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“You did not have to accept,” he spoke after a moment, in a tone she could not quite place as gratitude, though it sounded like something adjacent to it. “I suppose it was impressive to see how willing your brother was to support whatever decision you made. It is a noble trait.”

“One you would do well to adopt,” Anna mumbled under her breath. “I accepted because it was the sensible course, Your Grace, not out of any particular fondness for the arrangement, nor for you. I would ask that you not mistake practicality for anything warmer.”

“I would not dream of it,” he snorted, and there was something dry in his voice that suggested he found her insistence rather more amusing than she intended it to be.

For some reason, he did not seem eager to leave, and she did not know what to do next, so Anna busied herself gathering the tea things onto a tray, trying to occupy her hands rather than wait for him to decide what he wanted to do next.

“I had not expected you to accept so readily,” he admitted, after a moment. “Most women in your position would have wept, or fainted, or demanded a great deal more from me before agreeing to anything at all.”

“I am not most women.” Anna set the tray down with more force than strictly necessary. “And I have found that crying accomplishes very little beyond a headache and swollen eyes. I would rather address a problem directly than dissolve into sentiment over it.”

“A sensible philosophy.”

“It is the only one that has ever served me well.” She finally looked at him properly, chin lifted. “I do not require your admiration, Your Grace. Flattery will hardly undo what you did last night, nor will it resolve the fact that we are in this mess because of you. I require only that you honor the terms we have agreed upon.”

“You shall have them,” he assured, and something in his tone, quiet and certain, made her believe him rather more than she wished to.

“I am certain your brother and I will get along swimmingly,” Hudson remarked, with the faint, dry humor of a man who knew precisely how untrue the statement was.

“Like a bloody house on fire,” Anna muttered, and had the small satisfaction of seeing his mouth twitch – almost into something like a genuine smile.

Finally, she grew sick of his lingering and questioned,

“Might I see you out?”

Hudson blinked, seemingly startled, as though he had held some belief perhaps that this was his house.

“Ah – no, it is fine, I can –”

“Follow me, Your Grace,” she sighed, already leading the way.

It was more out of habit than any particular wish for his company, and for a few moments neither of them spoke as they made their way to the front door. The quiet between them felt strange, weighted with everything that had happened in the last day – the abduction, the argument, the proposal, the agreement. Finally, Hudson paused at the threshold and broke the tension.

“I truly am sorry,” he began carefully, “For the inconvenience this has caused you. That much I regret entirely.”

He paused, and something in his expression hardened again, the brief softness of moments before folding itself away. “But I am not sorry for attempting to save my brother from Miss Gale. That, I would do again.”

Anna's jaw tightened, and she immediately chose the defensive side. “You speak of Edith as though her every action must be studied for some hidden motive, and yet you extend your own brother no such scrutiny. Has it occurred to you, Your Grace, that you might have the matter entirely backward? That it is just as likely Cornelius is using her for his own gain as the reverse – if either of them is using the other at all, which I do not believe for a moment.”

“Cornelius would not do such a thing,” Hudson sniffed, turning his nose up at her implications.

“How can you possibly be so sure?” Anna countered, folding her arms. “You cannot trust men in matters of the heart, Your Grace, regardless of whatever brotherly confidence you place in him. I have learned that lesson rather thoroughly myself.”

Something flickered across his face at that, seeming to be a slight flash of curiosity, or perhaps the start of a question he did not feel confident enough to ask outright. “You speak from experience, then.”

“That is none of your concern.” Anna raised her chin, her instinctive defensiveness. “We can all simply say I have learned that a man's professed devotion and his actual conduct are not always so closely aligned as one might hope, and I see no reason to assume your brother is any different simply because he shares your blood.”

“He is nothing like the man who wronged you, whoever he was.”

“You do not know that. Not truly. You only wish it to be so, because the alternative would require you to admit you might have been wrong about Edith from the very start.” Anna's voice had risen, sharper now, though there was something almost pleading beneath the sharpness that she could not entirely disguise. “That is precisely my point, Your Grace. You have decided what sort of woman she is without ever troubling yourself to learn otherwise, and I will not simply –”

“You know nothing of my brother's character.”

“And you know nothing of Edith's, and yet that has not stopped you from condemning her a thousand times over.”

“That is entirely different–”

“It is not in the least different, and if you would simply–”