Chapter 6
Chapter Six
The morning room was already bright with the summer sun by the time Augusta arrived.
Hudson sat at the head of the table, the morning paper held like a shield, though his coffee cup had not yet been touched. He gave no sign of noticing her entrance, but she felt the shift in the air.
“Good morning, Miss Norton!” Cassie’s voice carried complete disregard for propriety. “I saved you the seat by the window. It’s the warmest. And you can see the garden if you squint.”
She demonstrated screwing up her face until her nose wrinkled.
“Thank you, Cassie.” Augusta took her place, smoothing her skirt and folding her hands in her lap.
She ignored the pointed glance Hudson cast at her over the top of the Times.
“Mrs. Beale will assist with taking your measurements. I will order a few dresses from the modiste,” he announced without looking up from the paper. He set it down after what felt like forever. “She makes all of Cassie’s clothing, and I trust that the dresses will be ready shortly.”
“Your Grace, that’s not necessary, truly,” Augusta responded instantly. “I could buy some dresses myself with the advance you gave me.”
Hudson shook his head.
Cassie tugged at her arm. “Hudson will have lovely dresses made for you. The modiste makes mine too,” she said. “We will look like sisters.”
There was nothing Augusta could do but nod mutely.
Hudson picked up his paper once more, and she turned to Cassie, racking her brain for a different topic.
“Did you sleep well?”
“I dreamed about Pippin,” Cassie replied. “He was chasing a squirrel, only the squirrel was the size of a sheep and kept turning invisible. If you like, I can draw it for you after breakfast.”
“That would be delightful,” Augusta said with perfect sincerity.
She reached for the teapot, but Cassie was already pouring. The stream arced wildly, missing the cup by a half-inch and puddling onto the saucer. Augusta took the pot quickly.
“Careful, or the tea will be all over the tablecloth,” she said. Then, catching Cassie’s guilty flush, she added, “You’re very strong for your age. That’s a good thing. My father always said women should have hands capable of breaking a wild pony to halter.”
That earned her a barely audible cough from behind the newspaper.
Cassie frowned at the thought for a second, though her mind did not remain there for very long.
“When will I be allowed to see Pippin? He hasn’t been out of the kennels since Monday. He’ll be absolutely mad with loneliness, and it’s not fair to make him wait until after dinner.”
Augusta stirred her tea, considering. “The schedule, as I understand it, is breakfast, then lessons, then Pippin.”
Cassie’s lower lip assumed its world-famous quiver. “He’ll think I’ve abandoned him.”
“I am assured the servants are keeping him quite busy,” Augusta said. “Possibly busier than you.”
“But he only listens to me,” Cassie said, with the desperation of someone who had tried every other argument. “And if he’s lonely, he gets restless. And if he’s restless—”
“He’ll trample the footmen and eat the kitchen cat, yes. I’ve read the reports,” Augusta cut in. “Very well, we shall see Pippin at luncheon, provided you apply yourself in the schoolroom this morning.”
Hudson did not speak up. He remained perfectly still behind the paper.
“Can we start with the lessons now?” Cassie’s voice was bright, and Augusta nodded with a half-smile. “Lead the way.”
The schoolroom was at the top of the first staircase. Cassie claimed the first desk, flinging herself into the seat with the sigh of a martyr.
Augusta took her time surveying the room before she walked to the far end and found, as she had hoped, a globe on a wooden stand, its surface worn thin at the equator from years of spinning fingers.
She rolled it to Cassie’s desk and set it between them.
“We’ll begin with geography,” she said, taking a seat beside her. “But not from the book.”
Cassie eyed the globe with suspicion. “Do we have to draw maps?”
“Not unless you wish to. I want you to spin the globe and stop it with one finger. Wherever your finger lands, that’s where we’ll start.”
Cassie looked at her as if she’d just been invited to climb onto the roof. “Really?”
“Really.” Augusta nodded. “But you only get one spin, so make it count.”
For the next hour, they charted a course from England to the Caribbean, detouring only for a lively debate about whether narwhals counted as unicorns and whether it was possible to survive on nothing but oranges and ship’s biscuits.
By the time Mrs. Beale arrived with a tray of cocoa and biscuits, Cassie was entirely engrossed in drawing a fleet of imaginary pirate ships, each one labelled with the names of her enemies. Augusta sipped her cocoa, feeling the rare satisfaction of a plan gone better than expected.
She glanced out the window and saw, far below in the garden, Hudson standing beside a gardener, pointing out something along the hedge. He looked up, as if sensing her gaze, and for one charged instant, their eyes met across the frosted distance.
Augusta held his gaze for a count of three, then returned her attention to Cassie, who had just declared war on the French navy with a colored pencil.
By the time the clock in the hall struck twelve, Augusta was prepared to declare the morning a triumph.
Not only had Cassie completed her arithmetic exercises without once threatening to run away to sea, but she had also produced a watercolor rendering of Admiral Nelson as a merman and recited the first ten lines of Ovid in a passable translation.
When Augusta finally announced that it was time to go outside, a grin broke out across Cassie’s face.
They had hardly made it outside before Pippin ran toward them, his immense black body a blur of fur and enthusiasm.
Cassie shrieked with delight and launched herself at him.
Pippin slid to a stop and, in a feat of canine precision, caught her in his front paws and licked her face until she collapsed in a heap of giggles.
“He missed you,” Augusta observed as Pippin rolled over for a belly rub and nearly bowled Cassie into the shrubbery.
“I missed him more,” Cassie said, breathless. “You’re the only one who understands me, aren’t you, Pippin? Miss Norton, did you know he once saved me from drowning in the pond?”
“I did not,” Augusta said. “Was that before or after you attempted to teach him to swim?”
Cassie looked up, caught off guard. “You’re not cross?”
“Why should I be?”
Cassie considered. “Because everyone else always is. The last governess fainted when she saw me on the roof. And my brother—” She broke off, glancing at the house.
“He’s very particular about safety. And about clothing.
And about never being within twenty yards of the pond unless I’m accompanied by three adults and a rope. ”
“He sounds like a very responsible brother,” Augusta said, with exactly the right note of gravity. “But you’re with me, and I am excellent with ropes.”
That earned her a conspiratorial grin.
Cassie threw herself onto the grass beside Pippin, who promptly flopped his massive head into her lap and closed his eyes in ecstasy.
Augusta found a dry spot beneath a leafless elm and watched them for a moment, content. Cassie’s laughter echoed off the brick walls, Pippin’s tail thumping like a drum.
Augusta closed her eyes, letting the weak sun warm her face, and thought of Olivia, who was somewhere out there, perhaps enjoying the soft rays of the day.
When she opened her eyes again, Cassie was attempting to climb the elm tree, Pippin watching with canine interest from below.
The girl’s boots scrabbled for purchase on the bark, and for a moment, Augusta was seized by the urge to scold her, to call her down, to reach for the invisible leash all adults seemed to carry.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she called, “You’ll have an easier time if you use the lowest branch as a step. Like this.” She demonstrated, bracing her foot against the trunk and miming the motion.
Cassie’s eyes widened. “You know how to climb trees?”
“I was raised in the country,” Augusta said. “We climbed everything. Trees, haystacks, the vicar’s fence.” She paused, then added, “Once, I climbed onto the roof of the stables and got stuck for half a day. The whole village came to watch the rescue.”
Cassie laughed, the sound brighter than the sun. “Were you in trouble?”
“Terrible trouble. But it was worth it.”
Cassie considered this, then redoubled her efforts. With Augusta’s advice, she managed to scramble onto the lowest branch, where she sat, grinning down like a triumphant pirate.
“If my brother sees me, he’ll have kittens,” she confided.
Augusta looked up, shielding her eyes. “Shall we make sure he doesn’t, then?”
Cassie nodded solemnly. “Pippin, you’re on lookout.”
The dog responded with a dignified snort.
They spent the next quarter hour devising ever more elaborate schemes of espionage and tree-based subterfuge.
Augusta recounted her own exploits—cherry-picking gone awry, the time she fell into the pigsty—and Cassie listened, rapt.
They plotted an imaginary escape from a fortress, which was the tree, planned a rescue mission with Pippin as the faithful steed, and even invented a secret code for future operations.
Eventually, Cassie’s arms tired, and she clambered down, landing on the grass with a thump that left her skirts smeared with mud. She looked at Augusta, expectation in her eyes.
“I won’t tell,” Augusta promised, anticipating the question.
Cassie’s relief was so palpable it made Augusta’s chest ache. “You’re not like the others,” she said. “You’re not afraid of me.”
“Should I be?”
Cassie shook her head. “You just let me—” She seemed to struggle with words. “You let me be.”
Augusta thought of all the rules and boundaries, the tight-lipped disapproval that had followed Cassie like a cloud.
“You are a very good girl,” she said, “and a very brave one. If anyone ever tells you otherwise, you send them to me.”
Cassie beamed. “Can we lie on the grass and watch the clouds?”
“We can do whatever you like, Lady Cassandra.”
They stretched out side by side, their skirts fanned over the grass, and Pippin flopped between them. The clouds scudded across the blue, and for a long, perfect moment, there was nothing but the warmth of the sun and the safe, happy thump of the dog’s tail.
They lay there until the cold began to seep through their clothes, and when they stood, their backs and skirts were streaked with green and brown.
Cassie looked down at her dress and then at Augusta, horror flashing across her face. “We’re a mess,” she whispered.
“We are,” Augusta agreed.
“If my brother sees, he’ll—”
“He won’t,” Augusta assured her. “We’ll sneak in through the servants’ corridor. I know the way.”
Cassie grabbed her hand, their fingers fitting together like two pieces of the same puzzle, and together they made for the side door, Pippin bounding ahead.
Cassie laughed, and Augusta did too, neither of them caring that their laughter would carry all the way to the house.
Cassie clung to Augusta’s hand as they entered, their skirts trailing muddy evidence of their adventure. They slipped past the laundry, past the pantry, and had almost reached the rear staircase when the door ahead swung open without warning.
“Ladies.” Hudson nodded.
He stepped into the corridor, his hands full of correspondence and his expression thunderous. Augusta, caught mid-step, collided with him squarely and would have fallen on the floor if he had not dropped the letters and seized her by the upper arms.
There was a moment—one of those strange, suspended instants—when she felt nothing but his hands on her, strong and hot even through the layers of wool and muslin. Their faces were only inches apart. His eyes were the cold blue of a winter sky, and they pinned her as thoroughly as his grip.
Cassie, ever the strategist, immediately let go and bolted up the stairs. “I’ll wash and change!” she shouted over her shoulder, her boots pounding in retreat.
Hudson’s jaw worked as he looked after his sister, but his hands did not release Augusta’s arms.
“Explain,” he ordered, voice tight with suppressed fury. “Now.”
“I was teaching her about trees,” Augusta said. “And gravity.”
His gaze dropped to her skirts, which were streaked with green and brown. “You took her climbing.”
“I did not take her,” Augusta countered. “She went of her own accord. I merely pointed out the best branch.”
His grip tightened. “You let her endanger herself for a whim.”
“She was perfectly safe,” Augusta said, aware of her pulse racing in her throat and sure he could feel it. “I was watching the entire time. She is quite alright.”
Hudson exhaled through his nose irritably. “Do you know how many governesses she’s chased off in the past two years? Three. Do you know why?”
“Because they tried to make her into something she isn’t,” Augusta said, not bothering to soften it.
He released her, but only to take a half-step back, still blocking the corridor. “You are not like the others,” he said, echoing Cassie’s words from earlier. “You are more—” He broke off, shaking his head. “More reckless. Or perhaps just more foolish.”
They stood there, the words hanging between them like a third presence in the corridor.
Augusta was suddenly acutely aware of her own breathing, of the way her chest rose and fell, of the faint tremor in her hands. She wanted…
She did not know what she wanted, only that it was dangerous and intoxicating and nothing to do with employment contracts or the strictures of the ton.
Hudson seemed to feel it, too. His hand came up, as if to brush a loose strand of hair from her cheek, but stopped just short, his fingers hovering in the air.
Then, from somewhere above, Cassie’s voice rang out. “Miss Norton? Are you coming?”
The spell broke.
Hudson stepped back, dragging a hand through his hair. “You will not encourage her to climb again,” he said, the words flat but not as sharp as before.
Augusta’s lips curved. “I can’t promise that, Your Grace. But I will promise to keep her safe.”
He looked at her, really looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “You are a most unusual governess, Miss Norton.”
“Perhaps I am.”
He wanted to say something else. She could see it in the way his mouth pressed into a thin line, in the way his hands flexed at his sides. But the moment was gone, and he turned, stooping to collect the spilled letters from the flagstones.
Augusta stood there for a moment, her heart still pounding, then turned and took the stairs two at a time, her skirts flying.