Chapter 6
Aurelia had not expected to see either of them again so soon.
When Clara had first exclaimed over Captain Harrow’s presence in the drawing room before dinner, Aurelia’s surprise had been sincere enough.
But the greater surprise had followed almost immediately, when her eyes moved almost without her consent through the crowd, only to find the other man standing some little distance away.
He had come, then.
For a gentleman who had spoken with such dry indifference of London pleasures, he seemed remarkably diligent in attending them.
One assembly might be explained away as duty, maternal coercion, or simply bad luck.
Two in succession suggested either a weak character or a more complicated one than Aurelia had first supposed.
She had decided, after watching him for only a quarter of an hour, that the latter was far more likely.
Indeed, she had been more amused than she ought to have by observing him before dinner.
His mother, who appeared to be a beautiful, stately woman with all the authority of long practice in governing a fashionable household, had been doing her utmost to present him with one young lady after another, as though she were exhibiting items before a purchaser who could not be trusted to choose sensibly for himself.
Aurelia had watched from across the room while one elegant beauty in pink satin replaced another in pale blue, then another in soft yellow, until the whole procession began to look less like society and more like a parade of carefully dressed ambition.
The young ladies were all very fine. There could be no denying it. They were polished, accomplished, admirably arranged, and so alert to his notice that Aurelia had once been obliged to look away lest her own expression betray her.
For he was plainly bored. He would never show it outright, of course. She didn’t know much of him, but she knew that he was either too well-bred or too disciplined for rudeness.
“You are fortunate to be seated where you are,” said the lady beside Aurelia, as the first course was served.
Aurelia turned. Mrs. Dalrymple, a plump, lively widow with bright eyes and an inexhaustible appetite for observation, smiled at her over the rim of her wineglass.
“Am I?” Aurelia asked.
“Certainly. Lady Mortimer has been talking of her digestion since we sat down, and Miss Gresham knows only two subjects: ribbons and her own complexion. I am therefore determined that you and I shall save one another.”
Aurelia smiled. “You are very obliging.”
“Oh, no. I am very selfish, my dear. There is a difference.”
That was said with such cheerful frankness that Aurelia laughed despite herself.
Mrs. Dalrymple nodded approvingly. “Much better. Young women are too often solemn at dinner. It gives the men an unfair advantage.”
“I had not thought men required assistance.”
“Oh, they always require assistance. Why else should they be handed wives, fortunes, and opinions from infancy?”
Aurelia lowered her gaze to her plate lest her amusement show too openly.
Mrs. Dalrymple, encouraged, continued in an undertone, “Do you know the lady in puce opposite us? No? Then you are happier than I. She once quarreled with her own sister for wearing the same shade of blue to a musicale. They did not speak for six months. Society survived only because both continued to attend everything.”
“That sounds very tragic.”
“It was spoken of as such.”
Aurelia glanced up politely toward the lady in question and murmured. “I shall be cautious in my choice of colors.”
“My dear, you should rather be cautious in your choice of sisters.”
The exchange eased her more than she had expected. Conversation of no consequence had its uses. It left the mind freer to wander where it ought not.
And Aurelia’s mind, to her annoyance, kept wandering.
She had not meant to watch him across the table. It was unnecessary, unwise, and rather childish. Yet once one had noticed a thing too much, it became difficult to return to proper indifference. She found herself observing him in stolen glances.
She noticed that he bent his head toward his mother beside him, and as the older woman spoke, she cast one measured glance in Aurelia’s direction. It was only one, but it was enough.
Aurelia felt the familiar chill of recognition at once. He had not known her the night before, but he knew her now, or at least, he knew enough of her. The lady beside him would have supplied whatever was necessary: the name, the history, the warning.
Aurelia had seen such moments before. They rarely required more than a sentence or two.
Mrs. Dalrymple, meanwhile, continued. “And Lord Beresford’s son is said to have lost eight hundred pounds at cards last week, though his mother insists it was only four. As though half the disgrace mends the whole of it.”
Aurelia forced herself to listen. “Perhaps she thinks moderation improves ruin.”
“My dear, moderation improves nothing once the story is already known.”
There was sense in that … too much sense.
Aurelia kept her eyes fixed on her plate, though the old disappointment had already begun to stir beneath her self-control.
It was foolish to feel it. She had no right to expect anything from him.
She had spoken with him once, for a few minutes only, under circumstances made easy by his ignorance.
If he knew now who she was, of course he would keep away.
Men with name and consequence generally did.
Still, she could not deny that she had absurdly enjoyed being spoken to without the shadow of the Finch scandal falling first across the conversation.
By the time the last course was removed, Mrs. Dalrymple had improved the whole dinner by half.
Yet even her company could not prevent Aurelia from feeling a peculiar unwillingness as dinner came to an end, and the guests were now invited to enjoy some drinks, while their host, who considered himself a tolerable musician but was by everyone else considered something else, seated himself at the pianoforte and began to play.
The effect was at once social and oppressive. Nobody was obliged to listen, and yet everybody was obliged to pretend to.
Aurelia had scarcely taken a glass from a passing tray when Clara came gliding to her side. She appeared all bright-eyed and restless, looking as though she had not sat through dinner so much as endured it.
“Aurelia,” she whispered, “may I go and speak to Captain Harrow?”
Aurelia turned her head at once, though she knew very well where Clara’s gaze would lead her. Captain Harrow was standing near one of the tall windows, somewhat apart from the larger knots of company, with a glass in his hand.
“He is alone,” Clara said, as if this settled every possible objection.
“He may prefer to remain so.”
Clara gave her a look. “No one prefers to remain alone at a party.”
“I do.”
“That is because you are strange.”
Aurelia almost smiled. “No, because I am prudent.”
Clara clasped her hands before her. “Please. I shall not stay long. Only a few minutes. I cannot sit across rooms from him all evening like some tragic heroine.”
“You have known him two days.”
“That is more than enough to know whether one wishes to speak to him.”
Aurelia took a measured sip of wine and tried to appear unmoved by Clara’s transparent eagerness. “You must not fix all your hopes upon the first agreeable gentleman who looks your way. There are a great many men in town, and this season has scarcely begun. It would be wiser to talk to several.”
“But I do not wish to talk to several,” Clara pouted.
“That,” said Aurelia, “is exactly what worries me.”
Clara drew a little nearer. “But I truly like him.”
“So I have observed.”
“And he likes me.”
Aurelia frowned. “That is possible.”
“It is certain,” Clara beamed.
Aurelia laughed under her breath. “You are incorrigible.”
“I am only honest,” Clara chuckled as well. “Will you, please, let me go?”
Aurelia looked once more toward the window. Harrow was now glancing about the room with the vague politeness of a man not wholly invested in his surroundings. There was nothing in his manner to alarm her. Indeed, there was something steady and open in him which, however cautiously, she liked.
If Clara must be foolish, Aurelia thought, she could be foolish in worse company.
Still, she lifted a finger in warning. “Very well. But you are not to forget yourself. And you are not to devote every moment to Captain Harrow as though the rest of London had ceased to exist.”
Clara’s whole face brightened. “I shall remember. I promise … may I go now?”
Aurelia sighed heavily. “You may. But I shall be watching.”
Clara smiled with infuriating sweetness. “That will not signify if you are too far away to hear.”
And before Aurelia could rebuke her for such insolence, she was gone, crossing the room with all the graceful urgency of a girl determined upon happiness and very nearly expecting to find it.
Aurelia watched her reach Harrow. He turned at once, and whatever he said on seeing her made Clara smile in that tender way which always seemed to Aurelia both lovely and perilous. They stood together at the window, already at ease.
She turned away before she could grow too emotionally careless or anxious and allowed her gaze to travel idly over the room. Not idly, she corrected herself almost at once, for she had seen him.
He was standing at some distance, surrounded by a small, crescent moon of young ladies so prettily arranged around him that they might have been placed there by a painter specializing in feminine ambition.
One leaned in too close when she spoke. Another laughed before he had finished answering, while a third fluttered her fan with such industry that Aurelia wondered she did not create a tornado.
The whole group seemed engaged in some silent contest as to who might best attract his notice.
He, meanwhile, looked as though he would rather be facing artillery.
It was impossible not to be amused.
There was something almost comical in the contrast between their elaborate eagerness and his unmistakable discomfort. He was too well-mannered to escape, too important to be left alone, and too honest in his countenance to disguise how very little he enjoyed being admired in company.
Aurelia ought not to have watched. Yet, she did.
Perhaps it was the memory of what his mother had probably divulged to him that evening.
Perhaps it was simple curiosity. Perhaps it was only that he seemed so utterly misplaced among women who looked as though they had never had a serious thought between them. Whatever the reason, her eyes lingered.
And as if her attention had some physical force, he turned.
Across the room, his gaze found her at once. Aurelia’s breath caught.
It was ridiculous, the small shock of it. There were dozens of people in the room, and he might have looked anywhere. Yet when his eyes met hers, she had the absurd sense that he had been aware of her before he saw her, as though the moment were less accidental than it ought to be.
Then, to her horror, he began to move. He disengaged himself with a bow and some quiet word Aurelia could not hear, and then he was crossing the room toward her.
Toward her.
For one wild instant, Aurelia’s entire composure deserted her. She looked immediately for Clara.
Of course. She would fetch Clara back. Clara was the perfect excuse, the natural shield, the sensible occupation.
A chaperone might always be called away by duty.
Aurelia’s eyes flew to the window where her cousin stood with Captain Harrow, laughing over something he had just said.
Her face was alight with such unaffected pleasure that the sight arrested Aurelia even in her panic.
Clara looked happy, not in that theatrical, romantic, silly way she herself described it, but simply, deeply happy. Aurelia saw in one glance what it would cost to interrupt her now. She could not do it, not for so cowardly a reason as her own sudden nerves.
And besides, what was she to do? Drag Clara away because a gentleman intended to speak to her? Such conduct would require more explanation than remaining where she was.
So, Aurelia stayed. She took a breath, tightened her fingers around the stem of her wine glass, and told herself she was behaving absurdly.
He was only a man. A titled one, perhaps. An intriguing one, certainly. But still only a man. If he had come to speak to her, she need only answer. If he had come to bow coldly and prove that his mother’s account had changed everything, she need only endure it with grace.
Still, her pulse had not settled by the time he reached her. He stopped at a proper distance and bowed.
“Miss Finch,” he called out her name, and she felt it like a slap to the face.