Owen’s hope sank.
“I am sorry for what happened,” Carter continued. “I am sorry for Finch, for his wife, for the girl, for all of it. But I will not speak.”
Owen looked at him for what felt like a small eternity.
“You think silence has kept you safe,” he told him. “Perhaps it has. But it hasn’t kept anyone else safe.”
Carter’s lips tightened, but he said nothing. No argument moved him after that.
When Owen and Thomas left the cottage, the mist had begun to lift, though the sky remained colorless above the lane. Owen mounted in silence. They rode several yards before he spoke.
“That is it, then.”
Thomas glanced at him. “I wouldn’t be so certain.”
“He admitted the report was false and refused to say it where it matters. That is the end of the road.”
“No,” Thomas assured him. “That is fear.”
Owen gave him a hard look. “Fear has stopped better men than Carter.”
“Yes,” Thomas replied. “And it has been overcome by worse ones.”
Owen did not answer, but as they rode back toward London, Carter’s words followed him with every hoofbeat. The report was false. The report was false. The truth was no longer a shape glimpsed beneath water. It had risen to the surface, close enough to touch, and still beyond reach.
***
That evening, Owen found himself seated at his writing table with a candle burning low beside him and wrote to Aurelia. Carter’s voice would not leave him.
The report was false.
Four words, and yet the man had spoken them as if they were not release but sentence. Owen had believed, foolishly perhaps, that once the truth was found, courage would follow it. Now he understood that truth might stand in the room with a man and still fail to move him.
At last, he dipped his pen.
My dear Miss Finch,
I hoped to write to you tonight with better news. Captain Harrow and I went to Greenwich this morning. The addressproved correct. Carter is alive, and we found him in a small cottage there, though I confess, when first we knocked, I thought he would deny us even that much. He was afraid before we had said a dozen words. He knew at once why we had come.
I told him what we had uncovered. I spoke of the altered report, of your father’s observations being removed, of blame being shifted until those who ought to have answered for their decisions stood untouched.
I spoke of Lady Finch, and of the injury done to her when she would not lend herself to a lie. I spoke, too, of you. Forgive me if I exceeded what I had the right to say, but I could not make him understand the cost of his silence without telling him that the consequences of that old falsehood did not end with the dead.
He admitted that the official report was false. I wish I could give you those words with the certainty they deserve. I wish I could say they were followed by his agreement to testify, or to write, or to place his name beside the truth at last. But he refused. He believes speaking now would destroy him.
I argued. Harrow argued more gently. Neither of us moved him.
I do not write this to discourage you. Indeed, I think we are nearer than we have ever been. We no longer have only fragments, suspicions, and contradictions. We have heard the truth spoken aloud by a man who was there. That he will notyet say it where it matters is bitterly disappointing, but it is not nothing. It cannot be nothing.
Owen stopped. The ink glistened in the candlelight. He read over the words and found them true, but insufficient. He drew in a slow breath and continued.
There is another matter I hope you will permit me to address, though I know I may be mistaken. Last night, at the theater, I thought you seemed distant. I do not reproach you for it. I had wondered, for a time, whether the frankness of our letters had become a discomfort to you once we were again in company. If that is so, you need only say it, and I will govern myself accordingly.
But I begin to think I may have misunderstood you. Harrow reminded me this morning of the incident at the garden party. He told me Miss Blackmore was hurt, and that the gossip attached to your name may have begun to reach her. I do not blame you for such caution. I admire it. But I hope you will not think you must bear the whole of this alone.
I was very glad to see you last night. More glad than I had any right to be, perhaps. After several days without your company, the sight of you in that theater reminded me how strangely and how deeply your presence has come to matter to me. I do not know when it happened. I only know that it has, and that I find I am a poorer man when I pretend otherwise.
He set the pen down. That was too much. It was certainly too much.
