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“I wasn’t particularly excited about ed, lifting her brows in a particularly Hyacinthish expression “I’ to possess, after all—but his blood is quite another thing He’s remarkably bad-tempered, did you know that?”

Gareth nodded, a bubble of giddy e within him “I’d noticed,” he heard himself say

“I suppose we’ll have to keep it a secret,” she said, as if she were speaking of nothing ossip “Who else knows?”

He blinked, still a little dazed by her matter-of-fact approach to the problem “Just the baron and me, as far as I’m aware”

“And your real father”

“I hope not,” Gareth said, and he realized that it was the first time he’d actually allowed himself to say the words—even, really, to think them

“He ht have thought you were better off with the St Clairs, as a child of nobility”

“I know all that,” Gareth said bitterly, “and yet somehow it doesn’t make it feel any better”

“Your grandht know more”

His eyes flew to her face

“Isabella,” she clarified “In her diary”

“She wasn’t really randmother”

“Did she ever act that way? As if you weren’t hers?”

He shook his head “No,” he said, losing himself to the memories “She loved me I don’t knohy, but she did”

“Itin the oddest htly lovable”