Page 21 of An Offer by the Wicked Duke
She nodded. “It’s… I wouldn’t ask for myself, Your Grace. It is my sister.”
He merely looked at her, and she took a deep breath before continuing.
“Olivia… My half-sister, really. I just… With everything that happened to my family, I am rather worried about her.”
“Naturally.” He said it without much emotion, yet it filled her with the courage to continue, so she lifted her chin and spoke faster.
“She’s living in Scotland, with her mother’s aunt, but… If… If my experience is anything to go by…”
“You are not quite certain that she is safe?”
Augusta nodded quickly. “I just… She is my sister. She’s all I have.”
Hudson was quiet for a long time, but when he spoke, it was with a deep sadness in his voice. “If there is one thing I understand, it is the concern one can have for a sibling. Wanting to protect them but fearing the inability to do so.”
She nodded mutely.
“I am looking for her, as I promised you. I do know a few people across Europe, and certainly some in Scotland. I’m making enquiries and once we find her, we’ll have her sent to London.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“I understand better than you think,” he said softly.
Their eyes met, and a strange warmth shot to her stomach, pooling there. Hudson’s hand, still resting on the glass, flexed as if he wished to reach for her and was barely resisting the urge.
Augusta’s pulse skittered. She wondered what would happen if she stood, crossed the space between them, pressed her lips to his. It would be ruinous, foolish, an end to everything she had worked hard to build.
But in that moment, she wanted it more than she had wanted anything.
“Miss Norton—” he began, his voice low.
“Your Grace—” she said at the same time.
They both stopped, and the moment stretched, taut as a wire.
The door banged open with the force of a cannon blast.
“Miss Norton!” Cassie shouted, breathless and wild-eyed. “Pippin is loose in the corridor, and Mrs. Beale is threatening to put him in the larder with the cold pies unless someone comes at once!”
The spell shattered.
Hudson stood, all efficiency now. “Go,” he said to Augusta, his eyes softening at the corners. “Rescue the dog, and the staff. And yourself.”
She was halfway to the door before she realized she had left her glass on the desk. She did not return for it.
In the corridor, Cassie took her hand, chattering about Pippin’s crimes and their impending doom.
Augusta did not look back, but she felt Hudson’s gaze following her, hot and unyielding, all the way to the stairs.
Hyde Park in summer was a whirlwind of activity. The sunny weather seemed to rub off on the promenaders, their laughter drifting in the air. The smell of flowers filled the air with sweetness.
Cassie strode several paces ahead, while Pippin ranged wide in a series of darting, joyful loops, oblivious to decorum or the constraints of leash and command. The dog’s one ear flapped in the wind as he chased first a sparrow, then a wayward hat, then a small child who screamed and laughed and then demanded a turn to pet him.
It took a moment to notice the three women standing off to the side, watching with the flat, assessing gazes of seasoned Society campaigners.
Augusta’s stomach clenched; she recognized the type immediately. They stood together, plumage immaculate, each one determined to outdo the others by some tiny, vicious increment. One wore a violet pelisse, the next an ice-pale blue, and the last was all in black, a signal of both refinement and, if Augusta read her expression correctly, a certain delight in funerary symbolism.
They know me.
