Chapter 10
Clara came flying into the breakfast parlor as if she had been launched there by joy alone.
It was a small but elegant room, softened by the glow of a cheerful fire and the light that slipped through muslin curtains.
A pianoforte was placed near the wall, its polished surface reflecting the candle branches above it.
A little table by the sofa held a basket, a volume of poetry, and an untouched letter.
Aurelia had only just lifted her teacup, then paused halfway through the motion and looked up in alarm. Clara’s cheeks were pink and there was a kind of breathless triumph in her whole expression that suggested either a proposal or a fire.
“What has happened?” Aurelia asked.
Clara clasped her hands together beneath her chin. “Captain Harrow is to call this morning.”
Aurelia blinked once. “Indeed?”
“Yes, we arranged it yesterday that we are to go for a walk.” Clara all but bounced where she stood. “Is it not delightful?”
Aurelia set down her cup with care. “It is very proper, I hope.”
Clara gave her a look of exaggerated innocence. “Of course it is proper. You are to come.”
“Ah,” Aurelia said dryly. “Then propriety survives.”
Clara laughed and dropped into the chair opposite her, leaning forward across the breakfast table as though she could not contain herself.
“He said the weather would be too fair to waste indoors and that Hyde Park would be full of respectable people. He could not possibly have chosen anything more suitable.”
That, Aurelia thought, was probably true. A walk in Hyde Park in broad daylight was one of the few freedoms afforded to young people under strict observation. There would be no privacy in it at all, which was precisely what made it acceptable.
She buttered a piece of toast more slowly than necessary, watching Clara from beneath her lashes. The girl looked absurdly happy already, and the walk had not even begun.
“You are very taken with him,” Aurelia observed.
Clara looked scandalized that such a thing should even require stating. “Naturally I am.”
Aurelia smiled faintly. “Naturally.”
She hesitated, then said, as lightly as she could. “And has no one else caught your eye? Not even a little?”
Clara’s expression turned solemn, as though Aurelia had asked whether the sun might be persuaded to rise in the west. “No.”
“No one at all?”
“No one at all,” Clara repeated with certainty. “Why should they, when Captain Harrow exists?”
Aurelia laughed despite herself. “That is not quite how a season is meant to work.”
“It is how mine is working.”
Clara’s answer was so immediate and so cheerful, that Aurelia did not attempt to argue further.
In truth, a part of her would have preferred Clara to cast her net a little wider.
It was dangerous, perhaps, to fasten so quickly and so completely upon one man.
Hearts were vulnerable things, and London was not kind to vulnerable things.
Yet the sharper, more practical part of her that had survived scandal and exile and years of watching every word before it left her mouth, could not deny that there was safety in a smaller circle. The fewer connections Clara made, the fewer opportunities there would be for whispers to spread.
The Finch name still carried its old stain, however politely some people pretended otherwise. If Clara’s world could remain narrowed to a handful of decent people, perhaps the season might pass without trouble.
Perhaps.
Clara was already talking again, smiling into her plate as if she were seeing not eggs and toast but an entire future laid out before her. Aurelia let her chatter wash over her. She answered when required, smiled when necessary, and kept her own thoughts mostly to herself.
Captain Harrow would call. And, despite her better judgement, she found herself wondering whether the Marquess of Westbridge would come with him.
She told herself it was only because the two men always seemed to be together.
It would be natural enough if he accompanied his friend.
Convenient, even. Lord Westbridge had made plain enough that he had no interest in marriage, and that alone made him feel safer than most men Aurelia had met in London.
There was a kind of ease in speaking to someone who wanted nothing from her.
And she had enjoyed their conversations. He made London less exhausting, less false.
She did not care to examine the thought too closely.
She reminded herself that there was also a practical advantage in his company.
He had military connections. He knew names, places, the sorts of men her father had once dealt with before his death.
If she were careful enough, mayhap she could learn something from him, some detail, some memory, some loose thread which, once tugged, might lead back to the truth.
Because though she had almost ceased to admit it even to herself, she had never entirely given up the old desire.
She wanted her family’s name cleared. She wanted the ugly shadow over her mother’s life lifted, if only in some small measure.
She wanted to know that her father had not died grasping at ghosts.
She wanted, selfishly perhaps, to stand in a room without feeling the weight of what had been done to them pressing between her shoulder blades.
She wanted the truth.
By the time they went upstairs to dress, Aurelia had scolded herself soundly for hoping the marquess might appear.
Hope was dangerous. It was also foolish and utterly unnecessary.
Still, when the knock came at last and Clara let out a delighted little gasp from the bedchamber window, Aurelia felt her own heart give a traitorous leap.
She told herself it was only relief that the captain had not forgotten.
In fact, she told herself several such things while descending the stairs.
When the maid admitted them into the drawing room, Aurelia saw at once that Captain Harrow was not alone. For one brief, private, ridiculous moment, pleasure flared so brightly in her chest that she nearly smiled outright.
Lord Westbridge stood beside his friend, grave and elegant in dark morning clothes.
Captain Harrow greeted Clara with such open warmth that Aurelia had to look away from them almost immediately.
It felt too intimate somehow, even in a room full of daylight and propriety.
Clara glowed under his attention like a flower turning its face to the sun.
“My cousin and I are honored by your call,” Aurelia greeted them both, summoning the polite reserve she wore so often it was nearly a second skin.
“That sounds alarmingly formal,” Captain Harrow said. “I assure you, Miss Finch, we have not come on any business so grave as to require such a reception.”
Lord Westbridge bowed over her hand only, propriety forbidding more. “Miss Finch.”
“My lord.”
There was nothing in the exchange that anyone could have objected to, yet Aurelia was absurdly conscious of it all the same.
They set out for Hyde Park soon after.
The day was bright without being warm, touched by that thin spring sunshine which seemed more a promise than a fact.
The paths were busy enough to satisfy all expectations of respectability: ladies were strolling with companions, gentlemen were on horseback, and children were darting along under harassed nurses’ watchful eyes.
Carriages rolled past at a stately pace, and now and then a breeze stirred the new leaves overhead with a sound like faint applause.
Captain Harrow and Clara naturally drifted ahead almost at once, though not so far that Aurelia could not keep them in sight.
Clara’s bonnet ribbons danced at her back as she turned her face up to the captain, listening with shining attention to whatever he was saying.
The Captain bent his head toward her with an ease that suggested he had already forgotten the rest of the world existed.
Aurelia watched them a moment, then slowed her pace slightly without quite meaning to, allowing Lord Westbridge to fall into step beside her.
For the first few minutes, their conversation was awkward enough that she wished she had thought of a polite excuse to remain behind.
It was not unpleasant, exactly, but there was a stiffness to it she had not expected.
They remarked upon the weather, upon the number of people in the park, upon the excellence of Captain Harrow’s spirits.
Each topic rose and fell almost as soon as it had been introduced.
Beside her, the marquess seemed more withdrawn than he had been before, although she could not attribute that to his coldness or rudeness. He seemed merely guarded.
She wondered whether he regretted speaking to her so openly the previous evening, whether, after hearing her name and the truth of the scandal attached to it, he had spent the night reconsidering the wisdom of his acquaintance.
The thought should not have mattered, and yet it did.
At length, Aurelia glanced at him. “Is the matter troubling you?”
He turned slightly. “What matter?”
She held his gaze. “My family’s scandal.”
He was quiet for a moment, and she thought perhaps he would dismiss the question. Instead, he answered. “I am afraid it is.”
The honesty of the answer steadied rather than shocked her.
“I am glad you have the courtesy as well as bravery to say so plainly,” she replied. “I would rather have that than pretense.”
A faint expression crossed his face then. “So would I.”
They walked another few paces before he spoke again.
“It was actually Miss Langley who unsettled me yesterday,” he confessed, much to her surprise.
“Or rather, what her presence suggested. Her father is deeply connected within military circles. If what you told me is true, if this scandal touched some official account or report, then I cannot think his name irrelevant.”
Aurelia felt a small chill move through her, though the sun was on her face.
“You know him well?”
“I have known of him a long while.” His mouth tightened. “And my mother saw fit to remind me that your family’s name is still not spoken of kindly in certain houses.”
There was a trace of bitterness in the words that surprised her.
He glanced ahead toward Clara and the Captain, then lowered his voice. “I do not like that our conversation has already begun to circle dangerous ground.”
Aurelia let that settle between them.
Dangerous ground.
Yes. That was exactly what it was.
For years, she had been forced to pretend that the ground did not exist at all, that there had been no lies, no intimidation, no destruction, only a disgrace everyone else seemed to understand better than she did. To hear someone else acknowledge the danger of it aloud felt oddly bracing.
She drew a breath.
“My father began to investigate before he died,” she repeated what he already knew.
He looked at her sharply then, the reserve in him giving way at once to attention. Aurelia kept her eyes on the path ahead. It was easier that way.
“He never believed the official version of events,” she continued.
“He gathered letters, notes, fragments of reports, anything he could. He thought if he could collect enough of it, he might force someone to listen. After my mother refused to say what was wanted of her, most of it was taken or destroyed, but not all.” She thought about it for a moment, then continued.
“They demanded his notebook first, I think. My mother had hidden what little she could before they came. It was the only victory allowed her, and even that was a dangerous one.”
He was silent, and in that silence she heard not indifference but care.
“I brought what remains with me to London,” she divulged. “A notebook of his. It is not much. Only scraps, really. Names and half-finished thoughts. I … look through it more often than I ought.”
“As though one day it might yield its meaning,” he added quietly.
She turned her head at that.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
She looked into his eyes and there was no mockery there, and no impatience, only an intent stillness that made her feel, absurdly, that she had said something important and it had been properly heard.
“Has anything in it stood out?” he asked.
She hesitated.
She had not shown the notebook to anyone.
Had scarcely spoken of it. Even with Clara she had been careful, unwilling to awaken questions she could not answer.
The book felt too bound up with her father’s memory, with the last fierce hope he had carried, with all the things that had been lost after his death.
And yet, Lord Westbridge had already told her more plainly than most people ever did. He had not flinched from discomfort. He had admitted concern, not hidden it behind false civility.
So, she answered. “There is one name that appears more than once. Sergeant William Carter.”
He repeated it under his breath, as if testing its shape against memory. “Carter.”
“My father seemed to think he mattered. Whether he witnessed something, or carried some report, I cannot tell. Half the notes make no sense to me. They were written as if he expected to understand them later and never had the chance.” She clasped her hands more tightly before her.
“But I have wondered whether Sergeant Carter might have seen the truth of what happened. If he is still alive, he might know enough to prove that the report was false.”
He inhaled slowly. She could see a spark in his eyes.
“You know the name,” Aurelia noticed.
He looked at her, thoughtful now in a way that seemed to reach well beyond the park, beyond the morning, perhaps even beyond her.
“I think I may,” he agreed.