It was a foolish thing… a dangerous thing, and yet it seemed to Aurelia that the whole room must have altered because of it.
At that moment, her cloak slipped from one shoulder, and she adjusted it with hands that felt not entirely her own. The ribbon at her throat had twisted. She attempted to set it right, but the knot caught beneath her fingers.
Owen moved. “May I?”
It was a perfectly ordinary courtesy. A gentleman could assist a lady with her cloak in a public foyer, particularly when the crush of people made such small services natural. Yet, the question seemed to fall between them with absurd consequence.
“Yes,” she whispered, though she knew she should have refused.
He stepped closer, and took the ends of the ribbon from her unsteady fingers. His gloves brushed hers again, and the contact was so brief that any sensible person would have dismissed it at once. Aurelia was not, at that moment, a sensible person. Sheheld herself very still while he untangled the ribbon and fastened it with quiet care.
“There,” he told her.
“Thank you,” she managed to muster.
He didn’t step back immediately. For one breath, perhaps two, they remained nearer than they had been before. Aurelia became painfully aware that the last letter he had sent her still rested in her reticule. She brought it with her for no sensible reason, folded carefully behind her handkerchief as though paper could become a talisman if carried close enough.
At that moment, a servant approached. “My lord, the carriage is nearly brought round.”
“Thank you,” Owen replied.
The servant withdrew. Aurelia glanced at the door. Beyond them, the night waited, shining under a thin veil of mist. Tomorrow, Owen would go and speak to Carter. Tomorrow, everything might move forward or collapse once more into silence.
But tonight, for one suspended moment in a crowded theater foyer, Aurelia stood beside Owen and allowed herself to want him to come back to her.
Chapter 29
By the following morning, Owen had slept poorly enough to be in no humor for patience. The road to Greenwich was damp from an early mist, and the horses’ hooves struck the ground with a steady rhythm that ought, under different circumstances, to have calmed him. Instead, every mile seemed to lengthen the distance between anticipation and proof.
Carter had been found. The address had been given. There was a man, living and breathing, who might at last confirm what they had only pieced together through altered reports, old recollections, and the wreckage left behind by more powerful men. And yet, the nearer they came to him, the more Owen felt the old dread settle in his chest.
Thomas had been uncharacteristically quiet for the first portion of the ride. At length, he shifted in his saddle. “There is something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Owen looked across at him. “About Carter?”
“No.” Thomas’s mouth tightened. “About Miss Blackmore.”
At that, Owen’s attention sharpened.
Thomas kept his gaze fixed ahead. “You remember that at the garden party, there was an incident. A gentleman refused to dance with her.”
Owen’s hand tightened on the reins. “I remember.”
“It was done with enough politeness to pass for accident, and enough intention to wound.” Thomas’s voice was controlled, but Owen heard the anger beneath it. “She tried to laugh it off. Miss Finch tried to spare her. But since then, Clara has been … different.”
It was the first time Harrow had used her Christian name without appearing to notice it.
“Different how?”
“Quieter, less certain of herself. She still smiles, of course. She would smile if the roof fell in, rather than inconvenience anyone with her distress. But it is not the same.” He glanced at Owen then, troubled in a manner Owen had rarely seen in him. “I had thought it only the gossip. That the shadow over Miss Finch’s name was beginning to reach her cousin.”
“And now?”
“Now I am not so certain that is all.”
Owen said nothing for several moments. His thoughts had gone, immediately and inevitably, to Aurelia. The walk in the park had seemed to ease something between them. He had believed it. Foolishly, perhaps, but sincerely. He had thought their letters had made possible some truth that society could not quite forbid. Yet at the theater, she had withdrawn behind all her former composure. They barely spoke. She was polite, formal and careful to the point of coldness.
At first, he had thought she regretted the openness of their correspondence, that, given the public sight of him, she had recoiled from what had been easier to write than to bear in person. Now, he wondered if he had been unjust. Aurelia Finch would retreat from happiness far sooner than allow it to harm someone she loved.
