“...I was not thinking straight,” Hudson explained to his brother. “That is the only possible explanation. One minute we were laughing about her parents and how ridiculously they had behaved. And the next...” His chest tightened at the memory, the guilt he had been fighting for days now surging back. “I lost control entirely. It was unlike anything I had ever felt, as if she had bewitched me!”
“Meaning…?”
His head dropped. “I kissed her.”
“You kissed her?” Elias gasped. “Where?”
“In the drawing room.”
“No, not the location,” Elias sighed. “Where did you kiss her—on the cheek? The hand?” He grinned and then winked. “On the mouth?”
Hudson looked flatly at his brother. “Where do you think?”
“Well, I never...” Elias fell back in his chair, a dazed look on his face that might have suggested he’d just run a mile and was experiencing lightheadedness. “His Grace, the Duke Worthington, kissing his own wife in the privacy of their home. The horror!”
“This is not a laughing matter,” Hudson snapped.
“Who is laughing?” Elias shot back right away. “Might I ask you something, brother?”
“You are going to nonetheless, I am sure.”
“Did she kiss you back?”
Hudson grimaced and looked away from his brother for a moment, feeling a flush of embarrassment and shame all in one. He was just glad that they were alone, for it was still relatively early in the day and the gentleman’s club they had met at had yet to fill out properly. Even so, they sat in the corner, as requested by Hudson, as he was determined for this conversation not be overheard.
The very fact that he had sought his brother out to discuss what had happened between himself and Florentia was as strange an action as he had ever taken. He was not one to talk about his personal life. He was not one to seek advice, either. Such were the times.
His brother watched him closely, and Hudson felt his face turning bright red. His mind went back to that kiss, even as he tried to keep it from there. The feel of his wife’s lips...the taste of her on his mouth...the way that his heart had soared in his chest....and how happy he had been at that moment.
For days now he had sat with those feelings, trying to eviscerate them from memory. Trying to diffuse the guilt he felt, the shame that followed him, and the knowledge that he had made a terrible mistake but was too stubborn to do anything to change it.
“She did,” he sighed. Before him was a tankard of beer, and he had himself a large mouthful. “She kissed me back.”
“Ha!” Elias clapped his hands together. “So, this is good news then!” He chuckled. “Congratulations, I believe are in order.”
“For someone as socially savvy as you are brother, you are failing miserably to read the room. This is not a matter to be celebrated.”
“Oh, I can see that you are beside yourself with shame,” Elias continued jovially. “And I have no doubt that for whateverreason, you think this a bad thing. But I prefer to see the upside, as I am sure you will soon enough.”
“Of course it is a bad thing!” Hudson snapped. “I was not meant to kiss her! And she was certainly not meant to kiss me back!!
“But she did. And did you, brother.”
“For but a second,” Hudson pleaded. He wished that he had been stronger. That he stopped himself before the action had taken him. If he had done, this entire situation may well have been avoided. “Believe me, I was quick to push her away once I got better control of myself.”
“Oh no...” Elias’s face dropped.
“At which point I was sure to tell her that she was misreading the situation entirely. I was firm with her, Elias. But not cruel.”That is a lie. “My hope being that she would understand that what I had done was an accident and nothing more. Not to be misread.”
“Oh, dear...”
“And then I suggested that we spend a few days apart, for no other reason than to realign our feelings—which do not exist,” he pressed, more as a means to convince himself than his brother. “Yes, we have grown close, but that does not mean what she thinks. I told her from the beginning what this was!”
The words sounded wrong on the ear and tasted like poison on the tongue. For days now, Hudson had tried to convince himself that he was in the right. Florentia had overreacted. She had gone against her word. All Hudson was doing was what he had promised from the beginning!
Needless to say, even he wasn’t buying whatever the heck he was trying to sell. How could he?
“And what did she say?” Elias asked carefully, leaning back as if bracing himself for the worst. “When you...” He winced. “When you pushed her away. Did she say anything? Or did she just leave?”
