She sighed. “Now I wonder what they are all concealing.”
The carriage drew up then, and Clara emerged from the shop with Captain Harrow, both arguing over some picture. The journey home was short, and filled with Clara’s laugher. At the door of their house, Captain Harrow was occupied in making Clara laugh again over some absurdity concerning a statue whose expression he claimed had reminded him of an offended colonel. Owen turned to Aurelia and bowed.
“Thank you for allowing me to escort you.”
“Thank you for the invitation.”
The words were formal. Their eyes were not. For a heartbeat too long, neither looked away. Aurelia felt a shiver pass through her,not from cold, but from the sudden, dangerous conviction that she did not want him to leave.
Then, he stepped back. Owen’s gaze dropped to her lips, so quickly she might have imagined it, had her own breath not caught in answer. The space between them was perfectly proper, and yet it seemed suddenly far too little.
“Aurelia,” he said her name without the protection of Miss Finch, and it sent a million little goosebumps down her back.
“My lord,” she replied in an effort to regain steadiness.
He entered the carriage with Captain Harrow, and Aurelia stood in the doorway longer than propriety required, watching until it turned the corner and was gone. Only then did she go into the house.
Clara chirped away throughout the rest of the day, but Aurelia could scarcely wait for the evening when she would write to Owen. The moment could not have arrived soon enough. She meant to ask whether he had heard more of Carter. She meant to mention General Langley, Charlotte’s watchfulness, Clara’s happiness, all the necessary subjects that belonged to their arrangement.
Instead, she wrote of the gallery.
My Lord,
I ought to thank you only for your escort today, and for the civility with which you bore my opinions upon the pictures, but I find myself inclined to be more honest than such a note requires.
When I first returned to London, I did so with very little pleasure in anticipation. The very sound of wheels in the street seemed to announce some judgement I had little courage to meet, and I came resolved to endure the season for Clara’s sake, then quit it as quietly as I had entered.
I cannot now say that London has become agreeable to me. That would be too bold a falsehood. Yet I may say that your friendship has made it less formidable, and, at moments, almost pleasant.
It is a strange liberty these letters allow us. In a drawing room, one must guard every look and measure every word, but on paper, sincerity seems less perilous. Perhaps that is why I write more freely than I ought, and why I trust you will understand the gratitude I cannot always express aloud.
Yours sincerely,
Aurelia Finch
When the letter was sealed, Aurelia rested her fingertips upon it a moment longer than necessity required. Then she rang for it to be sent, and sat alone beside the fading candle, wondering whether honesty, once permitted onto the page, could ever be persuaded back into silence.
Chapter 23
Owen found Thomas at White’s in a posture of such deceptive idleness that no one unfamiliar with him would have suspected he had been about anything more serious than the newspaper in his hand. But when Owen entered, Thomas folded the paper at once and rose.
“You are late,” he pointed out.
“I am exactly on time,” Owen corrected him.
“Then I have been impatient, which is less dignified.”
Owen glanced toward the other gentlemen in the room. It was not a place for unguarded conversation. Thomas seemed to understand, for he nodded toward a quieter corner, where two chairs stood beneath a gloomy portrait of some long-dead nobleman who looked as if he had disapproved of everyone beneath him and expected to continue doing so even from the canvas.
“Well?” Owen asked when they were seated.
Thomas’s levity faded. “I may have something.”
Owen sat straighter.
“I asked Marlborough. You remember him?”
“Vaguely.”
