Chapter 11
Carter.
The name struck against something in his memory like flint, throwing off sparks but no steady flame.
He knew it. He was certain he knew it. Yet when he reached for the detail, it slipped away again, buried beneath years of orders, dispatches, names half-remembered from a world in which too many men had bled and vanished.
“At least, I ought to know it,” he replied slowly. “I cannot yet place it, but I am certain I have heard it before.”
She said nothing, though he felt rather than saw how sharply her attention fixed upon him.
Ahead of them, Thomas and Clara stopped beside a stand of trees where the path widened.
Clara was laughing at something Thomas had said.
Her whole person was animated by a brightness so open it seemed almost foreign in comparison with the conversation Owen now found himself having.
There was no burden there, no caution, no history pressing at every word.
Just youth, and delight, and the extraordinary simplicity of two people who had taken to one another at once.
Owen looked back at Aurelia. There was no such simplicity here.
She stood with her gloved hands lightly clasped, looking calm, but there was hope in her eyes now, albeit carefully leashed, as though she feared to let it show itself too much.
It did something strange to him, seeing it there.
He had already felt unsettled enough by her account of her father’s investigation, by the idea of a book of surviving notes carried quietly across the Channel like the remnant of a war no one else remembered.
But this was different. This was not only her family’s grief. It was her persistence, her refusal to let it die. And as he looked at her, with the spring light touching the side of her face and that grave steadiness in her expression, Owen felt something else stir beneath his unease.
Purpose.
“If Carter witnessed something as your father believed he did, then he may be the very thread that connects all of this. You have your father’s notes. I have my own recollections, such as they are, and access to men who might remember more than I do.”
He paused, considering the shape of the thought even as he spoke it.
“It occurs to me,” he mused, “that we may be in possession of different parts of the same truth.”
Aurelia’s gaze sharpened. “You … think you could help me?”
“I do,” he answered not certain if it was a question or a statement. Not that it mattered either way. “And if we can connect what each of us knows, perhaps we may discover what really happened.”
For the first time since he had met her, the reserve in her face broke entirely. It was not a smile exactly, but something brighter, warmer, like sudden life after a long winter. Then the actual smile followed, small and incredulous and very nearly joyful.
“Yes,” she said at once. “Yes, I should like that very much.”
The quickness of her answer startled him, though he could not say why. Perhaps it was because he had half expected hesitation, distrust, or a reminder that he was, after all, part of the world that had failed her family.
Instead, there was only eagerness. And beneath it, he thought, relief.
She had wanted this for some time. Not him, perhaps, nor even his help in particular, but the chance to do something, to move at last instead of merely enduring, to take all the old pain and turn it toward an end.
It made his chest tighten unexpectedly.
“I warn you,” he told her, allowing a shade of dry humor into his voice, “I have not yet offered any proof of usefulness.”
That earned him another real smile then, one that transformed her. It was as if someone pulled aside a set of heavy curtains and she beamed at him, looking utterly lovely.
“No,” she agreed, “but you have at least offered honesty, which is a rarer thing.”
Owen felt that answer more than he ought.
For one absurd instant, he imagined what it might be like to continue in this way with her, not merely for a walk in the park but over days, perhaps weeks, sharing fragments of memory and paper and theory, each leading the other onward.
He imagined her seated across from him in a quiet room, with her head bent over her father’s notebook, lifting her eyes to his when she found some name or date that mattered.
He imagined the ease of speaking plainly with someone who did not require performance.
The thought came too easily. He distrusted it at once.
Still, he could not deny the steadier, warmer note that had entered his mood.
“Then we are in agreement,” he concluded.
“We are,” she replied.
He almost said more. He was not sure what. Maybe it would have been something about beginning at once, something about wanting very much to see that notebook … something unwise, most likely.
But before he could speak, a shadow fell across the path.
Thomas visibly stiffened. Owen followed his line of sight and felt the warmth vanish from the morning.
General Langley approached along the path with his daughter on his arm.
Even at a distance, Langley had the air of a man accustomed to command and to being obeyed in all things.
Age had not softened him. If anything, it had sharpened him into something harder, leaner, and more severe.
His iron-gray hair was brushed impeccably back from a face set in lines of permanent authority.
Beside him, Charlotte moved with her expression pleasant enough for society’s purposes, but with an unmistakable glint in her eyes that Owen had learned, over the years, to distrust.
As the Langleys drew near, Owen felt Aurelia still beside him. General Langley stopped before them and offered a bow that was correct without being warm.
“Westbridge,” he greeted him.
“General.”
There was the briefest pause, no more than a breath, as if each man were privately taking the measure of the other.
Then Langley’s eyes shifted to Aurelia. He said nothing at first, which somehow made the moment worse.
His gaze traveled over her face with a narrow, unsettling consideration that far exceeded politeness.
Owen saw Aurelia’s shoulders draw taut. There was no mistaking it now: Langley recognized her.
And Owen did not like it one bit.
The general inclined his head by a fraction. “Miss Finch.”
She curtsied, but Owen saw that the movement cost her something.
“General Langley.”
His stare lingered. It was not done openly enough to be challenged, not grossly enough to provoke comment, but long enough that Owen felt a flicker of anger low in his chest. There was calculation in it, following the recognition.
It was the sort of look a man gave when he discovered an old danger had returned in a more inconvenient form than expected.
At his side, Charlotte’s gaze moved between Owen and Aurelia, then past them to where Clara and Thomas stood waiting just ahead.
A smile touched her lips.
“How very interesting,” she said lightly, turning her attention back to him. “We meet twice in two days, Lord Westbridge, and in this same company. People may begin to talk.”
The words were delivered with an airy amusement that would have passed, to anyone inattentive, as harmless teasing. Owen knew better. Charlotte never said anything without intending the shape of its consequences.
However, before he could answer, Aurelia spoke.
“Hyde Park is a public place, is it not?” she inquired. “One may stroll about it as one wishes.”
“It is not the strolling,” Charlotte smirked. “Like I said, it is the company, my dear Miss Finch.”
“Well, I am merely accompanying my cousin,” she explained, with a calmness so careful that he heard the effort beneath it. “Captain Harrow was kind enough to call, and I, of course, must chaperone. Lord Westbridge’s presence is his own affair.”
Then, as if to make her point plain, she stepped away from him. The movement was slight, barely a pace, but Owen felt it as sharply as if she had struck him. He kept his expression still, though something in him recoiled in disappointment so immediate and irrational that he resented it.
Of course she should step away. Of course she should wish to make a distance clear. Charlotte’s remark was precisely the sort from which rumors grew, and Aurelia had more to lose than he did.
He understood all of that within the space of a heartbeat. However, understanding did not make the feeling any less bitter.
Charlotte’s smile deepened by a degree. She had seen it, too. Owen was sure of it.
General Langley’s gaze flicked once between them, missing little.
“Young ladies’ reputations are delicate things,” he said at last, in the measured tones of a man making a general observation while meaning something far more pointed. “One must be cautious where appearances are concerned.”
The words were for Aurelia, though he seemed to be addressing them to the air.
Owen looked at him steadily. “In Hyde Park, in full daylight, among half of London? I should have thought appearances could survive such a trial.”
Langley’s mouth altered, though whether in approval or warning Owen could not tell.
Charlotte gave a soft laugh. “Some appearances survive anything. Others are … more fragile.”
Aurelia’s face changed then, not enough for a stranger to notice, but enough that Owen saw the blood leave it. It was not merely offense. It was fear.
And at once, he knew that this fear was not for herself alone. It was for her cousin Clara, whose happiness walked only a few paces ahead with all the innocence of spring. It was for the way gossip clung not only to the person targeted, but to everyone near enough to be stained by association.
Owen glanced toward Thomas and Clara. She was looking back at them now, uncertain, sensing perhaps that something unwelcome had entered the morning. Thomas had gone alert in that quiet military way of his, his attention sharpened though he remained outwardly easy.