“I want a name,” he said.
Peters’ face arranged itself into an expression of professional regret. “Your Grace, I understand your concern, naturally?—”
“You understand nothing,” Hudson interrupted. His voice was low and controlled, which made it considerably more dangerous than shouting would have. “What you printed this morning goes beyond concern. It goes beyond libel. It is a deliberate attempt to destroy the reputations of two women who have done nothing except exist as the daughters of a man they had no hand in choosing.” He leaned forward, planting both hands on the desk. The wood creaked. “I want the name of the person who gave you this information. Now.”
Peters licked his lips. The office had fallen into a silence so complete that Hudson could hear the man’s breathing, shallow and rapid.
“Your Grace,” Peters said, “surely you appreciate that a publication of our standing has certain professional obligations. Sources must be protected. The public’s right to know?—”
“The public has no right to know a damned thing about my household,” Hudson bit out. “And if you cite freedom of the press to me one more time, I will demonstrate, personally and at length, the freedom my fist enjoys when introduced to your jaw. A name, Peters. I won’t ask again.”
Something in his tone produced the desired effect, and Peters’ composure cracked.
“It came in a note,” he admitted. “Anonymous. Dropped through the letter slot three days ago. No signature. No identifying marks beyond the handwriting, which was…” He paused, reaching for a drawer and pulling out a sheet of paper that he placed on the desk with the reluctance of a man surrendering his last bargaining chip. “You can see for yourself.”
Hudson picked up the note.
The Duke of Oakhart is harboring the daughters of the Viscount Whitfield, a convicted murderer, in his house. The eldest, Augusta Booth, serves as governess to his sister. The youngest, Olivia Booth, arrived recently from Scotland. Both women are the offspring of a man who killed three wives for failing to produce a male heir. The ton should know what kind of women the Duke brings into polite society.
There was no signature. No seal. Nothing but those words, arranged on cheap paper with the malice of someone who had taken time and care to ensure the maximum possible damage.
Hudson folded the paper. His hands remained perfectly steady. The rest of him was a furnace, banked now, the initial white-hot rage cooling into something harder and considerably more directed.
“If anything resembling this note appears in your publication again,” he said, “or in any other sheet in London, I will not return for a conversation. I will return with solicitors, with connections you cannot begin to comprehend. Do you understand me?”
“Perfectly, Your Grace.”
Hudson left without another word.
Outside, Fleet Street carried on with the particular obliviousness of a thoroughfare that had witnessed centuries of human drama and had long since ceased to be impressed by any of it.
Hudson stood on the pavement and allowed himself one moment to feel the full weight of what the note meant.
Someone knew. Someone with access to his household, to the details of Augusta’s position, to the fact of Olivia’s arrival.
Someone who had been close enough to observe, to listen, to piece together the architecture of a life that he had begun, against his better judgment, to believe might be worth protecting.
Chapter Thirty
Augusta stood at the window in her chamber and watched the morning light climb the garden wall in thin, golden stripes that did absolutely nothing to improve her mood.
The cup sat on the sill beside her, precisely where she had set it down after the third reading of the scandal sheet, when the words had stopped rearranging themselves into new configurations of horror.
She pressed her forehead against the cool glass and tried to think past the immediate, bruising humiliation to the problem that mattered.
Cassie.
The girl’s debut was years away, a stretch of time that should have felt like a reprieve. But Augusta had been raised in a vicarage. She understood how gossip worked, how it festered, how the ton nursed its scandals.
They would not forget.
By the time Cassie made her debut, the story would have turned into something approaching folklore: the Duke’s sister, raised by the murderer’s daughter, tainted by association if not by blood.
A child. A child who had done nothing except trust the wrong person.
Augusta’s fingers found the silver locket at her throat, tracing the familiar pattern of the carving. The portrait inside was too faded to make out clearly anymore, but she knew it by heart. It was her mother’s face, delicate and solemn, preserved behind glass no thicker than a breath.
What would her mother have done? What impossible calculus of protection and sacrifice would she have performed, faced with a child who was not her own but had somehow become her responsibility?
