They cut across the grass, their skirts snagging on the brown and yellow weeds. Pippin raced ahead, barking at the ducks with heroic intent.
“You know,” Cassie admitted, “I think you’re a better governess than anyone here realizes.”
“Thank you,” Augusta said, surprised by how much it meant.
“You don’t make me feel wrong for being different.”
Augusta knelt, smoothing a strand of hair from Cassie’s face. “You aren’t wrong, Cassie. Not in any way that matters.”
Cassie squinted, skeptical but hopeful. “Even if I’d rather be a pirate than a duchess?”
“Especially if you’d rather be a pirate.”
Cassie’s grin threatened to split her face. “Maybe someday you’ll come with me. We could sail a ship, just the two of us. And Pippin.”
Augusta laughed.
As they turned toward home, she felt the fear that had knotted her stomach slowly unwind. Society could stare, gossip, and sneer all it liked. Here, at least, she had found something true: loyalty, humor, and—if she let herself believe it—maybe even a little love.
As they rounded the final bend, Cassie broke into a run, chasing Pippin toward the house, arms outstretched and hair streaming behind her.
Augusta followed, her steps lighter than they had been in months.
Chapter Nine
The evening was one of those peculiar intervals when the city’s lamps seemed to glow more out of habit than necessity.
Hudson stood before the mirror in his dressing room, bare to the waist, and attempted to recall when the simple act of getting ready for a ball had last felt like an exercise in self-restraint. He tugged the starched shirt from its hook with more force than was strictly necessary, the fabric hissing in protest.
In truth, he had not been looking forward to the event. He fastened the first few buttons, the collar gaping open at his throat, and glared at his own reflection: hair damp from a recent wash, jaw freshly shaved, the long scar on his left side catching the candlelight.
He was reaching for his cufflinks when the door flew open. No knock, no warning, just a sudden rush of child and dog.
“Hudson!” Cassie’s voice was a shot through the dusk. She held a notebook in both hands, open to a page that looked filled with tightly packed Latin.
Behind her, nearly tripping over the hem of her skirt, came Augusta. In that startled instant, she looked as though she had been pulled along by Cassie’s momentum. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair coming loose from its pins, and her blue eyes widened at the sight of Hudson half-dressed.
“Oh!” she gasped, then whirled around, presenting him with her neatly braided hair and the anxious set of her shoulders. “Cassie, I told you to knock.”
Cassie, undeterred, advanced to the center of the room and planted herself directly before her brother. “I finished conjugating the verbs. All of them. Even the irregulars. Will you hear them, or should I recite them for Miss Norton?”
Hudson bit back a smile. “You may recite them for me, but I reserve the right to correct your pronunciation.”
“Thank you,” Cassie said, all business.
She began to recite the verbs, the Latin rolling off her tongue with surprising accuracy. Hudson watched her, arms folded, letting the sound wash over him.
Augusta, meanwhile, seemed determined to fuse herself to the wallpaper.
When Cassie paused for breath, Hudson commented, “Excellent. But you missed the future perfect ofesse.”
Cassie groaned and slapped her palm to her forehead. “I always forget that one.” She glanced over her shoulder at Augusta. “Did you hear him? He’s impossible.”
Augusta, still facing away, replied, “Your brother has very high standards.”
Hudson, recognizing an opening, said, “Miss Norton, you may turn around. I am not indecent.”
He watched with some satisfaction as she turned slowly, the blush on her cheeks deepening.
