Marie leaned in, her lips brushing the line of his jaw.
Hudson caught her wrist, his grip firm but not bruising. Then he released her and stepped back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This was a mistake.” He reached into his coat, produced a generous fold of banknotes, and set them on the dressing table. “For your time.”
She watched him, neither offended nor surprised.
He supposed that she had seen this before. Men who came with the best intentions, only to find themselves thinking of their wives or mistresses or the particular curve of another woman’s smile. Men who paid for the fantasy and couldn’t bring themselves to accept it when it stood before them, warm and willing and not who they wanted.
“Will you have some brandy before you go?” she asked, already reaching for the decanter.
Hudson shook his head. “I won’t trouble you further.”
He straightened his cravat in the mirror, a habit rather than a necessity. He would walk out, step into his carriage, andgo home without seeing anyone who would notice a duke’s dishevelment. He picked up his coat from the stand, shrugged it on, and reached for the doorknob.
“Sir.” Marie’s voice stopped him. “The next time… sometimes it helps to talk first. About why you’ve come.”
Hudson turned. She was watching him with the calm assessment of a woman who made her living reading the desires men tried to hide, even from themselves.
“There won’t be a next time,” he said.
She smirked. “They all say that.”
He stepped into the corridor, and the door closed behind him with the same soft click that had marked his arrival.
The madam was waiting at the foot of the stairs, her expression carefully neutral. “Will you be needing anything else tonight, sir?”
“No.” Hudson reached for his hat. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
Outside, the cold air hit his face like a slap. The rain had stopped, but the cobblestones still gleamed wet under the single lamp at the alley’s end.
Hudson’s breath clouded before him, white in the darkness. He stood for a moment, hands in his pockets, and looked up at the narrow strip of night sky visible between the buildings.
No distraction was going to work. No woman, no drink, no amount of distance between himself and Oakhart House would erase the memory of Augusta’s hand in his or the devastating rightness of her body pressed against his chest as the balloon swayed above London.
Hudson turned and walked toward the carriage waiting at the end of the alley, his footsteps echoing against the wet stone.
Behind him, the lamp in the upstairs window went out.
Chapter Seventeen
The morning air bit with a cold that turned the railings along Mayfair’s broad pavements to silver and made breath hang in delicate clouds before their faces.
Augusta kept her gloved fingers firmly wrapped around her end of Pippin’s lead, though the enormous Newfoundland trotted with surprising restraint ahead of them, his massive head low to the ground as he investigated each new scent.
“… and so I’ve drawn a map,” Cassie continued, her breath fogging the air as she gestured with her free hand. “Not a proper map with all the right names and all that, but a proper pirate map! With an X, and a skull with a sword in it, and all the things that make it look treasure-ish!” She sidestepped a suspicious puddle and glanced up at Augusta. “Do you think Pippin could carry dispatches? Because his mouth is certainly big enough.”
“He would likely consider them toys,” Augusta replied, steering Pippin away from a young servant hurrying along with a basketof laundry. “And dispatches tend to be rather sensitive to teeth marks.”
Cassie considered this, her nose wrinkling. “I suppose. Though I could train him. Hudson says I’m remarkably determined when I want something, and I think—” She stopped suddenly, her attention caught by something across the street. “Oh! Miss Norton, look.”
Across the pavement, three young girls had emerged from the entrance to one of the more imposing townhouses. They looked about Cassie’s age, perhaps twelve, dressed in matching blue coats with ermine trim, their ringlets arranged with identical precision beneath matching bonnets. Three governesses in dark wool coats hovered a few steps behind them, clutching muffs against the cold.
“Lady Harriet,” Cassie whispered, her voice laced with a mix of awe and delight. “And Miss Cecily Drummond and Miss Arabella Vane.” She tugged at Pippin’s lead. “We should say hello.”
Augusta hesitated. “Cassie, we’ve promised Mrs. Beale?—”
But Cassie was already crossing the street, Pippin trotting happily in her wake. Augusta followed, though not without some trepidation.
