He extended his hand, and when Olivia placed hers in it, he bowed over it with a flourish that would not have been out of place at Almack’s.
“It is an absolute pleasure to meet the woman who has reduced my oldest friend to a state of such persistent distraction that he has twice failed to respond to correspondence regarding a matter of considerable financial significance, which, for Hudson Rivers, is the emotional equivalent of setting himself on fire.”
Hudson, who had been leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed and his expression hovering somewhere between resignation and reluctant amusement, made a sound that was not quite a growl.
“James.”
“Merely establishing the factual landscape,” James said cheerfully. “For the benefit of our new arrival, whom I suspect is forming impressions at a rate that would make a Bow Street Runner blush with inadequacy.”
The afternoon unfolded with the particular chaotic warmth that James’s presence invariably introduced to any gathering. He produced a deck of cards from a hidden pocket and proceeded to teach Cassie a game that involved a great deal of dramaticgestures and questionable arithmetic, both of which Cassie embraced with the wholehearted enthusiasm of a child who had found her spiritual counterpart in adult form.
Olivia, initially reserved, was gradually drawn into the proceedings by the simple expedient of Cassie’s determination that no one in the room should be permitted to remain uninvolved.
Hudson maintained his position at the periphery, present but not quite participating, his eyes moving between Augusta and Olivia.
Later, after James had been successfully lured into the garden by Cassie for what she had described with suspicious specificity as “a demonstration of my improved climbing technique, which requires an adult witness for verification purposes,” and Hudson had retreated to his study with the air of a man grateful for the reprieve, Olivia cornered Augusta in the library.
“You’re in love with him,” she remarked.
Augusta, who had been attempting with limited success to concentrate on a volume of French poetry that Hudson had left on the side table three days ago and apparently forgotten, set the book down with more force than necessary.
“It’s… complicated,” she said.
Olivia’s expression suggested that she found this response approximately as convincing as Pippin’s claims of perpetual starvation. “Most things worth having are.”
“I don’t know what we are,” Augusta admitted. The words emerged more quietly than she had intended, with a weight of uncertainty that she had been carrying since that night in the garden, since the ball, since every moment in Hudson’s arms that had felt simultaneously like coming home and stepping off a cliff. “I’m terrified of ruining it by wanting more than I have any right to ask for.”
Olivia was silent for a long moment, her fingers tracing the spine of a book she had no intention of opening. When she spoke, her voice had lost its teasing edge, replaced by something warmer and considerably more serious.
“You deserve happiness, Gussie. Whatever shape it takes. Whatever name you give it.” She reached across the space between them, her hand finding Augusta’s. “Don’t talk yourself out of it because you’re afraid it won’t last. Nothing lasts. That’s rather the point of good things; they’re precious because they’re temporary.”
The encounter happened on South Audley Street, three days into what Augusta had begun privately to think of as the good weeks.
Pippin had detected something of interest beneath a wrought-iron gate and was conducting his investigation with focusedintensity, so Augusta, Olivia, and Cassie had slowed to a stop on the pavement.
Just then, Lady Barbara rounded the corner. Her gaze moved past Augusta and landed on Cassie with the warm, proprietary smile Augusta recognized from her last encounter with the woman in Hudson’s presence.
“Lady Cassandra, what a delightful coincidence. I was only saying to Lady Featherstone this morning that I had hoped to see you again. I have been meaning to ask, your brother mentioned you had taken an interest in watercolors. My niece is quite accomplished, and I thought perhaps?—”
“I don’t like watercolors,” Cassie interrupted. She was not looking at Lady Barbara, but at Pippin.
A brief pause. “Well, perhaps drawing, then. Or?—”
“I don’t want to meet your niece.”
“Cassie,” Augusta chided quietly.
“She keeps talking to me,” Cassie said, with the flat, exhausted candor of a child who had run out of patience. “Every time. I don’t know her, and I don’t want to. I don’t understand why she keeps?—”
“Lady Cassandra.” Lady Barbara’s voice had cooled by several degrees. “I am attempting to be kind.”
“You’re attempting to talk to my brother through me,” Cassie shot back. “I’m eleven, not foolish.”
The silence that followed was loaded.
“I beg your pardon,” Lady Barbara gasped. The warmth had vanished entirely now, replaced by something that had been waiting beneath it all along. Her gaze moved to Augusta with the slow, deliberate assessment of a woman recalibrating. “You might instruct your charge in the appropriate manner of addressing her betters.”
“She addressed you honestly,” Augusta countered. “I find I can’t improve upon it.”
