“We shouldn’t,” she said. “It isn’t right.”
He let out a long breath and then nodded, his jaw tight. “I know.”
She folded her arms over her chest, as though they could shield her. “I should go.”
“Yes,” he said. “But, wait.”
She paused halfway to the door.
He reached toward the shelf, taking something.The book, she realized, and her cheeks grew hot again.
He looked at the cover, then at her, and pressed it back into her hands. “Keep it. Finish reading it if you want. Curiosity is not a sin, Augusta.”
She could have argued but didn’t. She simply nodded, clutching the book so tightly the edge cut into her palm.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
As she slipped out, she caught a glimpse of him standing by the fire and staring into the flames as if searching for answers in the smoke.
She walked back to her room on legs that threatened to give out at every step. In the dark, she pressed the book to her heart and tried to make sense of what she’d just done.
She knew only that she wanted more.
Chapter Eleven
Augusta woke with a start, the remnants of a dream clinging to her like smoke.
Warm hands, the smell of brandy, the hard edge of a bookshelf pressed against her spine.
She lay perfectly still, staring at the canopy above her bed, willing her pulse to slow.
The book sat on her bedside table where she had left it, half-hidden beneath a volume of improving essays that fooled no one, least of all herself.
Memoirs of a Courtesan.
She dressed with the grim efficiency of a soldier preparing for battle, selecting the plainest gown she owned. The woman in the mirror looked severe, composed, entirely incapable of melting into a duke’s arms at midnight.
Good.
When she arrived in the breakfast room, she found Cassie sitting alone at the table, her tongue caught between her teeth as she cut a slice of toast into progressively smaller triangles.
“Good morning, Miss Norton!” Cassie abandoned her architecture. “Hudson’s already gone out. He said he had early business. He took his horse, not the carriage, which means he’s in a mood, because he only rides when he’s cross or thinking too hard.” She studied Augusta’s face with the frank appraisal of the very young. “You look different.”
“I am perfectly well.” Augusta took the chair nearest the window, the one that put the maximum distance between herself and the empty seat where Hudson usually sat. “I read rather late, that’s all.”
“Was it a good book?”
Augusta’s fingers tightened around her teacup. “It was… erm, educational.”
“I like books about pirates best,” Cassie said, apparently satisfied. “Or explorers. Or pirates who are also explorers! You know how I pretend that the schoolroom is my ship and the globe is my treasure map… Do you think that’s silly?”
“Not at all,” Augusta said, smiling. “I used to imagine I was a botanist, collecting rare plants from the Amazon.”
“A pirate botanist,” Cassie corrected, as though this were the only logical conclusion. “We should be pirate botanists together.”
They continued in this vein through breakfast and into the morning’s lessons, but Augusta found her attention splitting far too easily.
Every creak of the floorboards sent her gaze to the door. Every distant footstep set her pulse skittering. The schoolroom, which had always felt comfortably removed from the rest of the house, now seemed perilously close to Hudson’s study.
