“But-”
“No buts!”
“But-”
“Isabella.”
Isabella muttered something in Italian.
“I heard that,” Hyacinth said sharply.
Isabella smiled, a curve of lips so sweet that only her own mother (certainly not her father, who freely admitted himself wound around her finger) would recognize the deviousness underneath. “But did you understand it?” she asked, blinking three times in rapid succession.
And because Hyacinth knew that she would be trapped by her lie, she gritted her teeth and told the truth. “No.”
“I didn’t think so,” Isabella said. “But if you’re interested, what I said was-”
“Not-” Hyacinth stopped, forcing her voice to a lower volume; panic at what Isabella might say had caused her outburst to come out overly loud. She cleared her throat. “Not now. Not here,” she added meaningfully. Good heavens, her daughter had no sense of propriety. She had such opinions, and while Hyacinth was always in favor of a female with opinions, she was even more in favor of a female who knew when to share such opinions.
Isabella stepped out of her dressing room, clad in a lovely gown of white with sage green trimming that Hyacinth knew she’d turn her nose up at, and sat beside her on the bench. “What are you whispering about?” she asked.
“I wasn’t whispering,” Hyacinth said.
“Your lips were moving.”
“Were they?”
“They were,” Isabella confirmed.
“If you must know, I was sending off an apology to your grandmother.”
“Grandmama Violet?” Isabella asked, looking around. “Is she here?”
“No, but I thought she was deserving of my remorse, nonetheless.”
Isabella blinked and cocked her head to the side in question. “Why?”
“All those times,” Hyacinth said, hating how tired her voice sounded. “All those times she said to me, ‘I hope you have a child just like you…’”
“And you do,” Isabella said, surprising her with a light kiss to the cheek. “Isn’t it just delightful?”
Hyacinth looked at her daughter. Isabella was nineteen. She’d made her debut the year before, to grand success. She was, Hyacinth thought rather objectively, far prettier than she had ever been. Her hair was a breathtaking strawberry blond, a throwback to some long-forgotten ancestor on heaven knew which side of the family. And the curls-oh, my, they were the bane of Isabella’s existence, but Hyacinth adored them. When Isabella had been a toddler, they’d bounced in perfect little ringlets, completely untamable and always delightful.
And now…Sometimes Hyacinth looked at her and saw the woman she’d become, and she couldn’t even breathe, so powerful was the emotion squeezing across her chest. It was a love she couldn’t have imagined, so fierce and so tender, and yet at the same time the girl drove her positively batty.
Right now, for example.
Isabella was smiling innocently at her. Too innocently, truth be told, and then she looked down at the slightly poufy skirt on the dress Hyacinth loved (and Isabella would hate) and picked absently at the green ribbon trimmings.
“Mummy?” she said.
It was a question this time, not a statement, which meant that Isabella wanted something, and (for a change) wasn’t quite certain how to go about getting it.
“Do you think this year-”
“No,” Hyacinth said. And this time she really did send up a silent apology to her mother. Good heavens, was this what Violet had gone through? Eight times?
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”