Julia Quinn: It's In His Kiss

“I’ve no head for languages,” he said blithely, “and no need for it, with my two ladies at my side.”

Hyacinth rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to tell you any more naughty words,” she warned.

He chuckled. “Then I’m not going to slip Signorina Orsini any more pound notes with instructions to teach you the naughty words.”

Hyacinth turned to him in horror. “You didn’t!”

“I did.”

Her lips pursed. “And you don’t even look the least bit remorseful about it.”

“Remorseful?” He chuckled, deep in his throat, and then leaned down to press his lips against her ear. There were a few words of Italian he bothered to commit to memory; he whispered every one of them to her.

“Gareth!” she squeaked.

“Gareth, yes? Or Gareth, no?”

She sighed. She couldn’t help it. “Gareth, more .”

Isabella St. Clair tapped her pencil against the side of her head as she regarded the words she’d recently written. It was a challenge, translating from one language to another. The literal meaning never read quite right, so one had to choose one’s idioms with the utmost of care. But this-she glanced over at the open page in Galileo’s Discorsointorno alle cose che stanno, in sù l’acqua, ò che in quella si muovono -this was perfect.

Perfect perfect perfect.

Her three favorite words.

She glanced toward the door, waiting for her mother to appear. Isabella loved translating scientific texts because her mother always seemed to stumble on the technical words, and it was, of course, always good fun to watch her mum pretend that she actually knew more Italian than her daughter.

Not that Isabella was mean-spirited. She pursed her lips, considering that. She wasn’t mean-spirited; the only person she adored more than her mother was her great-grandmother Danbury, who, although confined to a wheeled chair, still managed to wield her cane with almost as much accuracy as her tongue.

Isabella smiled. When she grew up, she wanted to be first exactly like her mother, and then, when she was through with that, just like Great-Grandmama.

She sighed. It would be a marvelous life.

But what was taking so long? It had been ages since she’d sent her father down-and it should be added that she loved him with equal fervor; it was just that he was merely a man, and she couldn’t very well aspire to grow to be him .

She grimaced. Her mother and father were probably giggling and whispering and ducking into a darkened corner. Good heavens. It was downright embarrassing.

Isabella stood, resigning herself to a long wait. She might as well use the washroom. Carefully setting her pencil down, she glanced one last time at the door and crossed the room to the nursery washroom. Tucked high in the eaves of the old mansion, it was, somewhat unexpectedly, her favorite room in the house. Someone in years gone past had obviously taken a liking to the little room, and it had been tiled rather festively in what she could only assume was some sort of Eastern fashion. There were lovely blues and shimmering aquas and yellows that were streaks of pure sunshine.

If it had been big enough for Isabella to drag in a bed and call it her chamber, she would have done. As it was, she thought it was particularly amusing that the loveliest room in the house (in her opinion, at least) was the most humble.

The nursery washroom? Only the servants’ quarters were considered of less prestige.

Isabella did her business, tucked the chamber pot back in the corner, and headed back for the door. But before she got there, something caught her eye.

A crack. Between two of the tiles.

“That wasn’t there before,” Isabella murmured.

She crouched, then finally lowered herself to her bottom so that she could inspect the crack, which ran 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 Isabella was not most people. She noticed everything.

And this was something new.

Frustrated with her inability to get really close, she shifted to her forearms and knees, then laid her cheek against the floor.

“Hmmm.” She poked the tile to the right of the crack, then the left. “Hmmm.”

Why would a crack suddenly open up in her bathroom wall? Surely Clair House, which was well over a hundred years old, was done with its shifting and settling. And while she’d heard that there were far distant areas where the earth shifted and shook, it didn’t happen anyplace as civilized as London .

Had she kicked the wall without thinking? Dropped something?

She poked again. And again.

She drew back her arm, preparing to pound a little harder, but then stopped. Her mother’s bathroom was directly below. If she made a terrible racket, Mummy was sure to come up and demand to know what she was doing. And although she’d sent her father down to retrieve her mother eons earlier, it was quite a good bet that Mummy was still in her washroom.

And when Mummy went into her washroom-Well, either she was out in a minute, or she was there for an hour. It was the strangest thing.

So Isabella did not want to make a lot of noise. Surely her parents would frown upon her taking the house apart.

But perhaps a little tap…

She did a little nursery rhyme to decide which tile to attack, chose the one to the left, and hit it a little harder. 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.

“Hmmm.” Perhaps she could extend the crack…

She glanced over at her vanity table until her eyes fell upon a silver comb. That might work. She grabbed it and carefully positioned the last tooth near the edge of the crack. And then, with precise movements, she drew it back and tapped it against the plaster that ran between the tiles.

The crack snaked upward! Right before her eyes!

She did it again, this time positioning her comb over the left tile. Nothing. She tried it over the right.

And then harder.

Isabella gasped as the crack literally shot through the plaster, until it ran all the way along the top of the tile. And then she did it a few more times until it ran down the other side.

With bated breath, she dug her nails in on either side of the tile and pulled. She shifted it back and forth, shimmying and jimmying, prying with all her might.

And then, with a creak and a groan that reminded her of the way her great-grandmother moved when she managed to hoist herself from her wheeled chair into her bed, the tile gave way.

Isabella set it down carefully, then peered at what was left. Where there should have been nothing but wall, there was a little compartment, just a few inches square. Isabella reached in, pinching her fingers together to make her hand long and skinny.

She felt something soft. Like velvet.

She pulled it out. It was a little bag, held together with a soft, silky cord.

Isabella straightened quickly, crossing her legs so that she was sitting Indian style. She slid one finger inside the bag, widening the mouth, which had been pulled tight.

And then, with her right hand, she upended it, sliding the contents into her left.

“ Oh my G -”

Isabella quickly swallowed her shriek. A veritable pool of diamonds had showered into her hand.

It was a necklace. And a bracelet. And while she did not think of herself as the sort of girl who lost her mind over baubles and clothes, OH MY GOD these were the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

“Isabella?”

Her mother. Oh, no. Oh no oh no oh no.

“Isabella? Where are you?”

“In-” She stopped to clear her throat; her voice had come out like a squeak. “Just in the washroom, Mummy. I’ll be out in a moment.”