“I hope you still intend to look for them,” she said. “We have come too far to give up now.”
“Have you any idea where we might begin?” he asked, keeping his voice scrupulously even. “If I recall correctly, we seem to have hit a bit of a brick wall.”
She reached into her reticule and pulled out the latest clue from Isabella, which she’d had in her possession ever since they had parted a few days earlier. With careful, steady fingers she unfolded it and smoothed it open on his desk. “I took the liberty of taking this to my brother Colin,” she said. She looked up and reminded him, “You had given me your permission to do so.”
He gave her a brief nod of agreement.
“As I mentioned, he has traveled extensively on the Continent, and he seems to feel that it is written in a Slavic language. After consulting a map, he guessed that it is Slovene.” At his blank stare, she added, “It is what they speak in Slovenia.”
Gareth blinked. “Is there such a country?”
For the first time in the interview, Hyacinth smiled. “There is. I must confess, I was unaware of its existence as well. It’s more of a region, really. To the north and east of Italy.”
“Part of Austria-Hungary, then?”
Hyacinth nodded. “And the Holy Roman Empire before that. Was your grandmother from the north of Italy?”
Gareth suddenly realized that he had no idea. Grandmother Isabella had loved to tell him stories of her childhood in Italy, but they had been tales of food and holidays—the sorts of things a very young boy might find interesting. If she’d mentioned the town of her birth, he had been too young to take note. “I don’t know,” he said, feeling rather foolish—and in truth, somewhat inconsiderate—for his ignorance. “I suppose she must have been. She wasn’t very dark. Her coloring was a bit like mine, actually.”
Hyacinth nodded. “I had wondered about that. Neither you nor your father has much of a Mediterranean look about you.”
Gareth smiled tightly. He could not speak for the baron, but there was a very good reason why he did not look as if he carried any Italian blood.
“Well,” Hyacinth said, looking back down at the sheet of paper she had laid on his desk. “If she was from the northeast, it stands to reason that she might have lived near the Slovene border and thus been familiar with the language. Or at least familiar enough to pen two sentences in it.”
“I can’t imagine that she thought anyone here in England might be able to translate it, though.”
“Exactly,” she said, making an animated motion of agreement. When it became apparent that Gareth had no idea what she was talking about, she continued with, “If you wanted to make a clue particularly difficult, wouldn’t you write it in the most obscure language possible?”
“It’s really a pity I don’t speak Chinese,” he murmured.
She gave him a look—either of impatience or irritation; he wasn’t sure which—then continued with, “I am also convinced that this must be the final clue. Anyone who had got this far would be forced to expend quite a lot of energy, and quite possibly expense as well to obtain a translation. Surely she wouldn’t force someone to go through the trouble twice.”
Gareth looked down at the unfamiliar words, chewing on his lower lip as he pondered this.
“Don’t you agree?” Hyacinth pressed.
He looked up, shrugging. “Well, you would.”
Her mouth fell open. “What do you mean? That’s simply not—” She stopped, reflecting on his words. “Very well, I would. But I think we can both agree that, for better or for worse, I am a bit more diabolical than a typical female. Or male, for that matter,” she muttered.
Gareth smiled wryly, wondering if he ought to be made more nervous by the phrase, “for better or for worse.”
“Do you think your grandmother would be as devious as, er…”—she cleared her throat—“I?” Hyacinth seemed to lose a little steam toward the end of the question, and Gareth suddenly saw in her eyes that she was not as collected as she wished for him to believe.
“I don’t know,” he said quite honestly. “She passed away when I was rather young. My recollections and perceptions are those of a seven-year-old boy.”
“Well,” she said, tapping her fingers against the desk in a revealingly nervous gesture. “We can certainly begin our search for a speaker of Slovene.” She rolled her eyes as she added, somewhat dryly, “There must be one somewhere in London.”
“One would think,” he murmured, mostly just to egg her on. He shouldn’t do it; he should be far wiser by now, but there was something so…entertaining about Hyacinth when she was determined.
And as usual, she did not disappoint. “In the meantime,” she stated, her voice marvelously matter-of-fact, “I believe we should return to Clair House.”
“And search it from top to bottom?” he asked, so politely that it had to be clear that he thought she was mad.
“Of course not,” she said with a scowl.
He almost smiled. That was much more like her.