She did not want to go.
The realization settled into her bones with the weight of certainty. She had spent her entire life being shuffled from one unwanted situation to another. And now, when she had finally found something she truly wished to keep, the machinery ofrespectable society was preparing to whisk her away again, as efficiently as a housekeeper disposing of a cracked teacup.
She shook her head, as though it would rid her of the memories of Hudson’s tongue doing things to her that no proper lady would allow. Her skin was alive with memories as she dressed, only to bump right into the very man occupying her thoughts as she left her bedchamber.
“Good morning,” he greeted. His voice was rough with sleep, which did unfortunate things to her composure.
“Good morning.” It took everything she had not to press her hands against her flaming cheeks.
“We need to talk,” Hudson said, just when she thought the silence would become unbearable.
“I suppose we do,” she agreed.
“I don’t wish to marry.” The statement came without preamble, delivered in the same tone a man might use to announce the weather. “It has nothing to do with you. You know my reasons.”
Augusta sighed, then looked away. “I do. I… I don’t wish to go to Scotland,” she admitted. The words emerged more steadily than she had expected. “I am… fairly happy here. I mean… with Cassie, of course.”
Hudson’s expression did not change. “What do you propose, then?”
“I could write to my sister,” she said slowly. “Ask her to come to London. Perhaps if she hears this request from me…”
Hudson was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was low, careful. “Write the letter. I’ll see that it’s sent.”
Relief washed over her, warm and startling. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.” He crossed the room in three strides, his movements fluid and controlled, and took her hand in his own. His fingers were warm, callused, infinitely steady. “We keep things as they are. You stay. You write to your sister. We…” He paused, and she watched the rare, fascinating struggle of a man attempting to articulate a feeling he had spent years perfecting the art of concealing. “We continue.”
It was not a declaration. It was not even particularly romantic. But the pressure of his hand around hers, the deliberate weight of his gaze, felt like a promise nonetheless.
“Very well,” Augusta said, and allowed herself the smallest of smiles. “We continue.”
The letter took shape over the course of the morning, drafted and redrafted at the escritoire in her chamber.
My dearest sister,she wrote, and then sat staring at the page for a full five minutes, the pen hovering above the paper.
What did one say to a half-sister one had never met? How did one explain the complicated geography of a life that had included a murderous father, pious guardians, a duke’s bedchamber, and the persistent, inconvenient hope of something better?
In the end, she settled for honesty. Brief, careful honesty, omitting the more scandalous particulars of her current situation but conveying the essential truth: she was in London, she wished to see her sister, and there were matters to discuss that could not be entrusted to ink and paper.
She sealed the letter with a drop of wax, pressing her thumb into the soft red pool with more force than strictly necessary. The act felt ceremonial, weighted with significance. A message cast into the uncertain waters of family history, requesting an audience with the only blood relation who might still claim her.
When she handed it to the footman, her hand was steady.
Something had shifted in the architecture of her life: a door opened, a wall dismantled, a new room added to the familiar blueprint of solitude. She did not know what would come of it. She did not know if her sister would answer or what would become of this strange, tentative arrangement with Hudson.
But for the first time in longer than she could remember, the future felt less like a sentence and more like a question. Andquestions, Augusta had always believed, were considerably more interesting than answers.
The letter followed her, clung to her, even during Cassie’s lesson later that day.
“But if the mines are underground,” Cassie said, tapping her pencil against the map spread across the schoolroom table, “how do the miners know they’re still in England? Couldn’t they accidentally dig to France?”
“That would be an impressive feat of engineering,” Augusta replied, suppressing a smile. “The Channel is rather wider than your average tunnel.”
“Perhaps they could use a very long rope. To measure.” Cassie’s brow furrowed. “Or a compass! Do compasses work underground, Miss Norton?”
“I suspect the more pressing concern would be drowning, rather than nationality.” Augusta reached across the table to adjust the girl’s grip on her pencil. “But it’s an excellent question. Perhaps we might write to a mining engineer and inquire.”
Cassie’s face lit up. “Truly? You would let me?”
