Olivia studied her face with the particular attention of someone reading a text she had memorized years ago and was checking for revisions. Then she sighed, a soft, resigned sound that contained more understanding than Augusta had any right to expect.
“Scotland, then,” she said. “The two of us. Together.”
“Thank you,” Augusta whispered.
“Don’t thank me,” Olivia said. “Just promise me this isn’t forever. Promise me that someday, when this has all… when it’s settled, we will find our way back to something that resembles a choice. Not an exile, but a choice.”
“I promise.”
Though packing had been quick and easy, the letters took longer.
Augusta wrote a letter to Cassie first. She wrote about courage, about the particular brand of it that Cassie carried in her small frame without seeming to notice its weight. She wrote about trees that were meant for climbing and a mare named Juniper and the absolute, non-negotiable truth that being loved by Augusta Booth was a permanent condition, unaffected by distance or discretion or the meanness of London gossip. She wroteI will see you againand hoped, with a fervor that made her hand shake, that it was true.
She sealed it with a drop of wax, pressing her thumb into the soft red pool where a signet ring would normally go.
The letter to Hudson was far more difficult. She drafted it three times, each version more inadequate than the last, before settling on the approach that felt the least dishonest: gratitude first, explanation second, a request that was not quite a plea placed carefully at the end where he could not miss it.
Your Grace,she began and then struck it out.
Hudson,
Thank you for everything. For Cassie. For Olivia. For the garden, and the library, and every moment in between that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. You have been kinder than I had any right to expect, and more patient than any man of your station should have been required to be.
I cannot stay. You know this, I think, even if you will not admit it to yourself. What happened in the park today is onlythe beginning. Cassie’s future cannot be collateral damage in whatever this is between us. She deserves a clean slate, a life unmarked by the poison that my name now carries in this city.
This is my choice. I am choosing Cassie’s future over everything else, and I would make the same choice a hundred times without hesitation.
She did not sign it with love. She could not bring herself to write the word, knowing that he would read it in a house she had already left, in a future she had voluntarily abandoned. Instead, she wroteAugustaand left it at that.
She pressed the wax seal with more force than necessary, as though she could physically impress the finality of the gesture into the paper.
Dawn was still an hour away when she and Olivia met in the front hall, dressed for travel, their trunks positioned by the door with the quiet efficiency of a departure that had been planned to avoid witnesses.
Pippin, who had apparently developed some form of canine precognition regarding household upheaval, was sitting between the trunks with his ears drooping and an expression of such profound betrayal that Augusta had to look away.
“No goodbyes,” Olivia said softly. “It’s cleaner this way.”
Augusta nodded. She could not have spoken if she had tried.
The carriage arrived precisely as arranged. A hired conveyance, not one of Hudson’s, procured by Olivia through channels she had not explained and Augusta had not asked about.
The driver took their trunks without comment. The horses stamped and snorted in the cool pre-dawn air, their breath visible in pale clouds that dissipated into the darkness.
Augusta climbed into the carriage after Olivia. And with that, they rolled away from Oakhart House.
Chapter Thirty-One
When Hudson came down for breakfast at the usual hour the following morning, the room felt wrong.
He registered this fact before he had fully crossed the threshold. All was as it should be. Except that Augusta was not seated across from him, and Olivia was not there either.
He paused with his hand on the back of his chair and conducted a swift assessment.
The hour was correct. The day was Tuesday. Augusta was never late for meals. Olivia, while less rigorously committed to the clock, could generally be relied upon to appear within a quarter-hour of the appointed time, usually bearing a new sketch that she would attempt to pass off as a casual observation rather than the product of hours of focused work.
Neither woman had materialized.
He sat down slowly. The footman poured his coffee. Hudson accepted it with a nod that conveyed nothing of the unease churning in his gut. He reached for the post, more out of habit than interest, and was halfway through a letter from his steward regarding drainage in the north field when Mrs. Beale appeared in the doorway.
