“Hyacinth!”
“Butterworth,” Hyacinth grumbled. “Whatever her name is, she ran for the cliffs. End of chapter.”
“The cliffs? Still? Wasn’t she running at the end of the last chapter?”
“Perhaps it’s a long way.”
Lady Danbury narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
Hyacinth shrugged. “It is certainly true that I would lie to you to get out of reading the next few paragraphs of Priscilla Butterworth’s remarkably perilous life, but as it happens, I’m telling the truth.” When Lady D didn’t say anything, Hyacinth held out the book, and asked, “Would you like to check for yourself?”
“No, no,” Lady Danbury said, with a great show of acceptance. “I believe you, if only because I have no choice.”
Hyacinth gave her a pointed look. “Are you blind now, as well as deaf?”
“No.” Lady D sighed, letting one hand flutter until it rested palm out on her forehead. “Just practicing my high drama.”
Hyacinth laughed out loud.
“I do not jest,” Lady Danbury said, her voice returning to its usual sharp tenor. “And I am thinking of making a change in life. I could do a better job on the stage than most of those fools who call themselves actresses.”
“Sadly,” Hyacinth said, “there doesn’t seem to be much demand for aging countess roles.”
“If anyone else said that to me,” Lady D said, thumping her cane against the floor even though she was seated in a perfectly good chair, “I’d take it as an insult.”
“But not from me?” Hyacinth queried, trying to sound disappointed.
Lady Danbury chuckled. “Do you know why I like you so well, Hyacinth Bridgerton?”
Hyacinth leaned forward. “I’m all agog.”
Lady D’s face spread into a creased smile. “Because you, dear girl, are exactly like me.”
“Do you know, Lady Danbury,” Hyacinth said, “if you said that to anyone else, she’d probably take it as an insult.”
Lady D’s thin body quivered with mirth. “But not you?”
Hyacinth shook her head. “Not me.”
“Good.” Lady Danbury gave her an uncharacteristically grandmotherly smile, then glanced up at the clock on the mantel. “We’ve time for another chapter, I think.”
“We agreed, one chapter each Tuesday,” Hyacinth said, mostly just to be vexing.
Lady D’s mouth settled into a grumpy line. “Very well, then,” she said, eyeing Hyacinth in a sly manner, “we’ll talk about something else.”
Oh, dear.
“Tell me, Hyacinth,” Lady Danbury said, leaning forward, “how are your prospects these days?”
“You sound like my mother,” Hyacinth said sweetly.
“A compliment of the highest order,” Lady D tossed back. “I like your mother, and I hardly like anyone.”
“I’ll be sure to tell her.”
“Bah. She knows that already, and you’re avoiding the question.”
“My prospects,” Hyacinth replied, “as you so delicately put it, are the same as ever.”
“Such is the problem. You, my dear girl, need a husband.”
“Are you quite certain my mother isn’t hiding behind the curtains, feeding you lines?”
“See?” Lady Danbury said with a wide smile. “I would be good on the stage.”
Hyacinth just stared at her. “You have gone quite mad, did you know that?”
“Bah. I’m merely old enough to get away with speaking my mind. You’ll enjoy it when you’re my age, I promise.”
“I enjoy it now,” Hyacinth said.
“True,” Lady Danbury conceded. “And it’s probably why you’re still unmarried.”
“If there were an intelligent unattached man in London,” Hyacinth said with a beleaguered sigh, “I assure you I would set my cap for him.” She let her head cock to the side with a sarcastic tilt. “Surely you wouldn’t see me married to a fool.”
“Of course not, but—”
“And stop mentioning your grandson as if I weren’t intelligent enough to figure out what you’re up to.”
Lady D gasped in full huff. “I didn’t say a word.”
“You were about to.”
“Well, he’s perfectly nice,” Lady Danbury muttered, not even trying to deny it, “and more than handsome.”
Hyacinth caught her lower lip between her teeth, trying not to remember how very strange she’d felt at the Smythe-Smith musicale with Mr. St. Clair at her side. That was the problem with him, she realized. She didn’t feel like herself when he was near. And it was the most disconcerting thing.
“I see you don’t disagree,” Lady D said.
“About your grandson’s handsome visage? Of course not,” Hyacinth replied, since there was little point in debating it. There were some people for whom good looks were a fact, not an opinion.
“And,” Lady Danbury continued in grand fashion, “I’m happy to say that he inherited his brain from my side of the family, which, I might regretfully add, isn’t the case with all of my progeny.”
Hyacinth glanced up at the ceiling in an attempt to avoid comment. Lady Danbury’s eldest son had famously gotten his head stuck between the bars of the front gate of Windsor Castle.
“Oh, go ahead and say it,” Lady D grumbled. “At least two of my children are half-wits, and heaven knows about their children. I flee in the opposite direction when they come to town.”
“I would never—”
“Well, you were thinking it, and rightly you should. Serves me right for marrying Lord Danbury when I knew he hadn’t two thoughts to bang together in his head. But Gareth is a prize, and you’re a fool if you don’t—”
“Your grandson,” Hyacinth cut in, “isn’t the least bit interested in me or any marriageable female, for that matter.”
“Well, that is a problem,” Lady Danbury agreed, “and for the life of me, I don’t know why the boy shuns your sort.”
“My sort?” Hyacinth echoed.
“Young, female, and someone he would actually have to marry if he dallied with.”
Hyacinth felt her cheeks burn. Normally this would be exactly the sort of conversation she relished—it was far more fun to be improper than otherwise, within reason, of course—but this time it was all she could do to say, “I hardly think you should be discussing such things with me.”
“Bah,” Lady D said, gesturing dismissively with her hand. “Since when have you become so missish?”
Hyacinth opened her mouth, but thankfully, Lady Danbury didn’t seem to desire an answer. “He’s a rogue, it’s true,” the countess sailed on, “but it’s nothing you can’t overcome if you put your mind to it.”
“I’m not going to—”
“Just yank your dress down a little when next you see him,” Lady D cut in, waving her hand impatiently in front of her face. “Men lose all sense at the sight of a healthy bosom. You’ll have him—”