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“You refused,” he repeated, needing to hear it once more.

“Of course, I refused,” Anna said softly. “Did you truly believe I would leave, Hudson? After everything?”

He did not have an answer for that – not one he trusted himself to voice aloud, not with his brother and her dearest friend both watching, not with his own heart still hammering from the terror of the past hour and the fresh shock of learning how close he had come to losing her regardless of his own feelings on the matter.

“We need to talk,” Cornelius said again, into the charged silence that followed. “Properly, this time. Without half-truths or old grievances standing between every word.”

Hudson looked at his brother for a long moment – at the bruise already beginning to darken along his jaw, at the wary determination in his eyes – and felt something shift within him, some old, exhausted armor finally cracking under the weight of everything the past few weeks had asked of him.

“Very well,” he said. “Come inside.”

They settled in his study, the door closed against the curious ears of the household, Anna seated near the hearth with Edith beside her, close enough to intervene should the conversation between the brothers turn violent once more.

“What were you thinking?” Hudson demanded, the moment the door had shut. “Taking her at all – did it not occur to you what fear you would cause, both to her and to me?”

“I was thinking,” Cornelius began, his own temper finally rising to match his brother’s, “That I have spent the last year watching you decide what is best for everyone around you, and I wanted, for once, to offer someone a choice you had denied them. I did not think of your fear, Hudson, because you have rarely troubled yourself to think of mine.”

“That is not fair –”

“Is it not?” Cornelius’s voice cracked with old, long-buried frustration. “You kidnapped a woman to stop my marriage. You have spent our entire lives arranging my choices according to your own judgment, and when I finally chose something for myself, you would rather ruin three lives than allow it to stand. I do not care if you refuse to give your blessing, Hudson. Edith and I are marrying regardless, with or without your approval. I am done living in fear of disappointing you.”

The silence that followed was heavy, charged with months’ worth of accumulated grievance finally given full voice. Hudson felt the accusation settle into him, and for a long moment, he said nothing at all, searching within himself for some argument, some justification, and finding none that felt honest enough to offer.

“I accept it,” he uttered finally, his voice so quiet, they almost did not hear him.

Cornelius blinked, clearly having expected further resistance. “What?”

“Your engagement. I accept it.” Hudson exhaled slowly. “I was wrong about Edith. I saw what she did after the scandal – how thoroughly she withdrew from society, how much guilt she carried for a year over what happened to Anna – and I understand now that a woman capable of such conscience is hardly the reckless creature I judged her to be. I should have seen it sooner. I should have trusted your judgment of her character before my own preconceptions.”

Cornelius said nothing for a long moment, studying his brother with an expression Hudson could not quite read.

“You truly mean that,” he said finally, something almost wondering in his voice. “I expected excuses. I expected you to justify yourself, the way you always have. I did not expect you to simply... concede.”

“I have had a great deal of time recently to reconsider what stubbornness has cost me,” Hudson pointed out, sparing a glance at his wife. “I find I have little appetite left for defending positions I no longer believe in.”

For a moment, something like hope flickered across Cornelius’ face, quickly extinguished by a fresh surge of anger.

“That is meant to satisfy me? An admission, offered many months too late, after I have already wasted the better part of my youth fighting you for something that should never have required a fight at all?”

“That is not what I–”

“You wasted a year of my life, Hudson,” Cornelius pressed on, his voice rising. “A year I might have spent married to the woman I loved, building a life with her, rather than fleeing across the Continent trying to forget her because my own brother decided he knew better than I did what I required for happiness. And all because you cannot bear to relinquish control over anything, or anyone, that falls within your reach.”

“That was never my intention,” Hudson protested, though even as he spoke, he heard how hollow the defense sounded.

“You are a liar,” Cornelius accused flatly. “Or you are lying to yourself so thoroughly that you no longer recognize the difference. Which is it, Hudson?”

The question hung in the air between them, and Hudson found himself, for the first time in longer than he could recall, entirely without a ready answer. He looked at his brother – furious, wounded, more honest with him in this moment than he had been in too many months – and felt something within him finally give way.

“Neither,” he admitted quietly. “Or perhaps both. I do not entirely know how to separate the two anymore, if I am honest with you.”

He drew a slow breath, aware of Anna watching him carefully from her seat near the hearth, aware that whatever he said next would matter a great deal more than he had words prepared for.

“Do you remember our stepmother?” he asked instead.

Cornelius frowned, clearly thrown by the sudden shift. “Rosalie? Of course, I remember her. What has she to do with any of this?”

“More than you know,” Hudson said. “You were young when Father married her – young enough that you did not see what she truly was, nor what she did, in the years that followed.”