Hudson’s thumb stilled on the saucer. His gaze moved from Cassie to Augusta briefly, then back to his sister.
“And precisely what do you imagine could go wrong,” he asked calmly, “when suspending an eleven-year-old several hundred feet above London in a basket held aloft by fire?”
“First of all, the basket isn’t held up by fire. It’s held up by warm air, which expands and becomes less dense than the surrounding atmosphere.” Cassie ticked the correction off on one finger, her face scrunching up as she recounted what he could only assume were Augusta’s words. “Secondly, I’ve alreadyestimatedhow much weight it could carry, as Augusta showed me inPhilosophical Transactions, and itlookssafe.” She paused for breath, then continued without waiting for permission. “Besides, if it were dangerous, they wouldn’t have scheduled it in Hyde Park. They’d have done it somewhere with fewer witnesses.”
Hudson’s lips twitched, and his eyes glinted with amusement.
Augusta could feel his attention turn toward her before he moved.
“The exhibition is public and supervised,” she said, keeping her voice quiet enough that Cassie had to lean forward to catch the words. “Not a private ascent. The operators are professionals. And the event has been advertised openly, which suggests it has received the proper permissions.” She paused. “There is no reason for concern.”
The last sentence, she directed at her plate. She could not quite bring herself to meet his eyes. Not with the memory of the kiss still raw between them, not with Cassie sitting three feetaway, watching them both with the sharp attention of a girl who noticed everything and forgot nothing.
But she felt it the moment his gaze settled on her face. Her fingers tightened around her teacup.
Hudson traced one finger around the rim of his cup once. Twice.
“Very well,” he agreed.
Cassie jumped out of her chair. Her hands came together with a sharp crack, the newspaper sliding to the floor. “We’ll see everything!” The sound was halfway between a laugh and a shriek. “We’ll make notes and sketches, and?—”
Hudson raised one hand. “I will be accompanying you.”
Cassie froze, her mouth still open on the half-formed syllable of her next word. “You?”
Hudson folded his paper along the creases with exacting precision and placed it beside his plate. “If either of you is to be suspended above London by experimental engineering, I intend to supervise it personally.”
“You never wanted to come before.” Cassie’s voice had gone small, and the rawness of it hit Augusta square in the chest. “Not to the museum. Not to the Crystal Palace. Not even the pantomime at Christmas.”
Hudson lowered his gaze and cleared his throat. “Balloon ascents are a particular interest,” he said, as though this had been the case for decades rather than the handful of minutes since breakfast had begun.
Augusta pressed her lips together.
“We can see the chimney smoke from above,” Cassie said, her voice rising again, the bright architecture of her excitement rebuilding itself on this new and miraculous foundation. “And the river! It curves completely differently from the air than it does on maps. Miss Norton said so. And the roof structures, we studied them in architecture last week, but from the ground you can’t really tell?—”
She was still talking when she rounded the table and threw her arms around her brother’s neck.
Hudson went rigid. His hands lifted from the table, hovered as though he had forgotten the mechanics of the gesture, and then settled against her back, his fingers spreading wide against her shoulder blades. He held her carefully, his eyes closing above her blonde head.
Three seconds passed. Perhaps four. Then Cassie pulled away, already talking again, already halfway to the door. “I need the encyclopedia! Volume seven, the one with the diagram of the Montgolfier brothers. And I’ll write a list of questions for the balloon’s operator, and we’ll need to bring our own pencils because the exhibition ones are always terrible?—”
Pippin lurched to his feet, leaving Augusta’s ankle cold, and thundered after Cassie with the urgency of a creature who understood that wherever she went, interesting things followed.
The door banged shut behind them, suddenly leaving Hudson and Augusta alone, separated only by the quiet table.
Augusta should stand. She should follow Cassie. She should say something brisk and professional about lesson plans or pencil supplies or the proper outerwear for an exhibition. Instead, she looked at Hudson.
He was already looking at her.
The mask was gone, as though Cassie’s embrace had stripped it away and he had not yet slipped it back on. What remained was unguarded in a way that made Augusta’s breath catch. The crease between his eyebrows meant he was struggling with something he could not say.
“That was well done,” she said, her voice coming out rougher than she had intended. “She’s been wanting you to…” She stopped. The words were too honest. She folded her hands in her lap.
“To what?” Hudson asked it quietly, without an edge, the way he spoke in the moments when he forgot to be careful.
To choose her. To stop holding yourself apart from the people who love you. To sit in a basket suspended by fire and heatedair because your eleven-year-old sister asked you to, and to pretend you’ve cared about balloons your entire life, because pretending is its own form of devotion.
“To join her,” Augusta said instead.
