He closed his eyes, trying to recall Isabella’s face. It was hard to do; the memory was so old.
But she had loved him. He remembered that. She had loved him.
And she had known the truth.
Would she have told him? If she had lived to see him an adult, to know the man he had become, would she have told him the truth?
He could never know, but maybe… If she had seen how the baron had treated him…what they had both become…
He liked to think yes.
“Your uncle—” came Hyacinth’s voice.
“He knew,” Gareth said with low certitude.
“He did? How do you know? Did he say something?”
Gareth shook his head. He didn’t know how he knew that Edward had been aware of the truth, but he was certain now that he had. Gareth had been eight when he’d last seen his uncle. Old enough to remember things. Old enough to realize what was important.
And Edward had loved him. Edward had loved him in a way that the baron never had. It was Edward who had taught him to ride, Edward who had given him the gift of a puppy on his seventh birthday.
Edward, who’d known the family well enough to know that the truth would destroy them all. Richard would never forgive Anne for siring a son who was not his, but if he had ever learned that her lover had been his own brother…
Gareth felt himself sink against the wall, needing support beyond his own two legs. Maybe it was a blessing that it had taken this long for the truth to be revealed.
“Gareth?”
Hyacinth was whispering his name, and he felt her come up next to him, her hand slipping into his with a soft gentleness that made his heart ache.
He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know whether he should be angry or relieved. He really was a St. Clair, but after so many years of thinking himself an impostor, it was hard to grasp. And given the behavior of the baron, was that even anything of which to be proud?
He’d lost so much, spent so much time wondering who he was, where he’d come from, and—
“Gareth.”
Her voice again, soft, whispering.
She squeezed his hand.
And then suddenly—
He knew.
Not that it didn’t all matter, because it did.
But he knew that it didn’t matter as much as she did, that the past wasn’t as important as the future, and the family he’d lost wasn’t nearly as dear to him as the family he would make.
“I love you,” he said, his voice finally rising above a whisper. He turned, his heart, his very soul in his eyes. “I love you.”
She looked confused by his sudden change in demeanor, but in the end she just smiled—looking for all the world as if she might actually laugh. It was the sort of expression one made when one had too much happiness to keep it all inside.
He wanted to make her look like that every day. Every hour. Every minute.
“I love you, too,” she said.
He took her face in his hands and kissed her, once, deeply, on the mouth. “I mean,” he said, “I really love you.”
She quirked a brow. “Is this a contest?”
“It is anything you want,” he promised.
She grinned, that enchanting, perfect smile that was so quintessentially hers. “I feel I must warn you, then,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “When it comes to contests and games, I always win.”
“Always?”
Her eyes grew sly. “Whenever it matters.”
He felt himself smile, felt his soul lighten and his worries slip away. “And what, precisely, does that mean?”
“It means,” she said, reaching up and undoing the buttons of her coat, “that I really really love you.”
He backed up, crossing his arms as he gave her an assessing look. “Tell me more.”
Her coat fell to the ground. “Is that enough?”
“Oh, not nearly.”
She tried to look brazen, but her cheeks were starting to turn pink. “I will need help with the rest,” she said, fluttering her lashes.
He was at her side in an instant. “I live to serve you.”
“Is that so?” She sounded intrigued by the notion, so dangerously so that Gareth felt compelled to add, “In the bedroom.” His fingers found the twin ribbons at her shoulders, and he gave them a tug, causing the bodice of her dress to loosen dangerously.
“More help, milady?” he murmured.
She nodded.
“Perhaps…” He looped his fingers around the neckline, preparing to ease it down, but she placed one hand over his. He looked up. She was shaking her head.
“No,” she said. “You.”
It took him a moment to grasp her meaning, and then a slow smile spread across his face. “But of course, milady,” he said, pulling his jumper back over his head. “Anything you say.”
“Anything?”
“Right now,” he said silkily, “anything.”
She smiled. “The buttons.”
He moved to the fastenings on his shirt. “As you wish.” And in a moment his shirt was on the floor, leaving him naked from the waist up.
He brought his sultry gaze to her face. Her eyes were wide, and her lips parted. He could hear the raspy sound of her breath, in perfect time with the rise and fall of her chest.
She was aroused. Gloriously so, and it was all he could do not to drag her onto the bed then and there.
“Anything else?” he murmured.
Her lips moved, and her eyes flickered toward his breeches. She was too shy, he realized with delight, still too much of an innocent to order him to remove them.
“This?” he asked, hooking his thumb under the waist-band.
She nodded.
He peeled off his breeches, his gaze never leaving her face. And he smiled—at the exact moment when her eyes widened.
She wanted to be a sophisticate, but she wasn’t. Not yet.
“You’re overdressed,” he said softly, moving closer, closer, until his face was mere inches from hers. He placed two fingers under her chin and tipped her up, leaning down for a kiss as his other hand found the neckline of her dress and tugged it down.
She fell free, and he moved his hand to the warm skin of her back, pressing her against him until her breasts flattened against his chest. His fingers lightly traced the delicate indentation of her spine, settling at the small of her back, right where her dress rested loosely around her hips.
“I love you,” he said, allowing his nose to settle against hers.
“I love you, too.”
“I’m so glad,” he said, smiling against her ear. “Because if you didn’t, this would all be so very awkward.”
She laughed, but there was a slightly hesitant quality to it. “Are you saying,” she asked, “that all your other women loved you?”
He drew back, taking her face in his hands. “What I am saying,” he said, making sure that she was looking deeply into his eyes as he found the words, “is that I never loved them. And I don’t know that I could bear it, loving you the way I do, if you didn’t return the feeling.”
Hyacinth watched his face, losing herself in the deep blue of his eyes. She touched his forehead, then his hair, smoothing one golden lock aside before affectionately tucking it behind his ear.
Part of her wanted to stand like this forever, just looking at his face, memorizing every plane and shadow, from the full curve of his lower lip to the exact arch of his brows. She was going to make her life with this man, give him her love and bear him children, and she was filled with the most wonderful sense of anticipation, as if she were standing at the edge of something, about to embark on a spectacular adventure.
And it all started now.
She tilted her head, leaned in, and raised herself to her toes, just so she could place one kiss on his lips.
“I love you,” she said.
“You do, don’t you?” he murmured, and she realized that he was just as amazed by this miracle as she was.
/> “Sometimes I’m going to drive you mad,” she warned.
His smile was as lopsided as his shrug. “I’ll go to my club.”
“And you’ll do the same to me,” she added.
“You can have tea with your mother.” One of his hands found hers as the other moved around her waist, until they were held together almost as in a waltz. “And we’ll have the most marvelous time later that night, kissing and begging each other’s forgiveness.”
“Gareth,” she said, wondering if this ought to be a more serious conversation.
“No one said we had to spend every waking moment together,” he said, “but at the end of the day”—he leaned down and kissed each of her eyebrows, in turn—“and most of the time during, there is no one I would rather see, no one whose voice I would rather hear, and no one whose mind I would rather explore.”
He kissed her then. Once, slowly and deeply. “I love you, Hyacinth Bridgerton. And I always will.”
“Oh, Gareth.” She would have liked to have said something more eloquent, but his words would have to be enough for the both of them, because in that moment she was overcome, too full of emotion to do anything more than sigh his name.
And when he scooped her into his arms and carried her to his bed, all she could do was say, “Yes.”
Her dress fell away before she reached the mattress, and by the time his body covered hers, they were skin against skin. There was something thrilling about being beneath him, feeling his power, his strength. He could dominate her if he so chose, hurt her even, and yet in his arms she became the most priceless of treasures.
His hands roamed her body, searing a path across her skin. Hyacinth felt every touch to the core of her being. He stroked her arm, and she felt it in her belly; he touched her shoulder, and she tingled in her toes.
He kissed her lips, and her heart sang.
He nudged her legs apart, and his body cradled itself next to hers. She could feel him, hard and insistent, but this time there was no fear, no apprehension. Just an overwhelming need to have him, to take him within her and wrap herself around him.
She wanted him. She wanted every inch of him, every bit of himself that he was able to give.
“Please,” she begged, straining her hips toward his. “Please.”
He didn’t say anything, but she could hear his need in the roughness of his breath. He moved closer, positioning himself near her opening, and she arched herself closer to meet him.
She clutched at his shoulders, her fingers biting into his skin. There was something wild within her, something new and hungry. She needed him. She needed this. Now.
“Gareth,” she gasped, desperately trying to press herself against him.
He moved a little, changing the angle, and he began to slide in.
It was what she wanted, what she’d expected, but still, the first touch of him was a shock. She stretched, she pulled, and there was even a little bit of pain, but still, it felt good, and it felt right, and she wanted more.
“Hy…Hy…Hy…” he was saying, his breath coming in harsh little bursts as he moved forward, each thrust filling her more completely. And then, finally, he was there, pressed so fully within her that his body met hers.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, her head thrown back by the force of it all.
He moved, forward and back, the friction whipping her into insensibility. She reached, she clawed, she grasped—anything to bring him closer, anything to reach the tipping point.
She knew where she was going this time.
“Gareth!” she cried out, the noise captured by his mouth as he swooped in for a kiss.
Something within her began to tighten and coil, twisting and tensing until she was certain she’d shatter. And then, just when she couldn’t possibly bear it for one second longer, it all reached its peak, and something burst within her, something amazing and true.
And as she arched, as her body threatened to shatter with the force of it, she felt Gareth grow frenzied and wild, and he buried his face in her neck as he let out a primal shout, pouring himself into her.
For a minute, maybe two, all they could do was breathe. And then, finally, Gareth rolled off of her, still holding her close as he settled onto his side.
“Oh, my,” she said, because it seemed to sum up everything she was feeling. “Oh, my.”
“When are we getting married?” he asked, pulling her gently until they were curved like two spoons.
“Six weeks.”
“Two,” he said. “Whatever you have to tell your mother, I don’t care. Get it changed to two, or I’ll haul you off to Gretna.”
Hyacinth nodded, snuggling herself against him, reveling in the feel of him behind her. “Two,” she said, the word practically a sigh. “Maybe even just one.”
“Even better,” he agreed.
They lay together for several minutes, enjoying the silence, and then Hyacinth twisted in his arms, craning her neck so that she could see his face. “Were you going out to Clair House this evening?”
“You didn’t know?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t think you were going to go again.”
“I promised you I would.”
“Well, yes,” she said, “but I thought you were lying, just to be nice.”
Gareth swore under his breath. “You are going to be the death of me. I can’t believe you didn’t really mean for me to go.”
“Of course I meant for you to go,” she said. “I just didn’t think you would.” And then she sat up, so suddenly that the bed shook. Her eyes widened, and they took on a dangerous glow and sparkle. “Let’s go. Tonight.”
Easy answer. “No.”
“Oh, please. Please. As a wedding gift to me.”
“No,” he said.
“I understand your reluctance—”
“No,” he repeated, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. The sinking feeling that he was going to relent. “No, I don’t think you do.”
“But really,” she said, her eyes bright and convincing, “what do we have to lose? We’re getting married in two weeks—”
He lifted one brow.
“Next week,” she corrected. “Next week, I promise.”
He pondered that. It was tempting.
“Please,” she said. “You know you want to.”
“Why,” he wondered aloud, “do I feel like I am back at university, with the most degenerate of my friends convincing me that I must drink three more glasses of gin?”
“Why would you wish to be friends with a degenerate?” she asked. Then she smiled with wicked curiosity. “And did you do it?”
Gareth pondered the wisdom of answering that; truly, he didn’t wish for her to know the worst of his schoolboy excesses. But it would get her off the topic of the jewels, and—
“Let’s go,” she urged again. “I know you want to.”
“I know what I want to do,” he murmured, curving one hand around her bottom, “and it is not that.”
“Don’t you want the jewels?” she prodded.
He started to stroke her. “Mmm-hmmm.”
“Gareth!” she yelped, trying to squirm away.
“Gareth yes, or Gareth—”
“No,” she said firmly, somehow eluding him and wriggling to the other side of the bed. “Gareth, no. Not until we go to Clair House to look for the jewels.”
“Good Lord,” he muttered. “It’s Lysistrata, come home to me in human form.”
She tossed a triumphant smile over her shoulder as she pulled on her clothing.
He rose to his feet, knowing he was defeated. And besides, she did have a point. His main worry had been for her reputation; as long as she remained by his side, he was fully confident of his ability to keep her safe. If they were indeed going to marry in a week or two, their antics, if caught, would be brushed aside with a wink and a leer. But still, he felt like he ought to offer up at least a token of resistance, so he said, “Aren’t you supposed to be tired after all this bed
play?”
“Positively energized.”
He let out a weary breath. “This is the last time,” he said sternly.
Her reply was immediate. “I promise.”
He pulled on his clothing. “I mean it. If we do not find the jewels tonight, we don’t go again until I inherit. Then you may tear the place apart, stone by stone if you like.”
“It won’t be necessary,” she said. “We’re going to find them tonight. I can feel it in my bones.”
Gareth thought of several retorts, none of which was fit for her ears.
She looked down at herself with a rueful expression. “I’m not really dressed for it,” she said, fingering the folds of her skirt. The fabric was dark, but it was not the boy’s breeches she’d donned on their last two expeditions.
He didn’t even bother to suggest that they postpone their hunt. There was no point. Not when she was practically glowing with excitement.
And sure enough, she pointed one foot out from beneath the hem of her dress, saying, “But I am wearing my most comfortable footwear, and surely that is the most important thing.”
“Surely.”
She ignored his peevishness. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” he said with a patently false smile. But the truth was, she’d planted the seed of excitement within him, and he was already mapping his route in his mind. If he hadn’t wanted to go, if he weren’t convinced of his ability to keep her safe, he would have lashed her to the bed before allowing her to take one step out into the night.
He took her hand, lifted it to his mouth, kissed her. “Shall we be off?” he asked.
She nodded and tiptoed in front of him, out into the hall. “We’re going to find them,” she said softly. “I know we will.”
Chapter 21
One half hour later.
“We’re not going to find them.”
Hyacinth had her hands planted on her hips as she surveyed the baroness’s bedchamber. They had spent fifteen minutes getting to Clair House, five sneaking in through the faulty window and creeping up to the bedchamber, and the last ten searching every last nook and corner.
The jewels were nowhere.
It was not like Hyacinth to admit defeat. In fact, it was so wholly out of character that the words, “We’re not going to find them,” had come out sounding more surprised than anything else.