“You, Mr. St. Clair, aren’t thinking clearly.” She leaned forward, lifting one of her brows in an almost disconcertingly confident manner. “You need me.”
“Like I need a festering abscess,” he muttered.
“I am going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Hyacinth said. Between her teeth. “Because if I did otherwise, I would not be inclined to aid you in your endeavors. And if I did not aid you—”
“Do you have a point?”
She eyed him coolly. “You are not nearly as sensible a person as I thought you.”
“Strangely enough, you are exactly as sensible as I thought you.”
“I will pretend I didn’t hear that as well,” she said, jabbing her index finger in his direction in a most unladylike manner. “You seem to forget that of the two of us, I am the only one who reads Italian. And I don’t see how you are going find the jewels without my aid.”
His lips parted, and when he spoke, it was in a low, almost terrifyingly even voice. “You would withhold the information from me?”
“Of course not,” Hyacinth said, since she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him, even if he did deserve it. “I do have some honor. I was merely trying to explain that you will need me there, in the house. My knowledge of the language isn’t perfect. There are some words that could be open to interpretation, and I might need to see the actual room before I can tell exactly what she was talking about.”
His eyes narrowed.
“It’s the truth, I swear!” She quickly grabbed the book, flipping a page, then another, then going back to the original. “It’s right here, see? Armadio. It could mean cabinet. Or it could mean wardrobe. Or—” She stopped, swallowing. She hated to admit that she wasn’t quite sure what she was talking about, even if that deficiency was the only thing that was going to secure her a place by his side when he went to look for the jewels. “If you must know,” she said, unable to keep her irritation out of her voice, “I’m not precisely certain what it means. Precisely, that is,” she added, because the truth was, she did have a fairly good idea. And it just wasn’t in her character to admit to faults she didn’t have.
Good gracious, she had a difficult enough time with faults she did possess.
“Why don’t you look it up in your Italian dictionary?”
“It’s not listed,” she lied. It wasn’t really such an egregious fib. The dictionary had listed several possible translations, certainly enough for Hyacinth to truthfully claim an imprecise understanding.
She waited for him to speak—probably not as long as she should have done, but it seemed like an eternity. And she just couldn’t keep quiet. “I could, if you wish, write to my former governess and ask for a more exact definition, but she’s not the most reliable of correspondents—”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I haven’t written to her in three years,” Hyacinth admitted, “although I’m quite certain she would come to my aid now. It’s just that I have no idea how busy she is or when she might find the time to reply—the last I’d heard she’d given birth to twins—”
“Why does this not surprise me?”
“It’s true, and heaven only knows how long it will take her to respond. Twins are an uncommon amount of work, or so I’m told, and…” Her voice lost some of its volume as it became apparent he wasn’t listening to her. She stole a glance at his face and finished, anyway, mostly because she’d already thought of the words, and there wasn’t much point in not saying them. “Well, I don’t think she has the means for a baby nurse,” she said, but her voice had trailed off by the end of it.
Gareth held silent for what seemed an interminably long time before finally saying, “If what you say is correct, and the jewels are still hidden—and that is no certainty, given that she hid them”—his eyes floated briefly up as he did the math—“over sixty years ago, then surely they will remain in place until we can get an accurate translation from your governess.”
“You could wait?” Hyacinth asked, feeling her entire head move forward and down with disbelief. “You could actually wait?”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re there. Because—” She cut herself off, unable to do anything other than stare at him as if he were mad. She knew that people’s minds did not work the same way. And she’d long since learned that hardly anyone’s mind worked the way hers did. But she couldn’t imagine that anyone could wait when faced with this.
Good heavens, if it were up to her, they’d be scaling the wall of Clair House that night.
“Think about this,” Hyacinth said, leaning forward. “If he finds those jewels between now and whenever you find the time to go look for them, you are never going to forgive yourself.”
He said nothing, but she could tell that she’d finally got through to him.
“Not to mention,” she continued, “that I would never forgive you were that to happen.”
She stole a glance at him. He seemed unmoved by that particular argument.
Hyacinth waited quietly while he thought about what to do. The silence was horrible. While she’d been going on about the diary, she’d been able to forget that he’d kissed her, that she’d enjoyed it, and that he apparently hadn’t. She’d thought that their next meeting would be awkward and uncomfortable, but with a goal and a mission, she’d felt restored to her usual self, and even if he didn’t take her along to find the diamonds, she supposed she still owed Isabella thanks for that.