The Bridgertons Happily Ever After (23 page)

“I—”

“And don’t say you never thought of it,” she said, turning back so that she was once again facing the wall, just a few inches away. But her head was on his shoulder, and he was facing the same wall, and even though they weren’t looking at each other, their hands were still entwined, and somehow the position was everything a marriage should be.

“Because I know you,” she said, feeling a smile growing inside. “I know you, and you know me, and it’s just the loveliest thing.”

He squeezed her hand, then kissed the top of her head. “If it’s here, you’ll find it.”

She sighed. “Or die trying.”

He chuckled.

“That shouldn’t be funny,” she informed him.

“But it is.”

“I know.”

“I love you,” he said.

“I know.”

And really, what more could she want?

Meanwhile six feet away . . .

Isabella was quite used to the antics of her parents. She accepted the fact that they tugged each other into dark corners with far more frequency than was seemly. She thought nothing of the fact that her mother was one of the most outspoken women in London or that her father was still so handsome that her own friends sighed and stammered in his presence. In fact, she rather enjoyed being the daughter of such an unconventional couple. Oh, on the outside they were all that was proper, to be sure, with only the nicest sort of reputation for high-spiritedness.

But behind the closed doors of Clair House . . . Isabella knew that her friends were not encouraged to share their opinions as she was. Most of her friends were not even encouraged to have opinions. And certainly most young ladies of her acquaintance had not been given the opportunity to study modern languages, nor to delay a social debut by one year in order to travel on the continent.

So, when all was said and done, Isabella thought herself quite fortunate as pertained to her parents, and if that meant overlooking the occasional episodes of Not Acting One’s Age—well, it was worth it, and she’d learned to ignore much of their behavior.

But when she’d sought out her mother this afternoon—to acquiesce on the matter of the white gown with the dullish green trim, she might add—and instead found her parents on the washroom floor pushing a
bathtub . . .

Well, really, that was a bit much, even for the St. Clairs.

And who would have faulted her for remaining to eavesdrop?

Not her mother, Isabella decided as she leaned in. There was no way Hyacinth St. Clair would have done the right thing and walked away. One couldn’t live with the woman for nineteen years without learning
that
. And as for her father—well, Isabella rather thought he would have stayed to listen as well, especially as they were making it so
easy
for her, facing the wall as they were, with their backs to the open doorway, indeed with bathtub between them.

“What do you plan to do now?” her father was asking, his voice laced with that particular brand of amusement he seemed to reserve for her mother.

“I don’t know,” her mother replied, sounding uncharacteristically . . . well, not
un
sure, but certainly not as sure as usual. “Check the floor, I imagine.”

Check the floor? What on earth were they talking about? Isabella leaned forward for a better listen, just in time to hear her father ask, “You haven’t done so already? In the fifteen years since you moved here?”

“I’ve felt along the floor,” her mother retorted, sounding much more like herself. “But it’s not the same as a visual inspection, and—”

“Good luck,” her father said, and then—
Oh, no! He was leaving!

Isabella started to scramble, but then something must have happened because he sat back down. She inched back toward the open doorway—

Carefully, carefully now, he could get up at any moment. Holding her breath, she leaned in, unable to take her eyes off of the backs of her parents’ heads.

“I could buy you a diamond necklace,” her father said.

A diamond necklace?

A diamond . . .

Fifteen years.

Moving a tub?

In a washroom?

Fifteen years.

Her mother had searched for fifteen years.

For a diamond necklace?

A diamond necklace.

A diamond . . .

Oh. Dear. God.

What was she going to do? What was she going to do? She knew what she must do, but good God,
how
was she supposed to do it?

And what could she say? What could she possibly say to—

Forget that for now. Forget it because her mother was talking again and she was saying, “You could have bought me a necklace. And you could have hidden it. Just so that I could have found it, you could have hidden it. But you didn’t.”

There was so much love in her voice it made Isabella’s heart ache. And something about it seemed to sum up everything that her parents were. To themselves, to each other.

To their children.

And suddenly the moment was too personal to spy upon, even for her. She crept from the room, then ran to her own chamber, sagging into a chair just as soon as she closed the door.

Because she knew what her mother had been looking for for so very long.

It was sitting in the bottom drawer of her desk. And it was more than a necklace. It was an entire parure—a necklace, bracelet, and ring, a veritable shower of diamonds, each stone framed by two delicate aquamarines. Isabella had found them when she was ten, hidden in a small cavity behind one of the Turkish tiles in the nursery washroom. She
should
have said something about them. She knew that she should. But she hadn’t, and she wasn’t even sure why.

Maybe it was because she had found them. Maybe because she loved having a secret. Maybe it was because she hadn’t thought they belonged to anyone else, or indeed, that anyone even knew of their existence. Certainly she hadn’t thought that her mother had been searching for fifteen years.

Her mother!

Her mother was the last person anyone would imagine was keeping a secret. No one would think ill of Isabella for not thinking, when she’d discovered the diamonds—
Oh, surely my mother must be looking for these and has chosen, for her own devious reasons, not to tell me about it
.

Truly, when all was said and done, this was really her mother’s fault. If Hyacinth had
told
her that she was searching for jewels, Isabella would immediately have confessed. Or if not immediately, then soon enough to satisfy everyone’s conscience.

And now, speaking of consciences, hers was beating a nasty little tattoo in her chest. It was a most unpleasant—and unfamiliar—feeling.

It wasn’t that Isabella was the soul of sweetness and light, all sugary smiles and pious platitudes. Heavens, no, she avoided such girls like the plague. But by the same token, she rarely did anything that was likely to make her feel guilty afterward, if only because perhaps—and only perhaps—her notions of propriety and morality were ever-so-slightly flexible.

But now she had a lump in the pit of her stomach, a lump with peculiar talent for sending bile up her throat. Her hands were shaking, and she felt ill. Not feverish, not even aguey, just ill. With herself.

Letting out an uneven breath, Isabella rose to her feet and crossed the room to her desk, a delicate rococo piece her namesake great-grandmother had brought over from Italy. She’d put the jewels there three years back, when she’d finally moved out of the top-floor nursery. She’d discovered a secret compartment at the back of the bottom drawer. This hadn’t particularly surprised her; there seemed to be an uncommon number of secret compartments in the furniture at Clair House, much of which had been imported from Italy. But it
was
a boon and rather convenient, and so one day, when her family was off at some
ton
function they had deemed Isabella too young to attend, she’d sneaked back up to the nursery, retrieved the jewels from their hiding place behind the tile (which she had rather resourcefully plastered back up), and moved them to her desk.

They’d remained there ever since, except for the odd occasion when Isabella took them out and tried them on, thinking how nice they would look with her new gown, but
how
was she to explain their existence to her parents?

Now it seemed that no explanation would have been necessary. Or perhaps just a different sort of explanation.

A very different sort.

Settling into the desk chair, Isabella leaned down and retrieved the jewels from the secret compartment. They were still in the same corded velvet bag in which she’d found them. She slid them free, letting them pool luxuriously on the desktop. She didn’t know much about jewels, but surely these had to be of the finest quality. They caught the sunlight with an indescribable magic, almost as if each stone could somehow capture the light and then send it showering off in every direction.

Isabella didn’t like to think herself greedy or materialistic, but in the presence of such treasure, she understood how diamonds could make a man go a little bit mad. Or why women longed so desperately for one more piece, one more stone that was bigger, more finely cut than the last.

But these did not belong to her. Maybe they belonged to no one. But if anyone had a right to them, it was most definitely her mother. Isabella didn’t know how or why Hyacinth knew of their existence, but that didn’t seem to matter. Her mother had some sort of connection to the jewels, some sort of important knowledge. And if they belonged to anyone, they belonged to her.

Reluctantly, Isabella slid them back into the bag and tightened the gold cord so that none of the pieces could slip out. She knew what she had to do now. She knew exactly what she had to do.

But after that . . .

The torture would be in the waiting.

One year later

It had been two months since Hyacinth had last searched for the jewels, but Gareth was busy with some sort of estate matter, she had no good books to read, and, well, she just felt . . . itchy.

This happened from time to time. She’d go months without searching, weeks and days without even thinking about the diamonds, and then something would happen to remind her, to start her wondering, and there she was again—obsessed and frustrated, sneaking about the house so that no one would realize what she was

up to.

And the truth was, she was embarrassed. No matter how one looked at it, she was at least a little bit of a fool. Either the jewels were hidden away at Clair House and she hadn’t found them despite sixteen years of searching, or they weren’t hidden, and she’d been chasing a delusion. She couldn’t even imagine how she might explain this to her children, the servants surely thought her more than a little bit mad (they’d all caught her snooping about a washroom at one point or another), and Gareth—well, he was sweet and he humored her, but all the same, Hyacinth kept her activities to herself.

It was just better that way.

She’d chosen the nursery washroom for the afternoon’s search. Not for any particular reason, of course, but she’d finished her systematic search of all of the servants’ washrooms (always an endeavor that required some sensitivity and finesse), and before that she’d done her own washroom, and so the nursery seemed a good choice. After this she’d move to some of the second floor washrooms. George had moved into his own lodgings and if there really was a merciful God, Isabella would be married before long, and Hyacinth would not have to worry about anyone stumbling upon her as she poked, pried, and quite possibly pulled the tiles from the walls.

Hyacinth put her hands on her hips and took a deep breath as she surveyed the small room. She’d always liked it. The tiling was, or at least appeared to be, Turkish, and Hyacinth had to think that the Eastern peoples must enjoy far less sedate lives than the British, because the colors never failed to put her in a splendid mood—all royal blues and dreamy aquas, with streaks of yellow and orange.

Hyacinth had been to the south of Italy once, to the beach. It looked exactly like this room, sunny and sparkly in ways that the shores of England never seemed to achieve.

She squinted at the crown molding, looking for cracks or indentations, then dropped to her hands and knees for her usual inspection of the lower tiles.

She didn’t know what she hoped to find, what might have suddenly made an appearance that she hadn’t detected during the other, oh, at least a dozen previous searches.

But she had to keep going. She had to because she simply had no choice. There was something inside of her that just would not let go. And—

She stopped. Blinked. What was that?

Slowly, because she couldn’t quite believe that she’d found anything new—it had been over a decade since any of her searches had changed in any measurable manner—she leaned in.

A crack.

It was small. It was faint. But it was definitely a crack, running from the floor to the top of the first tile, about six inches up. It wasn’t the sort of thing most people would notice, but Hyacinth wasn’t most people, and sad as it sounded, she had practically made a career of inspecting washrooms.

Frustrated with her inability to get really close, she shifted to her forearms and knees, then laid her cheek against the floor. She poked the tile to the right of the crack, then the left.

Nothing happened.

She stuck her fingernail at the edge of the crack, and dug it in. A tiny piece of plaster lodged under her nail.

A strange excitement began to build in her chest, squeezing, fluttering, rendering her almost incapable of drawing breath.

“Calm down,” she whispered, even those words coming out on a shake. She grabbed the little chisel she always took with her on her searches. “It’s probably nothing. It’s probably—”

She jammed the chisel in the crack, surely with more force than was necessary. And then she twisted. If one of the tiles was loose, the torque would cause it to press outward, and—

“Oh!”

The tile quite literally popped out, landing on the floor with a clatter. Behind it was a small cavity.