And every part of her wanted to feel it again… and again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Allow me,” he murmured, his voice rough at the edges in a way that sent a shiver down her spine.
Augusta’s fingers trembled against the silk of her bodice, and she fumbled with the small pearl buttons she had managed to fasten so effortlessly mere hours ago.
Hudson’s hands covered hers, and her breath caught at the intimacy of the gesture.
This man, who had just moments ago reduced her to a trembling, gasping mess with nothing but his mouth and his hands and the skill with which he used them, was now buttoning her dress with the quiet concentration of a man performing a sacred ritual.
His fingers fastened the final hook at her neck, and his knuckles brushed the sensitive skin there, lingering perhaps a second longer than necessary.
She turned to face him, and the sight of him slightly disheveled, his cravat loose, his hair bearing the unmistakable evidence of her hands running through it, made her stomach flip in a way that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with the memory of his mouth on hers, his hands on her body, and the sounds he had coaxed from her that she was certain the entire party had heard.
“You should go first,” Hudson said, his voice carefully neutral, though his eyes told an entirely different story. “I’ll follow in a few minutes.”
The ballroom hit her like a wall of sound and warmth and light as she entered. The orchestra had struck up another waltz, and couples moved across the dance floor in elegant patterns that bore no resemblance to the desperate, hungry tangle of limbs she had just been part of.
Augusta paused at the threshold, her hand going unconsciously to her hair, wondering if the guests could see the evidence of Hudson’s attention written across her face in letters ten feet high.
She scanned the crowd, quickly finding Cassie’s bouncing curls and, beside them, the unmistakable figure of James.
She made her way toward them, her steps quickening despite her best efforts to appear composed. Cassie spotted her before she had covered half the distance.
“Miss Norton!” she called, her voice carrying above the music with the unselfconscious volume of the very young. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere. James said you’d gone to find a shawl because you were cold, but you don’t have a shawl, and it’s positively stifling in here, and?—”
“I needed air,” Augusta said, the lie coming out more smoothly than she had expected. “The ballroom was rather close. I stepped out into the garden for a moment.”
Cassie’s head tilted. “The garden? But you’ve been gone for ages. Mrs. Beale served the lemon ice, and Lord Follett made a speech about the Prince Regent’s hunting dogs, and Lady Seabury’s daughter sang a very long song in Italian that nobody understood, and you missed all of it.”
“I’m sorry,” Augusta said, meaning it. “I didn’t realize?—”
“And where did Hudson go?” Cassie interrupted, the question landing between them with the devastating precision of an artillery shell. “He also disappeared right after our dance. James said he had business to attend to, but business at a ball? That seems very odd, doesn’t it? Especially when there’s still lemon ice.”
Augusta opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. The truth hovered in her mind, and she felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep in her chest.
“I believe,” James spoke up, with the timing of a man who had been waiting for precisely this moment, “that the lemon ice isin grave danger of melting entirely if we do not consume it with all due haste. And I have it on excellent authority…” He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur that Cassie leaned in to catch, “… that Mrs. Beale has hidden a second batch in the morning room for the guests with the foresight to save room. Shall we launch a reconnaissance mission, Lady Cassandra? You and I against the forces of culinary restraint?”
Cassie’s expression shifted, suspicion giving way to delight in the space of a heartbeat. “A second batch? Really? But Hudson said?—”
“Hudson,” James said gravely, “is a man of many virtues, but his knowledge of Mrs. Beale’s secret dessert reserves is tragically limited. Come. We must move quickly before the enemy realizes our intentions.”
He offered his arm with a flourish, and Cassie took it with the gravity of a general accepting a commission, already chattering about tactical approaches to the morning room and the optimal distribution of lemon ice among deserving parties.
They moved away together, Cassie’s blonde head bobbing beside James’s taller figure, her earlier questions apparently forgotten in the thrill of clandestine dessert acquisition.
Augusta watched them go, her hand unconsciously rising to touch the base of her throat where Hudson’s fingers had touched her before she had returned.
How on earth was she supposed to concentrate on French vocabulary and arithmetic in the morning, when her thoughts were still tangled recklessly and insistently with him?
Augusta woke to sunlight spilling across her bed in warm, golden pools.
For one disorienting moment, she could not remember why her body felt the way it did.
Then it all came rushing back.
Hudson’s mouth on hers, his hands on her body, the way he had looked at her afterward, as though she were something precious and rare.
