Julia Quinn - It’s In His Kiss

“Of course not,” she answered. “It’s merely a touch warm in here, don’t you think?”

He eyed her for one second longer than she would have liked, then turned to Lady Danbury. “Are you overheated, Grandmother?” he asked solicitously.

“Not at all,” came the brisk reply.

He turned back to Hyacinth with a tiny shrug. “It must be you,” he murmured.

“It must,” she ground out, facing determinedly forward. Maybe there still was time to escape to the ladies’ retiring room. Penelope would want to have her drawn and quartered, but did it really count as abandonment when there were two people seated between them? Besides, she could surely use Lord Somershall as an excuse. Even now he was shifting in his seat, bumping up against her in a way that Hyacinth wasn’t entirely certain was accidental.

Hyacinth shifted slightly to the right. Just an inch-not even. The last thing she wanted was to be pressed up against Gareth St. Clair. Well, the second-to-last, anyway. Lord Somershall’s portly frame was decidedly worse.

“Is something amiss, Miss Bridgerton?” Mr. St. Clair inquired.

She shook her head, getting ready to push herself up by planting the heels of her hands on the chair on either side of her lap. She couldn’t-

Clap.

Clap clap clap.

Hyacinth nearly groaned. It was one of the Ladies Smythe-Smith, signaling that the concert was about to begin. She’d lost her moment of opportunity. There was no way she could depart politely now.

But at least she could take some solace in the fact that she wasn’t the only miserable soul. Just as the Misses Smythe-Smith lifted their bows to strike their instruments, she heard Mr. St. Clair let out a very quiet groan, followed by a heartfelt, “God help us all.”

Thirty minutes later, and somewhere not too far away, a small dog is howling in agony. Unfortunately, no one can hear him over the din…

There was only one person in the world for whom Gareth would sit politely and listen to really bad music, and Grandmother Danbury happened to be it.

“Never again,” he whispered in her ear, as something that might have been Mozart assaulted his ears. This, after something that might have been Haydn, which had followed something that might have been Handel.

“You’re not sitting politely,” she whispered back.

“We could have sat in the back,” he grumbled.

“And missed all the fun?”

How anyone could term a Smythe-Smith musicale fun was beyond him, but his grandmother had what could only be termed a morbid love for the annual affair.

As usual, four Smythe-Smith girls were seated on a small dais, two with violins, one with a cello, and one at a pianoforte, and the noise they were making was so discordant as to be almost impressive.

Almost.

“It’s a good thing I love you,” he said over his shoulder.

“Ha,” came her reply, no less truculent for its whispered tone. “It’s a good thing I love you.”

And then-thank God-it was over, and the girls were nodding and making their curtsies, three of them looking quite pleased with themselves, and one-the one on the cello-looking as if she might like to hurl herself through a window.

Gareth turned when he heard his grandmother sigh. She was shaking her head and looking uncharacteristically sympathetic.

The Smythe-Smith girls were notorious in London, and each performance was somehow, inexplicably, worse than the last. Just when one thought there was no possible way to make a deeper mockery of Mozart, a new set of Smythe-Smith cousins appeared on the scene, and proved that yes, it could be done.

But they were nice girls, or so he’d been told, and his grandmother, in one of her rare fits of unabashed kindness, insisted that someone had to sit in the front row and clap, because, as she put it, “Three of them couldn’t tell an elephant from a flute, but there’s always one who is ready to melt in misery.”

And apparently Grandmother Danbury, who thought nothing of telling a duke that he hadn’t the sense of a gnat, found it vitally important to clap for the one Smythe-Smith girl in each generation whose ear wasn’t made of tin.

They all stood to applaud, although he suspected his grandmother did so only to have an excuse to retrieve her cane, which Hyacinth Bridgerton had handed over with no protest whatsoever.

“Traitor,” he’d murmured over his shoulder.

“They’re your toes,” she’d replied.

He cracked a smile, despite himself. He had never met anyone quite like Hyacinth Bridgerton. She was vaguely amusing, vaguely annoying, but one couldn’t quite help but admire her wit.

Hyacinth Bridgerton, he reflected, had an interesting and unique reputation among London socialites. She was the youngest of the Bridgerton siblings, famously named in alphabetical order, A-H. And she was, in theory at least and for those who cared about such things, considered a rather good catch for matrimony. She had never been involved, even tangentially, in a scandal, and her family and connections were beyond compare. She was quite pretty, in wholesome, unexotic way, with thick, chestnut hair and blue eyes that did little to hide her shrewdness. And perhaps most importantly, Gareth thought with a touch of the cynic, it was whispered that her eldest brother, Lord Bridgerton, had increased her dowry last year, after Hyacinth had completed her third London season without an acceptable proposal of marriage.

But when he had inquired about her-not, of course because he was interested; rather he had wanted to learn more about this young lady who seemed to enjoy spending a great deal of time with his grandmother-his friends had all shuddered.

“Hyacinth Bridgerton?” one had echoed. “Surely not to marry? You must be mad.”

Another had called her terrifying.

No one actually seemed to dislike her-there was a certain charm to her that kept her in everyone’s good graces-but the consensus was that she was best in small doses. “Men don’t like women who are more intelligent than they are,” one of his shrewder friends had commented, “and Hyacinth Bridgerton isn’t the sort to feign stupidity.”

She was, Gareth had thought on more than one occasion, a younger version of his grandmother. And while there was no one in the world he adored more than Grandmother Danbury, as far as he was concerned, the world needed only one of her.

“Aren’t you glad you came?” the elderly lady in question asked, her voice carrying quite well over the applause.

No one ever clapped as loudly as the Smythe-Smith audience. They were always so glad that it was over.

“Never again,” Gareth said firmly.

“Of course not,” his grandmother said, with just the right touch of condescension to show that she was lying through her teeth.

He turned and looked her squarely in the eye. “You will have to find someone else to accompany you next year.”

“I wouldn’t dream of asking you again,” Grandmother Danbury said.

“You’re lying.”

“What a terrible thing to say to your beloved grandmother.” She leaned slightly forward. “How did you know?”

He glanced at the cane, dormant in her hand. “You haven’t waved that thing through the air once since you tricked Miss Bridgerton into returning it,” he said.

“Nonsense,” she said. “Miss Bridgerton is too sharp to be tricked, aren’t you, Hyacinth?”

Hyacinth shifted forward so that she could see past him to the countess. “I beg your pardon?”

“Just say yes,” Grandmother Danbury said. “It will vex him.”

“Yes, of course, then,” she said, smiling.

“And,” his grandmother continued, as if that entire ridiculous exchange had not taken place, “I’ll have you know that I am the soul of discretion when it comes to my cane.”

Gareth gave her a look. “It’s a wonder I still have my feet.”

“It’s a wonder you still have your ears, my dear boy,” she said with lofty disdain.

“I will take that away again,” he warned.

“No you won’t,” she replied with a cackle. “I’m leaving with Penelope to find a glass of lemonade. You keep Hyacinth company.”

He watched her go, then turned back to Hyacinth, who was glancing about the room with slightly narrowed eyes.

“Who are you looking for?” he asked.

“No one in particular. Just examining the scene.”

He looked at her curiously. “Do you always sound like a detective?”

“Only when it suits me,” she said with a shrug. “I like to know what is going on.”

“And is anything ‘going on’?” he queried.

“No.” Her eyes narrowed again as she watched two people in a heated discussion in the far corner. “But you never know.”

He fought the urge to shake his head. She was the strangest woman. He glanced at the stage. “Are we safe?”

She finally turned back, her blue eyes meeting his with uncommon directness. “Do you mean is it over?”

“Yes.”

Her brow furrowed, and in that moment Gareth realized that she had the lightest smattering of freckles on her nose. “I think so,” she said. “I’ve never known them to hold an intermission before.”

“Thank God,” he said, with great feeling. “Why do they do it?”

“The Smythe-Smiths, you mean?”

“Yes.”

For a moment she remained silent, then she just shook her head, and said, “I don’t know. One would think…”

Whatever she’d been about to say, she thought the better of it. “Never mind,” she said.

“Tell me,” he urged, rather surprised by how curious he was.

“It was nothing,” she said. “Just that one would think that someone would have told them by now. But actually…” She glanced around the room. “The audience has grown smaller in recent years. Only the kindhearted remain.”

“And do you include yourself among those ranks, Miss Bridgerton?”