For one suspended moment, they stared at each other across Cassie’s sunlit bedroom, the air between them charged with everything they had done and everything they had not said.
Hudson could not decide whether he wanted to drown in those eyes or flee the room entirely.
Both options held considerable appeal.
He was on the verge of choosing flight when his gaze drifted past Augusta to the bed behind her. The bed where a dark stain, unmistakable in its color and consistency, spread across the white linen in a pattern that sent a jolt of pure fear through his system.
Blood. A significant quantity of it, by the look of things, dark enough to have dried to a rusty brown at the edges.
His body moved before his mind had fully processed what he was seeing. Two strides took him to the bed, his hand reachingfor the stained sheet, his brain already calculating: wound, accident, injury, how badly, how recently.
“Your Grace, don’t…” Augusta was on her feet, her embroidery falling to the floor, her hand outstretched as though she could physically halt his progress through the air.
Cassie made a small, distressed sound that might have been his name, and then both of them were between him and the bed, a united front of female obstruction that would have been almost comical if not for the genuine alarm on their faces.
Hudson stopped and looked from his sister’s flushed cheeks to Augusta’s carefully controlled expression. Then he looked back at the blood on the sheets and felt something cold and hard settle in his chest.
“What happened?” The question emerged more roughly than he had intended. He turned to Augusta, who stood with her hands clasped before her, her chin lifted in that way she had when she was preparing for battle. “Was there an accident? Is she hurt?”
“Cassie is perfectly well,” she replied. Her voice was steady, but he caught the slight tremor beneath it, the effort it cost her to maintain her composure. “There was no accident. No injury. She is in excellent health.”
“Then explain that,” Hudson said, pointing to the stain. “Because from where I’m standing, it appears that my sister has lost enough blood to warrant medical attention, and neither of you saw fit to inform me.”
Augusta pursed her lips but said nothing.
The silence stretched between them, taut with something Hudson could not immediately name.
He watched a muscle jump in Augusta’s cheek, watched her throat work as she swallowed, watched the way her fingers twisted together, and realization dawned on him with the slow, sickening certainty of a ship striking a rock.
She was hiding something. She knew exactly what had happened to his sister, and she had chosen not to tell him.
“Miss Norton,” he said, each word precise, measured, honed to a cutting edge. “I employ you to care for my sister. To keep her safe. To ensure that when she is injured or ill or in any way compromised, I am made aware of itimmediately. Not after the fact. Not when I stumble across evidence of it by accident.”
He took a step toward her, close enough now that he could see the rapid pulse at the base of her throat, the way her breath had quickened.
“So I will ask you one more time. What. Happened?”
Augusta’s eyes met his. There was something in them—a plea, a warning, a complexity of emotion he could not begin to unravel—but then she looked away. “I cannot answer that question, Your Grace.”
His anger flared hotter.
“You cannot,” he gritted out, “or you will not?”
“Both,” she said quietly.
Something broke in him, some final thread of patience, some last vestige of the careful control he prided himself on maintaining.
“Get out,” he said. The words emerged low and harsh, scraped from somewhere deep inside him. “Now.”
He watched the color drain from her face.
“Miss Norton, wait!” Cassie called, lunging for Augusta’s sleeve.
But Augusta was already moving, her steps quick and measured, her back straight beneath the plain gray wool of her dress. She did not look back at Hudson. Did not acknowledge his presence in any way that he could detect. She simply walked through the door and closed it behind her with a gentle click that was more devastating than a slam.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Hudson stood with his hands clenched at his sides, his breath coming in sharp bursts that burned his lungs.
