Lady Danbury said. “You’ll be seeing him tomorrow night, anyway.”
“I am?” Hyacinth asked, at precisely the moment Mr. St. Clair said, “She will?”
“You’re accompanying me to the Pleinsworth poetry reading,” Lady D told her grandson. “Or have you forgotten?”
Hyacinth sat back, enjoying the sight of Gareth St. Clair’s mouth opening and closing in obvious distress. He looked a bit like a fish, she decided. A fish with the features of a Greek god, but still, a fish.
“I really…” he said. “That is to say, I can’t—”
“You can, and you will be there,” Lady D said. “You promised.”
He regarded her with a stern expression. “I cannot imagine—”
“Well, if you didn’t promise, you should have done, and ifyou love me…”
Hyacinth coughed to cover her laugh, then tried not to smirk when Mr. St. Clair shot a dirty look in her direction.
“When I die,” he said, “surely my epitaph will read, ‘He loved his grandmother when no one else would.’”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Lady Danbury asked.
