“She is trying to protect her,” Owen told him.
Thomas looked at him.
“If Clara has been hurt because of this inquiry, because of her connection to the Finch name, Miss Finch would consider that her own doing.”
“It is not.”
“No,” Owen agreed. “But she would not need it to be true in order to feel responsible.”
Thomas exhaled, his expression darkening. “Then we’d better find something today.”
Owen looked ahead, toward the gray, damp road.
“Yes,” he said. “We’d better.”
The cottage stood at the edge of a narrow lane, smaller than Owen had expected and poorer than he wished to find. Its garden had gone untended in places, though not entirely neglected. Smoke rose thinly from the chimney, and a cracked pot of herbs sat beside the door, as if someone had once meant to make the place cheerful and had since abandoned the attempt.
Owen dismounted first. For a moment, neither man moved toward the door.
What if Carter was not there? What if the address was wrong? What if he had gone, or been warned, or decided that silence was safer than any truth Owen could offer him?
Then Thomas came to stand beside him.
“Only one way to know,” he told him, pressing his hand to his shoulder.
Owen sighed and knocked. The wait that followed was brief, but it felt much longer. At last, the door opened only a little, and a man looked out through the narrow space.
He had altered. Years had thinned him, grayed him, drawn hard lines into a face Owen remembered only as one among many under the sun and smoke of the campaign. But the eyes were the same: watchful, strained, already afraid.
“Mr. Carter?” Owen asked.
The man’s hand tightened on the edge of the door. “You are mistaken.”
“I do not think so.”
“I know nothing,” Carter said at once.
Thomas remained silent, which Owen was grateful for. This required care, not pressure.
“I remember you,” Owen spoke. “From the campaign.”
Carter’s face changed, though only for a second. “Then you should know better than to come here.”
“I have no intention of exposing you to danger.”
At that, Carter gave a humorless sound. “Gentlemen always say that when the danger is not theirs.”
The words struck home more deeply than Owen wished to admit.
“I know what I ask,” he chose his words carefully. “And I know you have reason to refuse. But we have come because a falsehood has stood for too many years, and innocent people have paid for it.”
Carter looked from Owen to Thomas and back again. The door remained half closed. Then, at last, he stepped back.
“Come in,” he urged. “But not for long.”
The room within was neat, bare, and cold despite the fire. Carter did not ask them to sit. He stood with his back to the hearth, as if even that poor warmth required guarding.
Owen wasted no time. He told him what they had found: the discrepancies in the accounts, the report that had been altered, the observations erased from the record, the blame shifted downward until those with enough rank and influence were left untouched. He spoke of Finch, of the memorandum, of Lady Finch’s refusal to surrender what she knew to be true.
