It certainly didn’t make marriage look terribly appealing. Hyacinth made a mental note to try to marry a man without a mother.

“Chin up, Isabella,” she muttered, wincing as she read about the latest altercation—something about an addition of mussels to the menu, despite the fact that shellfish made Isabella develop hives.

“You need to make it clear who’s in charge,” Hyacinth said to the book. “You—”

She frowned, looking down at the latest entry. This didn’t make sense. Why was Isabella talking about her bambino?

Hyacinth read the words three times before thinking to glance back up at the date at top. 24 Ottobre, 1766.

1766? Wait a minute…

She flipped back one page.

1764.

Isabella had skipped two years. Why would she do that?

Hyacinth looked quickly through the next twenty or so pages. 1766…1769…1769…1770…1774…

“You’re not a very dedicated diarist,” Hyacinth murmured. No wonder Isabella had managed to fit decades into one slim volume; she frequently went years between entries.

Hyacinth turned back to the passage about the bambino, continuing her laborious translation. Isabella was back in London, this time without her husband, which didn’t seem to bother her one bit. And she seemed to have gained a bit of self-confidence, although that might have been merely the result of the death of the dowager, which Hyacinth surmised had happened a year earlier.

I found the perfect spot, Hyacinth translated, jotting the words down on paper. He will never… She frowned. She didn’t know the rest of the sentence, so she put some dashes down on her paper to indicate an untranslated phrase and moved on. He does not think I am intelligent enough, she read. And so he won’t suspect…

“Oh, my goodness,” Hyacinth said, sitting up straight. She flipped the page of the diary, reading it as quickly as she could, her attempts at a written translation all but forgotten.

“Isabella,” she said with admiration. “You sly fox.”

An hour or so later, an instant before Gareth knocks on Hyacinth’s door.

Gareth sucked in a deep breath, summoning the courage to wrap his fingers around the heavy brass knocker that sat on the front door of Number Five, Bruton Street, the elegant little house Hyacinth’s mother had purchased after her eldest son had married and taken over Bridgerton House.

Then he tried not to feel completely disgusted with himself for feeling he needed the courage in the first place. And it wasn’t really courage he needed. For God’s sake, he wasn’t afraid. It was…well, no, it wasn’t quite dread. It was—

He groaned. In every life, there were moments a person would do just about anything to put off. And if it meant he was less of a man because he really didn’t feel like dealing with Hyacinth Bridgerton…well, he was perfectly willing to call himself a juvenile fool.

Frankly, he didn’t know anyone who’d want to deal with Hyacinth Bridgerton at a moment like this.

He rolled his eyes, thoroughly impatient with himself. This shouldn’t be difficult. He shouldn’t feel strained. Hell, it wasn’t as if he had never kissed a female before and had to face her the next day.

Except…

Except he’d never kissed a female like Hyacinth, one who A) hadn’t been kissed before and B) had every reason to expect that a kiss might mean something more.

Not to mention C) was Hyacinth.

Because one really couldn’t discount the magnitude of that. If there was one thing he had learned in this past week, it was that Hyacinth was quite unlike any other woman he’d ever known.

At any rate, he’d sat at home all morning, waiting for the package that would surely arrive, escorted by a liveried footman, returning his grandmother’s diary. Hyacinth couldn’t possibly wish to translate it now, not after he had insulted her so grievously the night before.

Not, he thought, only a little bit defensively, that he’d meant to insult her. In truth, he hadn’t meant anything one way or another. He certainly hadn’t meant to kiss her. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him, and in fact he rather thought it wouldn’t have occurred to him except that he had been so off-balance, and then she’d somehow been there, right in the hallway, almost as if summoned by magic.

Right after his father had taunted him about her.

What the hell else was he expected to do?

And it hadn’t meant anything. It was enjoyable—certainly more enjoyable than he would have imagined, but it hadn’t meant a thing.

But women tended to view these things badly, and her expression when she broke it off had not been terribly inviting.

If anything, she had looked horrified.

Which had made him feel a fool. He’d never disgusted a woman with his kiss before.

And it had all been magnified later that night, when he’d overheard someone asking her about him, and she had brushed it off with a laugh, saying that she couldn’t possibly have refused to dance with him; she was far too good friends with his grandmother.

Which was true, and he certainly understood that she was attempting to save face, even if she hadn’t known that he could hear, but all the same, it was too close an echo of his father’s words for him not to feel it.

He let out a sigh. There was no putting it off any longer. He lifted his hand, intending to grasp the knocker—

And then quite nearly lost his balance when the door flew open.

“For heaven’s sake,” Hyacinth said, looking at him through impatient eyes, “were you ever going to knock?”

“Were you watching for me?”