Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Allow me,” he murmured, his voice rough at the edges in a way that sent a shiver down her spine.
Augusta’s fingers trembled against the silk of her bodice, and she fumbled with the small pearl buttons she had managed to fasten so effortlessly mere hours ago.
Hudson’s hands covered hers, and her breath caught at the intimacy of the gesture.
This man, who had just moments ago reduced her to a trembling, gasping mess with nothing but his mouth and his hands and the skill with which he used them, was now buttoning her dress with the quiet concentration of a man performing a sacred ritual.
His fingers fastened the final hook at her neck, and his knuckles brushed the sensitive skin there, lingering perhaps a second longer than necessary.
She turned to face him, and the sight of him slightly disheveled, his cravat loose, his hair bearing the unmistakable evidence of her hands running through it, made her stomach flip in a way that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with the memory of his mouth on hers, his hands on her body, and the sounds he had coaxed from her that she was certain the entire party had heard.
“You should go first,” Hudson said, his voice carefully neutral, though his eyes told an entirely different story. “I’ll follow in a few minutes.”
The ballroom hit her like a wall of sound and warmth and light as she entered. The orchestra had struck up another waltz, and couples moved across the dance floor in elegant patterns that bore no resemblance to the desperate, hungry tangle of limbs she had just been part of.
Augusta paused at the threshold, her hand going unconsciously to her hair, wondering if the guests could see the evidence of Hudson’s attention written across her face in letters ten feet high.
She scanned the crowd, quickly finding Cassie’s bouncing curls and, beside them, the unmistakable figure of James.
She made her way toward them, her steps quickening despite her best efforts to appear composed. Cassie spotted her before she had covered half the distance.
“Miss Norton!” she called, her voice carrying above the music with the unselfconscious volume of the very young. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere. James said you’d gone to find a shawl because you were cold, but you don’t have a shawl, and it’s positively stifling in here, and—”
“I needed air,” Augusta said, the lie coming out more smoothly than she had expected. “The ballroom was rather close. I stepped out into the garden for a moment.”
Cassie’s head tilted. “The garden? But you’ve been gone for ages. Mrs. Beale served the lemon ice, and Lord Follett made a speech about the Prince Regent’s hunting dogs, and Lady Seabury’s daughter sang a very long song in Italian that nobody understood, and you missed all of it.”
“I’m sorry,” Augusta said, meaning it. “I didn’t realize—”
“And where did Hudson go?” Cassie interrupted, the question landing between them with the devastating precision of an artillery shell.
“He also disappeared right after our dance. James said he had business to attend to, but business at a ball? That seems very odd, doesn’t it?
Especially when there’s still lemon ice. ”
Augusta opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. The truth hovered in her mind, and she felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep in her chest.
“I believe,” James spoke up, with the timing of a man who had been waiting for precisely this moment, “that the lemon ice is in grave danger of melting entirely if we do not consume it with all due haste. And I have it on excellent authority…” He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur that Cassie leaned in to catch, “… that Mrs. Beale has hidden a second batch in the morning room for the guests with the foresight to save room. Shall we launch a reconnaissance mission, Lady Cassandra? You and I against the forces of culinary restraint?”
Cassie’s expression shifted, suspicion giving way to delight in the space of a heartbeat. “A second batch? Really? But Hudson said—”
“Hudson,” James said gravely, “is a man of many virtues, but his knowledge of Mrs. Beale’s secret dessert reserves is tragically limited. Come. We must move quickly before the enemy realizes our intentions.”
He offered his arm with a flourish, and Cassie took it with the gravity of a general accepting a commission, already chattering about tactical approaches to the morning room and the optimal distribution of lemon ice among deserving parties.
They moved away together, Cassie’s blonde head bobbing beside James’s taller figure, her earlier questions apparently forgotten in the thrill of clandestine dessert acquisition.
Augusta watched them go, her hand unconsciously rising to touch the base of her throat where Hudson’s fingers had touched her before she had returned.
How on earth was she supposed to concentrate on French vocabulary and arithmetic in the morning, when her thoughts were still tangled recklessly and insistently with him?
Augusta woke to sunlight spilling across her bed in warm, golden pools.
For one disorienting moment, she could not remember why her body felt the way it did.
Then it all came rushing back.
Hudson’s mouth on hers, his hands on her body, the way he had looked at her afterward, as though she were something precious and rare.
She buried her face in her pillow to muffle the sound that escaped her, something between a laugh and a groan.
Mercy.
She had let a duke pleasure her in the gardens.
A duke. Hudson had reduced her to a trembling, moaning mess with nothing but his mouth, and his hands, and the skill with which he used them.
And she had loved every second of it. Had begged for more, in words she would blush to recall in the clear light of morning.
She dressed with hands that still trembled slightly. Every brush of fabric against sensitive skin, every casual movement that recalled the stretch and ache of muscles used in ways they were not accustomed to, sent little pulses of memory through her that made her breath catch.
The house was quiet. The ballroom, when she walked past its open doors, bore little resemblance to the glittering fantasy of the night before.
Cassie should be in the schoolroom by now.
They had agreed to start their morning lessons at nine o’clock, and the girl was rarely late.
Punctuality, she had informed Augusta with the solemn certainty of an eleven-year-old who had recently discovered the concept, was the mark of a well-organized mind.
The schoolroom door stood ajar. Augusta pushed it open, expecting to find Cassie already seated at her desk, but the room was empty.
The arithmetic text lay open on the desk, a slate beside it bearing half a sum that had been abandoned mid-calculation, the chalk still lying across the numbers as though its owner had been called away mid-thought.
Odd.
Cassie did not typically abandon sums. She approached mathematics with the grim determination of a soldier facing a superior enemy and did not retreat.
Augusta checked the adjoining room, but it too was empty, the fire laid but unlit, the windows letting in squares of spring sunlight that illuminated nothing but dust motes and the lingering scent of yesterday’s beeswax candles.
A sound stopped her. It was faint, barely audible over the distant sounds of the house coming awake, but unmistakable. A sob. Small, stifled, the kind of sound a child made when they were trying very hard not to be heard.
Augusta stood perfectly still, listening.
There, again. From the direction of the library.
She moved quickly, her earlier warmth giving way to a cold, sharp concern that settled in her chest like a stone. The library door was closed, which was unusual, for Cassie treated the library as her personal domain, and its doors were rarely shut during the day.
For a moment, Augusta hesitated, her hand on the handle, wondering if she ought to knock. The sobbing had stopped, or perhaps she had imagined it. The last thing she wanted was to barge in on a child who had sought privacy for whatever reason. But the silence that followed felt wrong.
She opened the door.
She did not know quite what she had expected to find. Certainly not the small, hunched figure curled on the floor between two bookshelves, knees drawn to her chest, face buried in her arms, the occasional shudder passing through her narrow shoulders like a physical wave.
Cassie.
Augusta’s heart sank. She crossed the room in three strides, her soft slippers silent on the carpet, and knelt beside the girl without touching her.
Cassie did not look up. Her blonde curls had come loose from their pins and fell around her face in a disordered halo, and the sleeve of her morning dress was damp where she had pressed it against her eyes.
“Cassie,” Augusta said softly. “Sweetheart. What’s happened?”
The girl’s shoulders stiffened. For a long moment, she remained exactly as she was, and then, with a sound that was half-sob, half-surrender, she lifted her head.
Augusta’s breath caught. Cassie’s face was blotchy, her eyes swollen, her lower lip trembling in a way that made her look younger than her eleven years.
Tears tracked clean paths through the dust on her cheeks.
Her hands, when they emerged from their protective curl, were clenched into small, white-knuckled fists.
“I’m sorry,” Cassie whispered, the words barely audible. “I didn’t mean to… I tried to…” She stopped, her throat working visibly, and a fresh tear rolled down her cheek to land with a soft plop on the sleeve of her dress. “I’m going to die, Miss Norton. I know I am.”
“Oh, Cassie,” Augusta said softly. She reached for the girl, her hands finding Cassie’s shoulders, and drew her gently into the circle of her arms. “Sweetheart, you’re not going to die.
I promise you that. Whatever’s happened, whatever you’re afraid of, we’ll face it together.
But first, you need to tell me what’s wrong. ”