Chapter 7
“It is hardly fair, sir, that you should know who I am when I am still entirely ignorant of your own name,” she managed to reply, even through the cold clarity of being found out.
For one moment he looked almost taken aback, as if the omission still vexed him.
“You are right,” he agreed. “The fault was mine. Please allow me to introduce myself officially. My name is Owen Honeyfield, the Marquess of Westbridge.”
Westbridge.
The name stirred something inside her mind.
Only, it was not a full recollection, but an echo.
She had heard that name before, somewhere beyond London drawing rooms and fashionable introductions.
The image of her father rose, speaking over letters and papers spread across a writing table, weaving some half-overheard conversation in years gone by, before everything had changed.
“A marquess,” she echoed, before she could stop herself.
He gave the smallest grimace. “I am afraid so.”
The answer, delivered without vanity, almost made her laugh.
“I did not realize I was being so improperly informal last night.”
“Nor did I. Perhaps we may forgive each other equally.”
“That is generous,” she retorted.
“Regardless of what others will tell you, I am capable of generosity in the right company,” he assured her with a grin.
There was something in the way he said it that made Aurelia look at him more directly than prudence advised. She told herself at once that this was foolish. A marquess was the last sort of man she ought to find herself at ease with. A marquess with military connections was perhaps worse.
And still, she couldn’t resist divulging the truth. “Westbridge sounds familiar.”
“Does it?” He lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.
“I think I may have heard it before,” she admitted. “I just cannot remember where.”
He regarded her a moment. “I have been away a long while. If it is familiarity from London, it must be old familiarity.”
“You spoke of the army last night.”
“I did.”
“Then perhaps from that.”
A faint pause followed. It was not enough to be awkward, but enough for Aurelia to notice.
“Perhaps,” he said.
But before she could consider the hesitation further, a servant passed with a tray, and she shifted her glass from one hand to the other.
Around them the room was alive with low conversation and the irregular advance of music from the pianoforte.
Their host had reached a passage he admired and everyone else endured.
Clara was still at the window with Captain Harrow, and Aurelia was absurdly grateful for the sight of her there, because it made her own continued presence less strange.
The marquess glanced toward the instrument with tolerant resignation. “Does our host always assault his guests so musically?”
Aurelia smiled despite herself. “I have not known him long enough to say, but if this is his usual style, I begin to understand why dinner was so prolonged.”
“That was strategy, then.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And what has been your opinion of the evening so far?” he asked. “Apart from the music, which is beyond defense.”
She considered, fighting the urge to chuckle. “It has improved in parts.”
“That is kinder than I should have been,” he nodded.
“You are less practiced in politeness.”
“No,” he said, “only less committed to it.”
She laughed softly that time. “I had not thought you so rebellious.”
“I am not rebellious,” he shrugged. “Merely tired at this point.”
“There seemed a good deal tonight capable of producing that state.”
His glance slid, with dry meaning, toward the cluster of young ladies from whom he had recently escaped.
Aurelia followed it. “Yes. I had noticed you were much pursued.”
“I am beginning to believe my mother considers me a public resource to be distributed for the good of others.”
“An uncharitable suspicion.”
“It is still an accurate one.”
“And are you very ungrateful for her efforts?” she asked playfully, incredulous that this man had such an effect on her.
“Profoundly.”
That answer came with such plainness that Aurelia could not hide her amusement.
“You should take care,” she pointed out. “If she hears you, she may redouble them.”
“You know, I think she will redouble them in any case,” he whispered, leaning in conspiratorially.
“Then I pity you,” she replied with a smile.
“I should value your pity more highly if you did not look so entertained,” he said in mock offense.
“Was it that obvious?” She blushed a little, yet strangely enough, she didn’t seem to mind. “That was unfortunate of me.”
“It was cruel,” he told her with equal amusement.
“Oh, well, now I am quite sure you exaggerate.”
“Not at all. I have spent the greater part of the evening being shown women like samples of ribbon.”
Aurelia’s mouth trembled, remembering her own thoughts on the matter. “And did any of the ribbons suit your taste?”
For some inexplicable reason, she wanted the answer to be no.
He let out a breath that was nearly a laugh. “None.”
“Not one?” she replied, hiding the unwanted relief that washed over her.
“Miss Finch, if you ask in that tone, I shall be obliged to think you mock me.”
“Would that be very dreadful?”
“Not if you continue to do it so well.”
She looked down then, pretending to have a greater interest in the stem of her glass than it deserved. It was becoming too easy to speak to him. That was the difficulty. She should not enjoy it so much.
Still, after a pause, she continued. “I confess I could not help observing that you seemed … overwhelmed.”
“Overwhelmed?” he replied, tasting the word as if he didn’t know its true meaning until that moment.
“Very.”
He lowered his voice. “Well, to be quite honest, I have no intention of marrying.”
The firmness of it surprised her. “None at all?”
“None. And certainly not one of those.”
He gave the slightest tilt of his head toward the bright little flock across the room. “Parrot women.”
Aurelia looked up sharply, then laughed before she could stop herself.
“Parrot women?”
“They are all feathers, color, noise, and display.”
She liked his comparison, although she would never admit it aloud. “Isn’t that a bit severe?”
“It is very exact,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“It is not their fault if they have been taught to ornament themselves,” she reminded him.
“No. Only mine if I am expected to admire it.”
There was enough sincerity beneath the dry tone to make her smile linger.
She had never been one for bows and feathers, nor for the entire hopeful pageantry of looking fashionable enough to secure admiration.
It was pleasant, in fact, it was more pleasant than it ought to have been, to hear another person confess indifference to it all.
“So … you disapprove of ornament,” she mused more to herself than to him.
“I disapprove of anything too evidently contrived,” he shrugged.
“Oh, but that seems like a dangerous principle to hold in London,” she replied playfully.
“I know.”
“And yet here you are,” she couldn’t help but smile through her answer.
“And yet here I am,” he sighed, although he, too, was smiling.
She glanced once more toward the ladies he had escaped. “Your parrot women will be very much disappointed.”
“I have already disappointed half the room. The rest, I believe, are waiting their turn.”
Aurelia nodded. “Then you are much in demand.”
“I don’t really believe it’s a recommendation,” he confessed.
“No?”
“No. It only proves that fortune and a title are more engaging than personality.”
She looked at him sidelong. “That sounds suspiciously like self-knowledge.”
“It is merely observation.”
“On society?”
“On everything.”
There was something in the way he said it that altered the lightness of the exchange, though only a little.
Aurelia felt again that curious sense she had experienced the previous evening, that for all his composure, there was something deeper in him than his surroundings accounted for.
There was a darkness to him, symbolizing that he knew the world was not made only of drawing rooms and polished speeches.
He did not belong wholly to such places, though he could move through them with ease when required.
It made her look at him more carefully, only for him to gaze back at her.
“And what have you observed of London since your return, Miss Finch?”
The question ought to have been harmless.
In another mouth it would have been harmless, just a convenient subject to carry them over the next few minutes.
Yet something in his tone made her suspect he meant more than that.
He knew her name now. He knew enough, surely, to know what it had once cost her family to be known in this city.
Aurelia gave the faintest lift of one shoulder. “I have not been in town long enough to judge it fairly.”
“Even so.”
He did not let the matter go. There was no cruelty in it, but neither was there the timid avoidance she had grown used to.
Most people, if they remembered the scandal at all, preferred to pretend they did not.
They would speak to her with exaggerated civility, then turn away and discuss it where she could not answer.
It was strange and almost relieving to be asked in a more direct manner.
“You ask very plain questions, Lord Westbridge.”
“I would rather ask plainly than leave you to guess what I mean.”
The answer surprised her into a slight smile. “That is uncommon.”
“Is it unwelcome?” he inquired almost tenderly.
“No,” she said and found that she meant it. “Only … unusual.”
He waited.
The quiet patience of it made refusal seem sillier than honesty, at least in part. Aurelia looked down briefly at the wine in her glass.
“London is very much what I remember it to be. Pleasant enough on the surface, less so underneath.”
He grinned. “Many would say that about me.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “I have started to come to the conclusion that it was the other way around.”
His eyes widened in mock disbelief. “Do not let anyone hear you, or my reputation is ruined.”
At the mention of this, she expected to feel humiliation, but instead, there was resignation and beneath that, to her own surprise, relief. At least she need not pretend ignorance. At least he was not forcing her to smile through a conversation built on deliberate falsehood.
“Well, you would need a scandal for that,” she explained.
“Such as?” he asked, tilting his head a little to the side.
“Hm,” she mused, “you need a scandal graver than lace.”
A faint flicker passed over his mouth, gone almost before it formed. “So I gathered.”
“A very good one would be a scandal concerning the army. Or rather, a military affair that certain men preferred to have remembered in a particular way. Your father would need to believe the official account was not true. And your mother would refuse to support that same official account. That refusal …” She paused, then went on more evenly, “would, in turn, make her the enemy of those who had most to lose.”
He was very still now. She took that stillness for attention and continued, though carefully. She had no intention of pouring out old wounds to a man she had met twice, however unexpectedly easy it was to speak to him.
“A good scandal would then need to include some sort of a cover up,” she continued, “where the wrong people were protected from the consequences, and your parents simply refused to let the matter rest.”
She kept it there: broad enough to answer, narrow enough to protect herself. She had spent too many years learning how much to say and how much to leave untouched.
The pianoforte in the corner lurched through another determined phrase. Somewhere near the fire, someone laughed too loudly. Clara, still by the window with Captain Harrow, had tilted her face up in animated delight at something he was saying.
Aurelia scarcely saw any of it. “Lord Westbridge?”
He looked back at once, but the ease of a moment before had gone. There was tension in him now, tightly held and not altogether concealed.
“I think,” she suddenly heard him speak in hushed tones, “I recognize the incident to which you are referring.”
Aurelia felt the world narrow around the words. “You … recognize it?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Another pause followed, but it was shorter this time.
“Because I was there.”