The door opened behind her without a knock.
“You’ve been to their offices,” she said. It was not a question.
“I have.” Hudson’s voice was rough. “The information could only have come from someone in this house, Augusta. A note dropped through their letter slot. Anonymous.”
She turned then.
“Who?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it in disordered waves that should have looked careless but instead made him look like a wild thing that had been temporarily contained. “But I will.”
She believed him.
He crossed to the window, standing close enough that she could feel the heat of him through the sleeve of her dress, and looked out at the garden.
“We’re going out for a walk,” he announced.
Augusta blinked. “A walk?”
“Hyde Park. The four of us. Cassie has been indoors all morning, and Olivia looks as though she’s preparing for a firing squad. Fresh air. Movement. The opposite of sitting in rooms, worrying about things we cannot immediately fix.” He turned to face her, and the intensity of his gaze made something in her chest twist. “Will you come?”
“Your Grace,” she began and then stopped, because the formality felt absurd under the circumstances. “Hudson, people will talk. They’ve already started. Making a public appearance the day after?—”
“My sister,” Hudson cut in, each word precise, “will not be holed up in this house because of something printed on cheap paper by a man whose primary talent appears to be creative libel. Cassie deserves better than that. You both do.”
It was the wrong argument. It was also, unfortunately, the only argument that mattered.
They gathered in the front hall twenty minutes later, Cassie bouncing on her toes.
Hyde Park in the afternoon was exactly as Augusta had feared: crowded, verdant, and thick with the particular social electricity that preceded the Season’s more formal gatherings.
Carriages lined the drive. Ladies in pastel walking dresses strolled the paths in pairs and trios, their parasols tilted at precisely the angle that suggested both fashion and surveillance. Gentlemen on horseback nodded to acquaintances with the casual entitlement of men who regarded public space as an extension of their drawing rooms.
For the first hundred yards, nothing happened. The day was fine. Pippin trotted ahead with his leash taut, investigating interesting smells with the comprehensive dedication of his species.
Then Lady Seabury passed them on the path with her two daughters in tow, and the world shifted.
Augusta saw it happen in perfect, excruciating detail. The moment of recognition, the fractional pause, the way Lady Seabury’s smile froze into something that belonged on a museum mannequin. Her hand came down on her younger daughter’s shoulder, not roughly but with unmistakable purpose, and guided the girl onto the grass, making a detour that would have been comical in its transparency if it hadn’t been so thoroughly, surgically deliberate.
No words were exchanged. None were necessary.
Cassie, to her credit, did not react. She continued walking, her chin lifted, her pace steady. But Augusta, walking half a step behind, noticed when the girl’s fingers tightened on Pippin’s leash. The leather creaked. Her knuckles went white.
It happened again. And again.
A baroness whose daughter had played with Cassie at a musicale three weeks ago now steered her child in a wide arc that took them past a particularly interesting shrub.
A viscount who had been Hudson’s regular partner at White’s raised his hat with a stiffness that suggested his neck had been recently starched.
A cluster of young ladies who fell silent as they approached and did not resume their conversation until they were well past.
Each time, Cassie’s composure held. Each time, the performance grew more brittle.
And then they rounded the curve near the Serpentine, and Augusta saw them: the daughters of the Baroness Finchley, two girls of thirteen or fourteen with identical chestnut curls and matching walking dresses of pale blue.
The elder Finchley girl spotted Cassie.
Augusta watched it happen. The moment of recognition, the automatic smile beginning to form, and then something else. A hesitation, a glance at the Baroness, who was standing three yards away, deep in conversation with another matron, and had not technically issued any instruction.
