Chapter 13
Aurelia woke unsettled the following morning.
For a few blurred moments, still half-caught in sleep, she did not know why. Then memory returned all at once, focusing on those astonishing words spoken with such calm certainty that they had seemed absurd until she had heard herself agree to them.
A false courtship.
Even now, alone in the quiet of her bedchamber with pale morning light filtering through the curtains, the idea felt unreal.
It was the sort of thing that belonged in novels Clara would devour in secret, full of misunderstandings and dramatic declarations and impossible arrangements that somehow became real before the final page.
Aurelia had never imagined herself in such a situation. She had not imagined herself the object of anyone’s supposed courtship, false or otherwise, and certainly not that of a marquess.
And yet she had agreed.
She pressed her hand lightly to her brow and stared up at the canopy, as if the fabric might offer some useful wisdom. It did not.
What had possessed her?
Practicality, she told herself at once. Necessity.
There was also the desire to protect Clara, to shield herself from further gossip, and to preserve the opportunity to investigate the truth of her family’s ruin.
Lord Westbridge had laid the case out very clearly, and she had been sensible enough to see the value of it.
That was all.
The fact that her pulse had quickened when he had first proposed it, and again when he had stepped closer to her under Charlotte’s watchful eye, need not be examined at all.
Before Aurelia could scold herself further, her bedchamber door flew open without ceremony and Clara came in like a shaft of sunlight.
“You’re awake!” Clara cried, already smiling as if the day had delivered some personal blessing. “I was certain you would still be asleep, because ladies in love are always languid in the mornings.”
Aurelia pushed herself upright at once. “Then it is fortunate I am not a lady in love.”
Clara, entirely untroubled by this denial, crossed the room and perched on the edge of the bed as if she had come to witness a thrilling confession.
“Oh, you may say that if you like,” she said, with a knowing expression that would have been ridiculous on anyone older than eighteen, “but I know better now.”
Aurelia narrowed her eyes. “I tremble to ask what you think you know.”
“That Lord Westbridge is devoted to you already, naturally.”
Aurelia made a helpless sound. “Clara.”
“He is!” Clara insisted. “No gentleman would have looked so serious while proposing an attachment if he did not mean it deeply.”
Aurelia stared at her. “You did not hear a word that passed between us.”
“No, but I saw enough.” Clara clasped her hands under her chin and looked dreamily toward the window.
“And I knew from the very first evening that something would happen. I said so, did I not? You spoke to him as though you had known him for years, and then there he was again and again, always near, always watching for you—”
“I do not think he has ever watched for me in his life.”
Clara gave her a pitying look. “You are hopeless.”
Aurelia opened her mouth to object, but Clara had already moved on, her thoughts racing happily ahead.
“I wonder how long it will be before he begins sending flowers,” she mused. “Or poetry. Though perhaps he does not seem like a poet. He is rather stern for that. Still, he might become poetic if he is sufficiently in love.”
“Clara,” Aurelia said again, trying not to laugh, “you must stop.”
But Clara was in no mood to stop. She leaned closer, with her eyes dancing.
“Will he call today? He must, must he not? If the understanding is to be known. And then everyone will see how well it is all proceeding, and before the season is done, perhaps there will be—”
“There will be no before-the-season-is-done of any kind,” Aurelia said firmly.
Clara only smiled as if this, too, were part of the romance. “You say that now.”
Aurelia gave up. It was impossible to reason with someone who had already written the next three chapters of one’s life in her head.
Still, Clara rattled on about all that was sure to come: calls, walks, perhaps concerts, perhaps flowers, certainly lingering glances across crowded rooms. Aurelia felt a prickle of guilt beneath her amusement.
Clara was so sincere in her delight, so delighted for her, so eager to believe that happiness might unfold exactly as promised in all the prettiest stories.
And Aurelia was allowing her to believe it.
By the time Clara had finally skipped away to dress for the day, Aurelia sat in silence for several moments on the side of the bed, her unease settling more heavily than before.
This was the danger of lies, even convenient ones. They did not remain tidy. They spread. They touched innocent people.
Still, there was no help for it now.
***
By noon, Owen did indeed call.
At the sight of his card in the maid’s hand, Aurelia felt a rush of something she refused to call anticipation. She only set aside the book she had been pretending to read, composed herself as best she could, and went downstairs to the drawing room with what she hoped was a proper degree of calm.
He was already there when she entered, standing near the mantel with one hand behind his back, his dark coat and severe bearing lending him an air of formal purpose that would have suited a diplomat or a judge.
“Miss Finch,” he said, bowing.
“My lord.”
The exchange was outwardly ordinary, exactly as it ought to be, yet Aurelia felt absurdly aware of the fact that this was now meant to signify something more.
Clara, of course, was delighted. She was all brightness and smiles for the first quarter hour, and Aurelia had the distinct impression that if left unchecked, her cousin would begin planning a wedding breakfast before the tea tray arrived.
Fortunately, propriety and good sense eventually sent Clara to another part of the room with her embroidery, though Aurelia suspected she remained very much within hearing distance.
Owen sat opposite Aurelia and accepted his tea with composed ease. Whatever he might have felt about their arrangement, he wore it well.
“It seemed wise to call today,” he said after the first few conventional topics had been dutifully addressed. “If our understanding is to appear credible, it must be seen.”
Aurelia inclined her head. “A very practical beginning.”
He gave the faintest hint of a smile. “I am glad you still find me practical rather than mad.”
“I have not yet ruled the latter out.”
Something almost like laughter moved through his expression, but it vanished quickly.
“I have informed my mother,” he revealed.
Aurelia blinked. “Already?”
He nodded. “I thought it best. She … did not receive the news with delight.”
Aurelia winced before she could help it. “I am sorry.”
He looked faintly surprised. “For what?”
“For placing you in such an awkward position.”
At that, his mouth changed in a way she was beginning to recognize. It was not quite amusement, not quite softness, but somewhere between the two.
“Miss Finch,” he said softly, “my mother has spent the better part of a month placing me in awkward positions. It is no hardship to return the favor.”
Aurelia laughed quietly.
“She made her views very plain,” he continued. “I made mine plainer. I told her that if I wished to pay my addresses to you, that was my concern and not hers.”
There was something quietly proud in the way he said it, and something in Aurelia’s chest tightened unexpectedly.
She didn’t believe it was because she imagined he truly wished to pay his addresses to her, for that would have been absurd.
Rather, it was because he had defended her name, however strategically, even against his own mother.
“She must think very badly of me,” Aurelia said before she could stop herself.
He held her gaze. “That is not a matter that need trouble you.”
The steadiness of the answer, and the expression that accompanied it, made it clear he meant her not to feel guilty on his account.
More than that, he looked almost pleased with himself, as though this fictitious courtship had delivered him from some ongoing domestic campaign and he had no intention of regretting the relief.
That, at least, made it easier to breathe.
Once Clara at last found some excuse to leave the room altogether, though not before giving Aurelia a look so full of delighted implication that Aurelia wanted to sink into the carpet, Owen leaned slightly forward.
“May I see the notebook?”
The shift in tone was subtle but immediate.
The drawing room performance remained in place, yet beneath it something more purposeful had come alive.
Aurelia rose without a word and crossed to the escritoire, where the battered little volume lay hidden beneath other harmless papers.
She always kept it close by, depending on which room she occupied.
She hesitated only a moment before bringing it back.
It looked unimpressive in her hands: worn leather, edges softened by time, pages crowded with hurried notes and names and half-legible marks that had seemed to mean more to her father than they ever had to her. To Aurelia, it had always felt like holding the last surviving shard of him.
When she placed it between them, she did so carefully.
Owen’s expression changed as he looked down at it. The easy social politeness left him altogether, replaced now by concentration so intent it seemed almost intimate.
Together, they bent over the pages. There was not much to see, not really.
There were fragments of correspondence copied in abbreviated form, a list of names, dates without explanations, mentions of units and places Aurelia barely understood, and several lines crossed out so fiercely that the ink had nearly torn the paper.
Yet Owen moved through it with patience and seriousness that made Aurelia feel that perhaps the notebook was not only a relic of grief, but a real source of answers.
Here and there, he pointed something out, such as a military shorthand or a likely reference to a dispatch. Aurelia, in turn, showed him the entries that had long troubled her most, small notes written in her father’s hand after midnight, when his script had grown sharper and more erratic.
Then at last, they found it again.
William Carter.
It was not mentioned once, but several times, in different places and different contexts.
Owen drew a breath. “There.”
Aurelia leaned closer. “You see it?”
“Yes, here and here.” He touched the page lightly, careful not to smudge the old ink. “It is not accidental. Your father was tracking him deliberately.”
Aurelia’s pulse leapt.
“And this,” Owen said, turning a page, “this may be the same name again, only abbreviated. W. Carter. Beside a note about witness statements, I think.”
Aurelia looked from the page to him, hardly daring to believe it. “So he mattered.”
“He mattered,” Owen agreed with certainty now.
Aurelia’s hand moved instinctively toward the page at the same moment his did. Their fingers brushed, and it lasted but a moment, yet neither withdrew at once. Owen looked down at that small point of contact as though it had startled him more than the discovery itself.
“Forgive me,” he said quietly, though his hand had not yet moved.
“There is nothing to forgive,” Aurelia replied, and wished at once that her voiced sounded steadier.
The excitement that passed between them in that moment was so sharp and immediate that it stripped away all the careful formality of the afternoon.
Aurelia forgot to sit like a lady. Owen forgot to look like a suitor.
For one bright instant, they were simply two people leaning over the same clue, equally intent, equally alive to the possibility that they had found something real.
She looked up at him and found him already looking at her.
His eyes were brighter than before. They were warmer, too.
“Yes,” she told him softly, unable to help the smile that touched her mouth. “That is something, is it not?”
“It is,” he said.
For a breath, neither moved. Then the silence became noticeable, and with it came the sudden awareness of where they were: a drawing room in broad daylight, the fiction of their courtship draped over every word they spoke, the rest of the house only a few steps away.
Aurelia sat back first. The moment folded itself up and disappeared, leaving in its place polite distance once more. Owen cleared his throat lightly and closed the notebook with care.
“We ought to continue cautiously,” he urged.
“Yes,” Aurelia replied.
And just like that they were formal again. When at last he rose to leave, the afternoon had lengthened toward evening. Clara reappeared as if summoned by instinct, all smiles and expectation, and Aurelia walked with Owen to the door under her cousin’s bright supervision.
At the threshold, he paused.
“There is one further practical matter,” he leaned in to whisper.
Aurelia looked up at him.
“If we are to continue this investigation, letters may be useful. Easier than arranging meetings each time either of us learns something. And perfectly natural, under the circumstances.”
Under the circumstances.
She almost smiled at the phrase. Their entire acquaintance now existed under the circumstances.
“You mean to write to me?”
“If you permit it.”
The answer was simple enough, yet Aurelia felt a strange flutter in her chest at the thought. Letters were a different sort of conversation. They were more private and more deliberate.
“Yes,” she spoke. “I think that would be sensible.”
He inclined his head. “Then I shall do so.”
He left a moment later, descending the steps with that same controlled ease he seemed to carry everywhere, while Aurelia remained just inside the doorway, watching longer than she meant to.