The carriage rolled on. Neither spoke much after that. By the time they reached home, the weariness of the afternoon had sunk into Aurelia’s bones. Yet beneath it was something more restless than mere fatigue. Charlotte’s questions turned in her mind again and again, particularly the one about her father’s recovered belongings.
It was too pointed to be chance.
***
That evening, once Clara had retired and the house was quiet at last, Aurelia sat at her writing table with paper before her and wrote to Owen.
The task felt easier than it ought to have done.
That, more than once, had begun to surprise her. In person they were careful with one another, always circling what could and could not be safely said, always aware of rooms and proprieties and the false shape of the courtship surrounding them.
In letters, all that altered. The page seemed to permit a kind of honesty she did not yet know how to manage aloud.
My Lord,
Today, Clara and I attended a luncheon with several ladies, and upon our entrance there was so marked a hush in the room that I could not mistake its meaning. It was plain they had been speaking of us, more particularly, I think, of me. Some remained civil, but others were noticeably altered in their manner, and I could not help fearing that old stories are beginning to revive.
Miss Langley was present, and I suspect she may have had some hand in it, though of course I cannot prove as much. She wore throughout the most innocent expression in the world, which in her case is enough to make me distrust her all the more.
What distressed me most was not any slight offered to myself, but the effect upon Clara. I cannot help wondering whether I waswrong to bring her to London at all. I begin to feel that the stain upon my name reaches every person who stands too near me.
Miss Langley spoke to us as we were leaving. She was all politeness, yet her questions were of a very curious kind. She asked after my return from France, after my mother, and most particularly, whether any of my father’s belongings or papers had ever been recovered. I thought the enquiry odd enough to unsettle me. Why she should care about such matters, I cannot tell, unless she knows or suspects more than she ought.
For that reason, I think we must be very careful of the Langleys, and especially of Miss Langley. She seems to be feeling her way toward something.
I do not know why it is easier to say these things in a letter than aloud, but I find that it is. Perhaps because in writing I need not pretend so much. I confess that the thought of all this beginning again frightens me less for myself than for my mother. What was done to our family injured her more deeply than anyone else, and I do not think she has ever truly recovered from it. The idea that old whispers might rise again, and that she might be made to suffer afresh for the same wrong, is very hard to bear.
Pray forgive so serious a letter. I wished only that you should know exactly what transpired, and why I think caution necessary.
Yours sincerely,
Aurelia Finch
When she finished, she placed the letter where it might be sent early, and then, she went to the window and stood looking out into the dark.
Somewhere in another part of London, Owen would receive her letter by the following day. He would read what she had dared to say. He would know now something more of her fear and of the danger she felt circling nearer.
The thought should have unsettled her. Instead, it made her feel a little less alone.
That, she suspected, was a complication of its own.
Chapter 17
It was exactly three days later that Owen found himself seated upon a picnic blanket in Hyde Park with a plate balanced on one knee and the uneasy but undeniable sensation that he was enjoying himself.
The day had been chosen with care. The weather was mild, and the park sufficiently full of carriages, riders, nurses, strolling families, and all the respectable clutter of London leisure to ensure that their party would be seen.
That, after all, was part of the point. A private excursion would have been improper. A public picnic, on the other hand, announced precisely what it was meant to announce. If anyone cared to observe Lord Westbridge attending Miss Finch in the open air with her cousin and Captain Harrow close by, they were welcome to do so. Indeed, they were meant to.
Still, Owen had not expected the outing to feel so pleasant.
The four of them had settled beneath a wide green tree where the light came down in shifting patches through the leaves. Thomas had brought more good humor than provisions, though fortunately the servants had supplied enough of the latter to compensate. Clara was laughing over everything: the arrangement of the basket, the stubbornness of the wine bottle, and Thomas’s very poor attempt at slicing cold ham with apocketknife before Owen intervened and forbade him to butcher the luncheon. Even Aurelia, who had arrived at first with her usual caution wrapped about her like an invisible shawl, had gradually begun to smile more freely.
They had eaten, talked, and watched the world go by, and to Owen’s surprise the whole thing felt less like an exercise in appearances and more like a proper afternoon.
Thomas and Clara did most of the talking at first, their ease with one another becoming more marked each time Owen saw them together. Clara met Thomas’s teasing with bright indignation and then laughter. Thomas seemed to glow under the smallest scrap of her attention. It was all so absurdly open that Owen ought, perhaps, to have found it tedious.
Instead, he found it rather restorative.
