She swallowed before asking, “Is it the cause of your estrangement? The betrothal?”
“You’re asking a rather lot of questions for someone who has demanded that I leave.”
“I’m going to marry you,” she said. “I will learn eventually.”
“Yes, you will,” he said. “But not tonight.”
And with that, he swung himself through the window.
He looked up when he reached the ground, desperate for one last glimpse of her. Anything would have been nice, a silhouette, perhaps, or even just her shadowy form, moving behind the curtains.
But there was nothing.
She was gone.
Chapter 17
Teatime at Number Five. Hyacinth is alone in the drawing room with her moth
er, always a dangerous proposition when one is in possession of a secret.
“Is Mr. St. Clair out of town?”
Hyacinth looked up from her rather sloppy embroidery for just long enough to say, “I don’t believe so, why?”
Her mother’s lips tightened fleetingly before she said, “He hasn’t called in several days.”
Hyacinth affixed a bland expression onto her face as she said, “I believe he is busy with something or other relating to his property in Wiltshire.”
It was a lie, of course. Hyacinth didn’t think he possessed any property, in Wiltshire or anywhere else. But with any luck, her mother would be distracted by some other matter before she got around to inquiring about Gareth’s nonexistent estates.
“I see,” Violet murmured.
Hyacinth stabbed her needle into the fabric with perhaps a touch more vigor than was necessary, then looked down at her handiwork with a bit of a snarl. She was an abysmal needlewoman. She’d never had the patience or the eye for detail that it required, but she always kept an embroidery hoop going in the drawing room. One never knew when one would need it to provide an acceptable distraction from conversation.
The ruse had worked quite well for years. But now that Hyacinth was the only Bridgerton daughter living at home, teatime often consisted of just her and her mother. And unfortunately, the needlework that had kept her so neatly out of three-and four-way conversations didn’t seem to do the trick so well with only two.
“Is anything amiss?” Violet asked.
“Of course not.” Hyacinth didn’t want to look up, but avoiding eye contact would surely make her mother suspicious, so she set her needle down and lifted her chin. In for a penny, in for a pound, she decided. If she was going to lie, she might as well make it convincing. “He’s merely busy, that is all. I rather admire him for it. You wouldn’t wish for me to marry a wastrel, would you?”
“No, of course not,” Violet murmured, “but still, it does seem odd. You’re so recently affianced.”
On any other day, Hyacinth would have just turned to her mother and said, “If you have a question, just ask it.”
Except then her mother would ask a question.
And Hyacinth most certainly did not wish to answer.
It had been three days since she had learned the truth about Gareth. It sounded so dramatic, melodramatic even—“learned the truth.” It sounded like she’d discovered some terrible secret, uncovered some dastardly skeleton in the St. Clair family closet.
But there was no secret. Nothing dark or dangerous, or even mildly embarrassing. Just a simple truth that had been staring her in the face all along.
And she had been too blind to see it. Love did that to a woman, she supposed.
And she had most certainly fallen in love with him. That much was clear. Sometime between the moment she had agreed to marry him and the night they had made love, she’d fallen in love with him.
But she hadn’t known him. Or had she? Could she really say that she’d known him, truly known the measure of the man, when she hadn’t even understood the most basic element of his character?