The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #4)

by Julia Quinn

All blond bouncy curls and such.” He made a blond bouncy motion near his ear, which led Richard to wonder how it was possible that Winston’s hand movements were so clearly not brunette.

Which meant that she probably yodeled in her spare time. When she wasn’t practicing taxidermy. On crocodiles.

Richard supposed that a deaf man might have described her as being one with the music. Instead she was merely one with the din.

It was extraordinarily difficult to pick out her playing underneath the frenetic sounds of the two violinists, but every now and then a low mournful note would escape the insanity, and Richard could not help but think— She’s quite good.

She, at least, knew how terrible they were. Her misery was acute, palpable. Every time she reached a pause in the score, she seemed to fold in on herself, as if she could squeeze down to nothingness and disappear with a “pop!”

“So accomplished,” Iris’s mother trilled year after year. “So poised.” So blind, was Iris’s unsaid response. So deaf.

As for the rest of the Smythe-Smiths—the men, generally, and most of the women who had already paid their dues on the altar of musical ineptitude—they gritted their teeth and did their best to fill up the seats so as to limit the circle of mortification.

And then there were the unsuspecting innocents, who clearly lived under rocks. At the bottom of the ocean. On another planet.

He was trying to rattle her. That could be the only explanation. What a rude boor. And an idiot. Did he really think he could irritate her more than her own sister? It would take an accordion-playing minotaur to top Daisy on the scale of bothersome to seventh circle of hell.

The last thing anyone wanted to do was make polite conversation about an aural disaster. It was rather as if the Dover cliffs crumbled into the sea, and everyone sat about drinking tea, saying, “Oh yes, ripping good show. Too bad about the vicar’s house, though.”

no matter how annoying Daisy was—and she was, oh, she was—it wasn’t her fault

“You glued a horn to your cousin’s head,” he repeated. She winced. “I did.” “Do you like this cousin?” “Oh, very much. She’s eleven and really quite delightful. I’d trade Daisy for her in a heartbeat.”

Richard had a feeling she would trade Daisy for a badger if given the option.

only to trip over the littlest sheep, who was still licking the piano leg.

Henry scrambled for purchase, but the (possibly rabid) unicorn was too fast,

“O blessed sunlight,” she sang. “How your warmth doth shine!” And then Daisy stepped forth. Richard turned sharply to Iris. Her mouth was hanging open. “No no no,” she finally whispered, but by then Daisy had launched into her violin solo, presumably a musical representation of sunshine. Or death.

“Perhaps I ought to help,” Iris said, casting a wary glance at her cousins. Richard waited while she approached the melee, watching the proceedings with no small amusement.

Iris, who was standing at the edge of the small crowd, immediately took a step back. “Perhaps we should get something to drink,” she said to Richard. “In a moment.” He was having far too much fun to leave.

Richard knew he should try to reassure her, but he was laughing too hard to be of any use.

“And Daisy is not pleasant to live with when she is in good humor.

Oh yes, that would be genteel. Here, take my arm, but do ignore my raging erection. Someone really needed to invent a better pair of breeches.

“I see.” Richard made a note to compliment himself on his sparkling wit.

If her own parents ever slept in the same bed, she didn’t know about it. Nor, she thought with a shudder, did she want to.

“You think she went into one of the tunnels?” “I don’t think she went out the window,” William retorted. He cleared his throat. “Sir.”