hated that she was nervous, hated that he made her nervous, hated that she had to sit there and not say a word while he pondered her options. But contrary to popular belief, she did occasionally know when to keep her mouth shut, and it was clear that there was nothing more she could say that would sway him one way or the other. Except maybe…
No, even she wasn’t crazy enough to threaten to go by herself.
“What were you going to say?” Gareth asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
He leaned forward, his blue eyes sharp and unwavering. “What were you going to say?”
“What makes you think I was going to say something?”
“I could see it in your face.”
She cocked her head to the side. “You know me that well?”
“Frightening though it may seem, apparently I do.”
She watched as he sat back in his seat. He reminded her of her brothers as he shifted in the too-small chair; they were forever complaining that her mother’s sitting room was decorated for tiny females. But that was where the resemblance ended. None of her brothers had ever possessed the daring to wear his hair back in such a rakish queue, and none of them ever looked at her with that blue-eyed intensity that made her forget her own name.
He seemed to be searching her face for something. Or maybe he was just trying to stare her down, waiting for her to crack under the pressure.