The woman who makes your jaw clench…
He reached for the map in his desk drawer, the one with the coast of Scotland outlined in his own hand, the small village of Kinloch circled in ink now gone black with handling.
Somewhere to the north, Miss Olivia Booth was waiting for word of a sister who didn’t know where to find her.
He’d promised to look. He’d promised to keep her safe. And he’d promised himself, the day he’d pulled her from the Nightingale’s auction floor, that she would leave his house exactly as she had entered it: whole, unharmed, untouched.
He closed the drawer.
The clock struck one.
The narrow Mayfair side street was more an alley than a thoroughfare, a slim passage of cobblestones between two rows of unmarked doors. Hudson’s boots made no sound on the wet stone as he walked, his collar turned high against the night air.
The establishment he sought had no sign above the lintel. It probably needed none. Yet a single lamp glowed in thedownstairs window, its light a dull orange behind the thick curtains.
He paused, listening to the distant sounds of the city at night: a carriage on the main street, a drunk singing somewhere beyond the square, the soft hush of rain beginning to fall.
He rapped his knuckles against the door. It opened immediately, as though someone had been waiting on the other side. The woman who greeted him was neither young nor old. Her hair was pulled back in a simple updo, her dress unadorned but clearly expensive.
“Good evening,” she said, without surprise or recognition in her tone. “This way, if you please.”
She led him up a short flight of stairs to a corridor where the carpet muffled their steps. The walls were papered in a pattern of small, tasteful flowers, nothing like the gaudy excess he had expected.
At the far end, she opened a door with a key from her pocket and stood aside.
“The green room tonight,” she said. “I’ll send Marie straightaway.”
The door closed behind him with a soft click. The room was small but well-appointed: a canopied bed with burgundy hangings, the counterpane turned down to reveal crisp whitesheets. A low fire burned in the grate, just enough to take the edge off the night’s chill. A dressing table stood against the far wall, its mirror reflecting the candlelight from the single lamp beside the bed. A bottle of brandy and two glasses waited on a small table near the hearth.
Hudson shrugged out of his greatcoat and hung it on the stand near the door. His fingers found the small scar on his left side and pressed, the small pain a counterpoint to the hollowness in his chest.
The door opened.
The woman who entered was pretty; there was no denying that. Dark hair fell loose past her shoulders, and her face was arranged in an expression of interested welcome. She wore a silk wrapper of deep green, already loose at the shoulders, her bare feet peeping from beneath the hem.
She smiled at Hudson.
“Good evening,” she greeted, her voice low. “It’s a pleasure.”
She moved toward him without hesitation, her fingers sliding up to his shoulders and then his chest, her touch unhurried and professional. Her hands were cool against the warmth of his skin through the fine wool.
“Would you like me to help you with your shirt?” she asked, already working the buttons loose. “Or perhaps you’d prefer to keep it on for a while?”
Hudson stood still and let her work. Her fingers moved to his cravat, loosening the careful folds, her palm pressing flat against his shirt where it opened at the throat.
She smelled of roses and clean linen, a scent deliberately chosen to be inoffensive. Her eyes were watching his face, cataloging his responses, adjusting her approach to what she found there.
“You seem,” she murmured, leaning closer, “like you’ve had a difficult day. Perhaps I can help with that.”
She slid one hand beneath his shirt, her touch light against his ribs. Her other hand rested against his chest, fingers splayed, and then moved slowly.
This was a woman who knew exactly where she was going and how to get there. Her fingers found the fall of his trousers and pressed there, warm and certain.
Nothing.
Hudson stood very still. The fire crackled in the grate. Somewhere in the room, a candle guttered.
His eyes stayed open, fixed on the middle distance, on the burgundy hangings of the bed, on nothing. On Augusta’s chinlifted in the corridor that afternoon, mud on her skirts, refusing to apologize. The sound of her laugh, bright, unguarded, gone almost before it arrived. The way Cassie’s face opened like a window when Augusta walked into a room.
