The clear insinuation in Slater’s words dredged up memories Hudson would rather keep buried. He slowly took a seat, his heart racing wildly in his chest.
The taste of her lips. Her soft skin under his hands. Her body pressed against his?—
“That’ll be all, Slater.” It took everything he had to keep his voice level.
Slater dipped his head and withdrew. The door clicked shut, and the office settled back into its particular silence: the distant rumble of the gaming floor below, the tick of the mantel clock, the faint creak of the building itself, old timbers shifting in the cold.
Hudson turned back to the map. He traced the line of the coast with one finger, north from Kinloch toward the cluster of fishing villages that dotted the shore above Lochinver. Somewhere in that landscape of stone and heather and grey water, a girl was waiting for news of a sister who did not know where to find her.
He had promised to find Olivia.
Two villages crossed out. One lead going cold. A sprig of heather growing brittle in the corner of a map.
The clock struck three. Hudson reached for his whiskey, lifted it, and drank.
Chapter Thirteen
“Good morning, Miss Norton!” Cassie had already claimed the newspaper’s society column and was holding it at arm’s length, her chin lifted at precisely the angle her brother adopted when reading.
Augusta could not help but smile as she sat down at the breakfast table. “Morning, Cassie. Reading the paper, I see?”
Cassie shrugged, though her nose twitched in amusement.
Augusta poured her tea.
It was not getting any easier. Three seats separated her from Hudson. Three seats and a tablecloth and a newspaper and the memory of his hands on her arms in the corridor, his voice in the dark…
She took a sip, and the tea burned her tongue.
“Muffin?” Cassie asked, already pushing the basket toward her.
“Thank you.”
The clock near the fireplace ticked. The paper crackled as he turned a page. Beneath the table, Pippin, who had taken up his customary position against Augusta’s ankles, snored contentedly.
The newspaper crackled again. She did not look up, though her skin prickled along the back of her neck, down her arms, and across her collarbones.
She took a bite of the muffin. Chewed. Swallowed. Reached for her tea again.
“A hot-air balloon ascent exhibition!” Cassie’s voice cracked through the fragile quiet like a rock through glass.
The newspaper flattened against the table under both her palms, her chair legs scraping across the floor as she shot forward, her shoulders hunched with excitement.
“Hyde Park, this Saturday.” Her finger traced the paragraph, her reading accelerating with each word as though her mind was outrunning her tongue. “Enormous crowds expected, demonstrations of the principles of aerostatic navigation, an attempt upon the altitude record—” She was nearly breathless now, the newspaper trembling in her grasp. “Ascents every hourfrom ten until four.” She looked up, her face incandescent. “Wemustgo.”
Augusta set down her teacup. “You will need your brother’s permission,” she said, doing all she could to keep her voice level.
A day out of the manor, she decided, would do her good too.
Cassie turned to Hudson with the swiftness of a weathervane in a changing wind. The newspaper had not lowered. A beat passed, then the paper dipped.
Hudson’s face gave nothing away.
“It’s a public exhibition,” Cassie said, looking at him pleadingly. “And Miss Norton and I have been studying atmospheric pressure and the principles of lift and buoyancy for weeks.”
That was generous. They had spent one afternoon with a diagram in a geography text and an enthusiastic discussion of why boats floated while stones did not. Augusta studied her muffin.
“Think of it as… as showing what I am learning in a way where I can really see it,” Cassie finished, her voice ringing with the conviction of the deeply, sincerely invested.
