And to the library, with its accusing bookshelves and its lingering memories.
At luncheon, Hudson was again absent.
“His Grace sends his apologies,” Mrs. Beale announced, setting the soup tureen down with her customary precision. “He was called to his club. He may not return for dinner.”
“Oh,” Augusta said simply. She spooned broth into her bowl and watched the steam curl upward.
She was not quite certain what it was that she felt. She decided to believe it was relief. Of course, it was relief.
The afternoon ambush came without warning.
She was descending the main staircase, her arm full of exercise books and a volume of Ovid that Cassie had decorated with pencil drawings of sea monsters in the margins. She heard the footsteps before she saw Hudson.
She stopped, one hand white-knuckled on the banister.
He appeared at the foot of the stairs, head bent over a stack of correspondence. His coat was damp at the shoulders. She could see the tiny cut on his jaw where he’d nicked himself shaving, and the slight crease between his eyebrows that appeared when he was lost in thought.
He looked up.
The air between them went taut. Augusta’s grip on the banister tightened until the wood creaked beneath her fingers. His eyes found hers and held, and for one suspended heartbeat, neither of them breathed.
Then the mask settled over his features, smooth and impenetrable as glass.
“Miss Norton.” He inclined his head. “Good afternoon.”
“Your Grace.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears.
His gaze dropped to the exercise books in her arm. “I see that Cassie is keeping you busy.”
“Yes. She’s very bright.”
“Indeed,” Hudson said. “If you’ll excuse me…”
“Yes, of course.”
They moved at the same instant, Augusta continuing down, Hudson stepping aside.
And misjudged the geometry entirely.
His hand shot out and caught her elbow as she stumbled, the contact brief and electric, his fingers pressing through the thin fabric of her sleeve. The exercise books slid in her arm, and she clutched them tighter, using them as a barricade. Then he moved past her, taking the stairs two at a time.
She stood alone on the stairs, her pulse hammering in her throat and the ghost of his touch burning through her sleeve like a brand.
Three days. For three days, she had managed to avoid him. Only for an accidental touch to make her body betray her, her skin flushing, her breath quickening, her treacherous heart slamming against her ribs as though trying to break free and go to him of its own accord.
She set the books on her bedside table and sank onto the edge of her bed.
She pressed her face into her pillow and tried not to think about the way his voice had sounded when he said her name in the library, low and rough and hungry, as if the word itself were something he wanted to taste.
The garden on the fourth morning was stripped bare, all its vanity gone, leaving behind the honest bones of stone and evergreen. The last roses clung stubbornly to the trellises, their petals edged with brown, and the ornamental pond reflected a sky the color of pewter.
Augusta sat on the stone bench nearest the water, her hands folded in her lap, watching Cassie attempt to teach Pippin to fetch. The exercise had been going on for a quarter of an hour and had produced no discernible result beyond mutual entertainment.
“Fetch, Pippin!” Cassie hurled the stick with impressive force for a girl her size. It arced through the grey air and landed ten yards away on the frosted grass.
Pippin watched its trajectory with scholarly interest, then rolled onto his back and wriggled, all four enormous paws paddling at the sky.
“He’s broken,” Cassie huffed, abandoning the effort and dropping onto the bench beside Augusta. Her cheeks were bright from the cold, her blonde curls escaping their pins in every direction. “I think he understands perfectly well what I’m asking. He simply doesn’t see why he should do it.”
