“I’m sorry to interrupt, sir,” one of the men said, his discomfort evident. “But we found the girl behind the bar. She was attempting to drink whiskey. We stopped her before she could manage to taste it, but we thought you should know.”
Hudson went very still. For a moment, he looked at the girl the way a man might look at something that had simultaneously terrified and exhausted him.
“Cassie,” he growled.
Just her name, nothing more, but the tone made the girl’s shoulders hunch slightly.
“It’s not fair,” Cassie complained, the words tumbling out as though she’d been holding them back. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. And I’m not a girl. I’m eleven! Practically twelve!”
The man dismissed the employees with a nod. “Wait outside,” he ordered. “I’ll call for you in a moment.”
The burly men stepped back, pulling the door mostly closed behind them but not shutting it completely, which Augusta noted.
The tall man turned to the little girl, his voice dropping to a low, controlled register. “How on earth did you get here?” he asked.
“Well, I was curious about where you go at night, and… well, I snuck into the back compartment of the carriage,” the girl admitted.
The man ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. “You must never do this again, Cassie,” he chided. “This is a gaming hell. A young girl like you cannot be here.”
Cassie crossed her arms, her chin lifting another notch. “Nothing happened. I’m fine.”
“You’re notfine, Sister,” he said. “You’re in a place where you shouldn’t be, doing something that could have hurt you. Do you understand what might have happened if those men hadn’t found you? If someone else had?”
So little Cassie here is his sister, Augusta realized.
“Like what?” Cassie challenged.
Augusta stood to one side, watching the exchange with wide eyes.
The unlocked door—the one the employees had left slightly ajar—beckoned to her. Freedom, just a few steps away.
She took a half-step toward it, then stopped.
“I can protect myself. Peter the stable boy taught me how to throw a punch,” the little girl added.
The girl’s bravado was paper-thin. Her lower lip had a faint wobble she was working hard to suppress, and the sight of it caught at something in Augusta’s chest. She’d seen that same expression on her own face, reflected in windows and mirrors in the past month after her father’s arrest, determination stretched over a foundation of fear.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” the man was saying, his voice strained now. “I expect you to trust that when I say something is dangerous, I’m not saying it to?—”
“You want to hide me,” Cassie cut him off. “To keep me locked up like a—like a prisoner. I’m not a baby!”
“That’s not what I—” He stopped, running a hand through his hair. For a moment, he looked exhausted. “Cassie, you must understand there are consequences to your actions. You can’t just go about?—”
Augusta stepped forward, directly into Cassie’s line of sight. “Protection can feel like a prison, I suppose,” she interjected. “But you must understand… If something had happened to you tonight, if the wrong person had noticed you, or if you’d actually managed to drink enough to make yourself ill… What would your brother have done?”
Cassie’s arms slowly uncrossed, her posture softening almost imperceptibly. “He would be angry at me, which he is all the time. He’s always angry, all the time!”
“I doubt he is angry,” Augusta said gently. “I think he’s worried, and it comes through as irritation. When people love us deeply, they tend to lose their temper if they fear for our safety.”
Cassie’s lower lip curled downwards, and she dropped her gaze to the floor. “Hudson? Is that true?” she asked.
The man called Hudson pressed his lips together but nodded. “Yes. That is the point, Sister.”
She looked up at him, her eyes glassy with tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Finally, he leaned down to look the girl in the eye.
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “We’ll talk more at home.” He raised his voice slightly. “Joseph?”
