No one understood why Hyacinth visited Lady Danbury every Tuesday and read to her, but she enjoyed her afternoons with the countess. Lady Danbury was crotchety and honest to a fault, and Hyacinth adored her.

“The two of you together are a menace,” Penelope remarked.

“My aim in life,” Lady Danbury announced, “is to be a menace to as great a number of people as possible, so I shall take that as the highest of compliments, Mrs. Bridgerton.”

“Why is it,” Penelope wondered, “that you only call me Mrs. Bridgerton when you are opining in a grand fashion?”

“Sounds better that way,” Lady D said, punctuating her remark with a loud thump of her cane.

Hyacinth grinned. When she was old, she wanted to be exactly like Lady Danbury. Truth be told, she liked the elderly countess better than most of the people she knew her own age. After three seasons on the marriage mart, Hyacinth was growing just a little bit weary of the same people day after day. What had once been exhilarating-the balls, the parties, the suitors-well, it was still enjoyable-that much she had to concede. Hyacinth certainly wasn’t one of those girls who complained about all of the wealth and privilege she was forced to endure.

But it wasn’t the same. She no longer held her breath each time she entered a ballroom. And a dance was now simply a dance, no longer the magical swirl of movement it had been in years gone past.

The excitement, she realized, was gone.

Unfortunately, every time she mentioned this to her mother, the reply was simply to find herself a husband. That, Violet Bridgerton took great pains to point out, would change everything.

Indeed.

Hyacinth’s mother had long since given up any pretense of subtlety when it came to the unmarried state of her fourth and final daughter. It had, Hyacinth thought grimly, turned into a personal crusade.