Julia Quinn: It’s In His Kiss Epilogue II

A book in the Bridgerton 2nd Epilogues series, 2006

1847, and all has come full circle. Truly.

Hmmph.

It was official, then.

She had become her mother.

Hyacinth St. Clair fought the urge to bury her face in her hands as she sat on the cushioned bench at Mme. Langlois, Dressmaker, by far the most fashionable modiste in all London.

She counted to ten, in three languages, and then, just for good measure, swallowed and let out an exhale. Because, really, it would not do to lose her temper in such a public setting.

No matter how desperately she wanted to throttle her daughter.

“Mummy.” Isabella poked her head out from behind the curtain. Hyacinth noted that the word had been a statement, not a question.

“Yes?” she returned, affixing onto her face an expression of such placid serenity she might have qualified for one of those pietà paintings they had seen when last they'd traveled to Rome.

“Not the pink.”

Hyacinth waved a hand. Anything to refrain from speaking.

“Not the purple, either.”

“I don’t believe I suggested purple,” Hyacinth murmured.

“The blue’s not right, and nor is the red, and frankly, I just don’t understand this insistence society seems to have upon white, and well, if I might express my opinion-”

Hyacinth felt herself slump. Who knew motherhood could be so tiring? And really, shouldn’t she be used to this by now?

“-a girl really ought to wear the color that most complements her complexion, and not what some over-important ninny at Almack’s deems fashionable.”

“I agree wholeheartedly,” Hyacinth said.

“You do?” Isabella’s face lit up, and Hyacinth’s breath positively caught, because she looked so like her own mother in that moment it was almost eerie.

“Yes,” Hyacinth said, “but you’re still getting something white.”

“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.”

“Of course I know what you were going to ask. When will you learn that I always know?”

“Now that is not true.”

“It’s more true than it is untrue.”

“You can be quite supercilious, did you know that?”

Hyacinth shrugged. “I’m your mother.”

Isabella’s lips clamped into a line, and Hyacinth enjoyed a full four seconds of peace before she asked, “But this year, do you think we can-”

“We are not traveling.”

Isabella’s lips parted with surprise. Hyacinth fought the urge to let out a triumphant shout.

“How did you kn-”

Hyacinth patted her daughter’s hand. “I told you, I always know. And much as I’m sure we would all enjoy a bit of travel, we will remain in London for the season, and you, my girl, will smile and dance and look for a husband.”

Cue the bit about becoming her mother.

Hyacinth sighed. Violet Bridgerton was probably laughing about this, this very minute. In fact, she’d been laughing about it for nineteen years. “Just like you,” Violet liked to say, grinning at Hyacinth as she tousled Isabella’s curls. “Just like you.”

“Just like you, Mother,” Hyacinth murmured with a smile, picturing Violet’s face in her mind. “And now I’m just like you.”

An hour or so later. Gareth, too, has grown and changed, although, we soon shall see, not in any of the ways that matter…

Gareth St. Clair leaned back in his chair, pausing to savor his brandy as he glanced around his office. There really was a remarkable sense of satisfaction in a job well done and completed on time. It wasn’t a sensation he’d been used to in his youth, but it was something he’d come to enjoy on a near daily basis now.

It had taken several years to restore the St. Clair fortunes to a respectable level. His father-he’d never quite got ’round to calling him anything else-had stopped his systematic plundering and eased into a vague sort of neglect once he learned the truth about Gareth’s birth. So Gareth supposed it could have been a great deal worse.