At last, Cassie pulled back, beaming. “Can I be the one to introduce Miss Norton to Pippin?” she asked, turning to himwith her hands clasped beneath her chin in a posture of exaggerated pleading. “Please? I’ll be good, I promise! For a whole week! Maybe two!”
Hudson frowned. “No,” he said, the word coming out more sharply than he’d intended. “Your punishment still stands. The staff will introduce Miss Norton to Pippin.”
Cassie’s face fell, her lower lip beginning its telltale wobble. “But?—”
“I can see I’ve missed something important,” Augusta interjected, stepping smoothly into the breach. She looked at Hudson, her head tilted slightly. “Who is Pippin, and what punishment are you talking about?”
Hudson stared at her. The question was perfectly reasonable; a governess would need to know the household’s routines and rules. Yet something in her tone suggested she was asking not as an employee but as an advocate. For Cassie.
“Pippin is my dog,” Cassie replied before Hudson could. “He’s the most beautiful puppy in the whole county, and Hudson says I can’t see him because I—” She stopped, casting a glance at her brother.
“Because she insists on sowing chaos with the animal, who is by no means a puppy anymore,” he supplied.
“Miss Fairchild was very cross,” Cassie added, with the grave understatement of the truly unrepentant. “She said she’d never been so humiliated in her life, and then she packed her things and left without even saying goodbye.”
“Well,” Augusta offered, “perhaps there’s a way to make amends that doesn’t involve being kept from something you clearly care about.” She glanced at Hudson, her eyes meeting his with a directness that made his skin warm. “What if, instead of this punishment, Cassie writes a proper apology—to Miss Fairchild and to you—and takes on a practical form of amends? Perhaps she could help tend to your animals? Show that she will be responsible with her dog.”
Cassie looked up, hope blooming across her face. “I… I suppose I could do that,” she said eagerly.
“No.” The word cut through Cassie’s excitement like a blade.
Hudson straightened, his shoulders squaring as he fixed Augusta with a look that had made seasoned businessmen reconsider their positions.
“Discipline in my house,” he said, each word precisely measured, “is not a matter for negotiation.”
Augusta met his eyes without flinching. “It isn’t about negotiation,” she countered. “It’s about making sure Cassie actually learns something from the experience, rather than simply being restricted until she forgets why the restriction was imposed in the first place.”
Hudson took a step closer, closing the distance between them. Augusta didn’t step back. Instead, she held her ground, her chin lifting slightly, her eyes never leaving his.
He was close enough now to see the flecks of gold in her blue eyes, to catch the faint scent of lavender that clung to her skin.
His jaw worked, his nostrils flaring slightly as he drew a breath. For one treacherous second, his gaze dropped to her mouth—full and currently set in a firm line—before snapping back up to her eyes.
“Cassie will write the apology,” he said finally, his voice lower than he’d intended. “And she will take on additional duties in the stables. But the terms are mine to set, and the supervision is my decision.”
Augusta nodded, a single dip of her chin. “Of course, Your Grace,” she agreed, holding his gaze just long enough to make it clear that she was choosing to accept his terms, not conceding to them.
Hudson turned to his sister, straightening his back. “Not a word of tonight’s little excursion leaves this room,” he ordered, his voice quieter than it had been all evening. “Not to anyone. Is that clear?”
Cassie straightened. “It is locked away, Hudson. I shall be a veritable fortress of silence,” she said.
With a mischievous glint in her eyes, she mimed the turn of a key against her lips and then held her hand out to him, palm up, waiting.
Hudson stared at her small, expectant hand for a beat. This was the silent demand for a ‘token’ of his trust. It was a trifle beneath a man of thirty, but then he looked at her face, glowing with the grave importance only an eleven-year-old could muster.
“A pact between us,” he said with a soft huff, then reached out.
Instead of a formal handshake, he tapped his index finger twice against her palm, then closed her fingers over it, as if trapping the secret inside her hand.
“Forever sealed,” Cassie said in a low, grave tone.
Hudson felt the corner of his lips twitch upward. He gave a sharp, single nod of confirmation, then stepped back to adjust his cuffs, already reassembling the mask of the elder brother.
Chapter Five
The carriage rattled to a stop before a grand Mayfair townhouse that seemed to have been plucked from one of the romance novels Reverend Leighton so vigorously disapproved of.
Augusta peered through the window at the polished stone façade, the tall sash windows gleaming with lamplight, and the black-lacquered front door flanked by iron railings.
