Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Hudson did not, as a rule, permit himself the luxury of contentment before noon. The habit was a relic of his father’s regime, and he had clung to it.
But the past fortnight had tested this principle rather severely.
Breakfast at Oakhart House had undergone a transformation that defied both his expectations and his better judgment.
The mahogany table, once the stage for solitary meals taken with the mechanical efficiency of a man who regarded eating as a necessary interruption in the day’s business, now hosted a scene that belonged in one of those sentimental prints Cassie collected, all warmth and light.
“I maintain,” Cassie announced, brandishing a spoon with the authority of a scientist presenting incontrovertible evidence, “that marmalade is architecturally superior. The peel provides tensile strength. Blackcurrant is structurally unsound. It collapses under pressure.”
She demonstrated her thesis by applying her spoon to a dollop of preserve with sufficient force to send a spray of purple across the tablecloth, narrowly missing his sleeve.
“An eloquent defense,” Hudson said, retrieving his coffee before it could become collateral damage in the jam campaign. “Though I note you’ve demolished the evidence rather thoroughly.”
“Scientific rigor requires sacrifice,” Cassie declared, with the solemn certainty of an eleven-year-old who had recently discovered philosophy and was determined to deploy it at every opportunity.
Augusta looked up, and the smile that crossed her face did something to Hudson’s heart that he was still learning to tolerate without visible discomfort.
“The vicar would have been horrified,” she said. “Jam physics at breakfast.”
Hudson had barely opened his mouth to respond when the butler appeared in the doorway.
The man carried the morning post on a silver tray, a stack of correspondence that Hudson would normally have regarded with the enthusiasm of a dentist approaching an abscess.
Today, however, the sight of it elicited nothing more severe than mild resignation. The world beyond Oakhart House’s gates had receded to a distant murmur, its demands attenuated by the presence of the women seated at his breakfast table, none of whom appeared to be in any hurry to return to it.
“Your Grace,” the butler said.
Something in his tone made Hudson set down his coffee with rather more care than the situation warranted.
The scandal sheet lay atop the stack. The London Whisperer, its masthead rendered in the shade of bilious yellow that its publisher apparently considered the height of journalistic distinction.
Hudson had never subscribed to the thing. It arrived regardless, like a recurrent rash or a particularly persistent door-to-door salesman, deposited on his tray by a butler who had long since given up attempting to intercept it.
He picked it up out of habit, intending to discard it, but the headline stopped his hand mid-motion.
Daughters of Death: Notorious Murderer’s Daughters Get Harbored Under the Duke’s Roof
The words arranged themselves on the page with the malice that only cheap ink and cheaper morality could produce.
Hudson’s vision narrowed. The pleasant chatter at the breakfast table faded to a distant hum, overridden by the white-hot roar of something that started in his chest and spread outward with the force and velocity of a cannonball.
The paper trembled in his grip. He was distantly aware that his knuckles had turned white.
The article itself was worse than the headline, a masterpiece of innuendo and sanctimonious horror, pieced together from half-truths and outright fabrications.
Lord Whitfield’s crimes were summarized in lurid detail, and his daughters were portrayed as somehow complicit by blood, as though the mere fact of their parentage rendered them dangerous, contaminated, unfit for polite society.
Augusta’s name appeared six times in the first paragraph alone, each iteration accompanied by some variation on “the governess with the murderer’s blood.”
Olivia fared no better. Her artistic talents were reduced to a footnote, her presence in his household framed as evidence of either his monumentally poor judgment or something considerably darker.
Hudson read it twice. The second time was not out of any desire to revisit the content but out of the peculiar, dislocated sense that the words on the page could not possibly have been written by a human being with functioning lungs and a beating heart.
He needed to confirm this impression before proceeding to the next step, which involved locating the said human being and rectifying the deficiency with his fists.
He became aware, belatedly, that the breakfast table had fallen silent.
“Your Grace?” The butler, still hovering by the door, had the expression of a man who would prefer to be anywhere else.
Hudson folded the paper with a precision that cost him more effort than he cared to admit. His hands, he noted with detached interest, were perfectly steady. The rest of him was not.
“Leave us,” he ordered. The words emerged low and controlled, which was not at all how he felt.
The butler withdrew with the alacrity of a man escaping a building that had just begun to smolder.
Augusta reached for the paper. Hudson held it just beyond her reach.
It was an instinctive movement, but it was entirely futile because the damage was already done, the words already inked onto cheap paper and distributed across a city that fed on scandal with the indiscriminate appetite of a starved dog.
“What is it?” Olivia asked. Her voice was calm, but Hudson caught the slight tremor beneath it, the careful composure of a woman who had spent years perfecting the art of appearing unruffled while the ground shifted beneath her feet.
He handed Augusta the paper. Watched her face as she read it. Watched the color drain from her cheeks. Watched her throat work. Watched the moment her eyes found the passage about her father.
“It’s about us,” she said finally. Her voice was remarkably steady, which made it worse. “About our father. About… all of it.”
Olivia took the paper next. Her reaction was quieter. She read to the end with methodical attention, her fingers leaving faint creases in the margins where they pressed too hard.
Cassie, who had been watching their exchange with the mounting concern of a child whose morning had been abruptly derailed, reached for the scandal sheet with the unselfconscious curiosity of the very young.
“No,” Hudson said, the word coming out sharper than he had intended.
Cassie’s hand froze mid-reach, her expression crumpling into something that made him want to locate the author and introduce him, personally and at length, to the concept of consequences.
“I want to know what it says,” she said, her lower lip trembling.
“Lies,” Hudson told her, his voice gentler now, though the gentleness cost him something fierce. “Horrible lies, written by people who have never met you, or Miss Norton, or Miss Olivia, and who don’t care about the truth. That’s all you need to know.”
He looked at Augusta. At Olivia. At the two women seated at his breakfast table with their composure intact and their eyes holding a hurt that made his chest ache with a fury that had nowhere useful to go.
“I will find out who did this.” Each word emerged precise, measured, honed to an edge that could have cut glass. “I will find out who gave them this information, and I will ensure they regret it with every breath they take for the remainder of their miserable existence.”
He pushed back from the table, his chair scraping across the floor with a sound that seemed to fill the suddenly silent room.
“I’m going to their offices,” he said. “Now.”
Augusta rose. For one suspended moment, he thought she would attempt to stop him.
“Be careful,” she said quietly.
After Hudson had left, the house was quiet for a while.
Cassie’s eyes flicked from her breakfast to Augusta, then back. “Miss Norton, why is Hudson so mad about a gossip rag?” She leaned forward curiously. “I mean, I know it’s not nice to gossip, but we’ve been mentioned in the papers loads of times, and he’s never been so mad.”
Augusta hesitated. Now was the moment of truth. The moment where she had to admit far more than she truly wanted to.
“It is… difficult, Cassie.”
Cassie faced her with an expression that could almost be described as stern. “I’m eleven,” she said haughtily. “I can understand difficult things.”
Augusta gave her a small smile. “It’s… about my father.”
“Did he do something bad?”
“He did something… horrible. And other people were hurt… very badly.”
Cassie looked at her sympathetically. “Was he a mean man?”
“Yes, he was. He was mean, cruel, and truly awful. And what he did…” Augusta hesitated. “It is not something anyone can take back. Not something I could escape. Just by being his daughter…”
“People think you are bad too?” Cassie supplied helpfully.
Augusta nodded. “Something to that effect.”
“But you’re not,” Cassie said, as though that settled the entire matter.
“I hope I am not.” Augusta let out a small laugh. “But people… they don’t tend to forgive the sins of our fathers easily. And I fear that this might reflect on you.”
“Hudson won’t let it,” Cassie said, rising from her chair and moving to embrace her tightly. “He’s going to fix all of this. I know he is!”
Augusta couldn’t help but smile, a glimmer of hope taking flight within her.
“Perhaps,” she whispered. “Perhaps he might.”
Yet the heavy shadow of reality still loomed over her.
She squeezed the little girl in her arms, clinging to the warmth of the moment.
The offices of the London Whisperer occupied the second floor of a building on Fleet Street that had apparently been designed with the specific intention of discouraging visitors of any social distinction whatsoever.