Julia Quinn - When He Was Wicked With 2nd Epilogue (Bridgertons)

“If he’s not available I will simply turn around and go home,” Violet said. “Jam please, Hyacinth.”

“I’ll come, too,” Hyacinth said.

Oh, God . Francesca’s knife skittered right across her muffin. She was going to have to drug her sister. It was the only solution.

“You don’t mind if I come along, too, do you?” Hyacinth asked Violet.

“Didn’t you have plans with Eloise?” Francesca said quickly.

Hyacinth stopped, thought, blinked a few times. “I don’t think so.”

“Shopping? At the milliner?”

Hyacinth took another moment to run through her memory. “No, in fact I’m quite certain I don’t. I just purchased a new bonnet last week. Lovely one, actually. Green, with the most cunning ecru trim.” She glanced down at her toast, regarded it for a moment, then reached for the marmalade. “I’m weary of shopping,” she added.

“No woman is ever weary of shopping,” Francesca said, a touch desperately.

“This woman is. Besides, the earl—” Hyacinth cut herself off, turning to her mother. “May I call him Michael?”

“You’ll have to ask him,” Violet replied, taking a bite of eggs.

Hyacinth turned back to Francesca. “He’s been back in London an entire week, and I haven’t even seen him. My friends have been asking me about him, and I don’t have anything to say.”

“It’s not polite to gossip, Hyacinth,” Violet said.

“It isn’t gossip,” Hyacinth retorted. “It’s the honest dissemination of information.”

Francesca actually felt her chin drop. “Mother,” she said, shaking her head, “you really should have stopped at seven.”

“Children, you mean?” Violet asked, sipping at her tea. “Sometimes I do wonder.”

“Mother!” Hyacinth exclaimed.

Violet just smiled at her. “Salt?”

“It took her eight tries to get it right,” Hyacinth announced, thrusting the salt cellar at her mother with a decided lack of grace.

“And does that mean that you, too, hope to have eight children?” Violet inquired sweetly.

“ God no,” Hyacinth said. With great feeling. And neither she nor Francesca could quite resist a chuckle after that.

“It’s not polite to blaspheme, Hyacinth,” Violet said, in much the same tone she’d used to tell her not to gossip.

“Why don’t we stop by shortly after noon?” Violet asked Francesca, once the moment of levity had petered out.

Francesca glanced up at the clock. That would give her barely an hour to make Michael presentable. And her mother had said we . As in more than one person. As in she was actually going to bring Hyacinth, who had the capacity to turn any awkward situation into a living nightmare.

“I’ll go now,” Francesca blurted out, standing up quickly. “To see if he’s available.”

To her surprise, her mother stood also. “I will walk you to the door,” Violet said. Firmly.

“Er, you will?”

“Yes.”

Hyacinth started to rise.

“Alone,” Violet said, without even giving Hyacinth a glance.

Hyacinth sat back down. Even she was wise enough not to argue when her mother was combining her serene smile with a steely tone.

Francesca allowed her mother to precede her out of the room, and they walked in silence until they reached the front hall, where she waited for a footman to retrieve her coat.

“Is there something you wish to tell me?” Violet asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.”

“I assure you,” Francesca said, giving her mother her most innocent look, “I don’t.”

“You have been spending a great deal of time at Kilmartin House,” Violet said.

“I live there,” Francesca pointed out, for what felt like the hundredth time.

“Not right now you don’t, and I worry that people will talk.”

“No one has said a word about it,” Francesca returned. “I haven’t seen a thing in the gossip columns, and if people were talking about it, I’m sure that one of us would have heard by now.”

“Just because people are keeping quiet today doesn’t mean they will do so tomorrow,” Violet said.

Francesca let out an irritated exhale. “It’s not as if I’m a never-married virgin.”

“Francesca!”

Francesca crossed her arms. “I’m sorry to speak so frankly, Mother, but it is true.”

The footman arrived just then with Francesca’s coat and informed her that the carriage would be in front momentarily. Violet waited until he stepped outside to await its arrival, then turned to Francesca and asked, “What, precisely, is your relationship to the earl?”

Francesca gasped. “Mother!”

“It is not a silly question,” Violet said.

“It is the silliest—no, quite the stupidest—question I have ever heard. Michael is my cousin!”

“He was your husband’s cousin,” Violet corrected.

“And he was my cousin as well,” Francesca said sharply. “And my friend. Good heavens, of all people . . . I can’t even imagine . . . Michael!”

But the truth was, she could imagine. Michael’s illness had kept it all at bay; she’d been so busy caring for him and keeping him well that she’d managed to avoid thinking about that jolting moment in the park, when she’d looked at him and something had sparked to life within her.

Something she had been quite certain had died inside of her four years earlier.

But hearing her mother bring it up . . . Good God, it was mortifying. There was no way, no earthly way that she could feel an attraction to Michael. It was wrong. It was really wrong. It was . . . well, it was just wrong . There wasn’t another word that described it better.

“Mother,” Francesca said, keeping her voice carefully even, “Michael has not been feeling well. I told you that.”

“Seven days is quite a long time for a head cold.”

“Perhaps it is something from India,” Francesca said. “I don’t know. I think he is almost recovered. I have been helping him get settled here in London. He has been gone a very long time and as you’ve noted, he has many new responsibilities as the earl. I thought it my duty to help him with all of this.” She looked at her mother with a resolute expression, rather pleased with her speech. But Violet just said, “I will see you in an hour,” and walked away.

Leaving Francesca feeling very panicked indeed.

M ichael was enjoying a few moments of peace and quiet—not that he’d been bereft of quiet, but malaria did little to allow a body peace—when Francesca burst through his bedroom door, wild-eyed and out of breath.

“You have two choices,” she said, or rather, heaved.

“Only two?” he murmured, even though he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.

“Don’t make jokes.”

He hauled himself into a sitting position. “Francesca?” he asked gingerly, since it was his experience that one should always proceed with caution when a female was in a state. “Are you quite all—”

“My mother is coming,” she said.

“Here?”

She nodded.

It wasn’t an ideal situation but hardly something deserving of Francesca’s feverish demeanor. “Why?” he inquired politely.

“She thinks—” She stopped, catching her breath. “She thinks—Oh, heavens, you won’t believe it.”

When she didn’t expound upon this any further, he widened his eyes and held out his hands in an impatient gesture, as if to say— Care to elaborate ?

“She thinks,” Francesca said, shuddering as she turned to him, “that we are conducting an affair.”

“After only a week back in London,” he murmured thoughtfully. “I’m faster than I imagined.”