“I’m always interested in gossip,” Hyacinth said quite candidly. “About anyone. You should know that already.”

“Very well,” Lady D said, somewhat grumpily after having been thwarted. “He’s coming because I blackmailed him.”

Hyacinth and Penelope regarded her with identically arched brows.

“Very well,” Lady Danbury conceded, “if not blackmail, then a heavy dose of guilt.”

“Of course,” Penelope murmured, at the exact time Hyacinth said, “That makes much more sense.”

Lady D sighed. “I might have told him I wasn’t feeling well.”

Hyacinth was dubious. “Might have?”

“Did,” Lady D admitted.

“You must have done a very good job of it to get him to come tonight,” Hyacinth said admiringly. One had to appreciate Lady Danbury’s sense of the dramatic, especially when it resulted in such impressive manipulation of the people around her. It was a talent Hyacinth cultivated as well.

“I don’t think I have ever seen him at a musicale before,” Penelope remarked.

“Hmmmph,” Lady D grunted. “Not enough loose women for him, I’m sure.”

From anyone else, it would have been a shocking statement. But this was Lady Danbury, and Hyacinth (and the rest of the ton for that matter) had long since grown used to her rather startling turns of phrase.

And besides, one did have to consider the man in question.

Lady Danbury’s grandson was none other than the notorious Gareth St. Clair. Although it probably wasn’t entirely his fault that he had gained such a wicked reputation, Hyacinth reflected. There were plenty of other men who behaved with equal lack of propriety, and more than a few who were as handsome as sin, but Gareth St. Clair was the only one who managed to combine the two to such success.

But his reputation was abominable.

He was certainly of marriageable age, but he’d never, not even once, called upon a proper young lady at her home. Hyacinth was quite sure of that; if he’d ever even hinted at courting someone, the rumor mills would have run rampant. And furthermore, Hyacinth would have heard it from Lady Danbury, who loved gossip even more than she did.