Owen looked back at Aurelia. There was no such simplicity here.
She stood with her gloved hands lightly clasped, looking calm, but there was hope in her eyes now, albeit carefully leashed, as though she feared to let it show itself too much. It did something strange to him, seeing it there. He had already felt unsettled enough by her account of her father’s investigation, by the idea of a book of surviving notes carried quietly across the Channel like the remnant of a war no one else remembered.
But this was different. This was not only her family’s grief. It was her persistence, her refusal to let it die. And as he looked at her, with the spring light touching the side of her face and that grave steadiness in her expression, Owen felt something else stir beneath his unease.
Purpose.
“If Carter witnessed something as your father believed he did, then he may be the very thread that connects all of this. You have your father’s notes. I have my own recollections, such as they are, and access to men who might remember more than I do.”
He paused, considering the shape of the thought even as he spoke it.
“It occurs to me,” he mused, “that we may be in possession of different parts of the same truth.”
Aurelia’s gaze sharpened. “You … think you could help me?”
“I do,” he answered not certain if it was a question or a statement. Not that it mattered either way. “And if we can connect what each of us knows, perhaps we may discover what really happened.”
For the first time since he had met her, the reserve in her face broke entirely. It was not a smile exactly, but something brighter, warmer, like sudden life after a long winter. Then the actual smile followed, small and incredulous and very nearly joyful.
“Yes,” she said at once. “Yes, I should like that very much.”
The quickness of her answer startled him, though he could not say why. Perhaps it was because he had half expected hesitation, distrust, or a reminder that he was, after all, part of the world that had failed her family.
Instead, there was only eagerness. And beneath it, he thought, relief.
She had wanted this for some time. Not him, perhaps, nor even his help in particular, but the chance to do something, to move at last instead of merely enduring, to take all the old pain and turn it toward an end.
It made his chest tighten unexpectedly.
“I warn you,” he told her, allowing a shade of dry humor into his voice, “I have not yet offered any proof of usefulness.”
That earned him another real smile then, one that transformed her. It was as if someone pulled aside a set of heavy curtains and she beamed at him, looking utterly lovely.
“No,” she agreed, “but you have at least offered honesty, which is a rarer thing.”
Owen felt that answer more than he ought. For one absurd instant, he imagined what it might be like to continue in this way with her, not merely for a walk in the park but over days, perhaps weeks, sharing fragments of memory and paper and theory, each leading the other onward. He imagined her seated across from him in a quiet room, with her head bent over her father’s notebook, lifting her eyes to his when she found some name or date that mattered. He imagined the ease of speaking plainly with someone who did not require performance.
The thought came too easily. He distrusted it at once.
Still, he could not deny the steadier, warmer note that had entered his mood.
“Then we are in agreement,” he concluded.
“We are,” she replied.
He almost said more. He was not sure what. Maybe it would have been something about beginning at once, something about wanting very much to see that notebook … something unwise, most likely.
But before he could speak, a shadow fell across the path.
Thomas visibly stiffened. Owen followed his line of sight and felt the warmth vanish from the morning.
General Langley approached along the path with his daughter on his arm. Even at a distance, Langley had the air of a man accustomed to command and to being obeyed in all things. Age had not softened him. If anything, it had sharpened him into something harder, leaner, and more severe. His iron-gray hair was brushed impeccably back from a face set in lines of permanent authority. Beside him, Charlotte moved with her expression pleasant enough for society’s purposes, but with an unmistakable glint in her eyes that Owen had learned, over the years, to distrust.
As the Langleys drew near, Owen felt Aurelia still beside him. General Langley stopped before them and offered a bow that was correct without being warm.
“Westbridge,” he greeted him.
“General.”
