Chapter 14
Owen received Aurelia’s reply to his letter the following morning.
He had only just come down to breakfast when his butler entered with a silver tray, upon which lay a single folded note. The butler’s expression remained perfectly neutral, but Owen had the fleeting and unreasonable impression that the man knew precisely from whom it had come.
“A footman from the Finch household delivered it, my lord,” the man said.
Owen felt his pulse quicken in a manner he found both foolish and faintly irritating. It was only a letter, a practical continuation of yesterday’s discussion. Nothing more.
He picked it up all the same with more care than the thing required. He didn’t expect that she would send a reply so soon. Then again, he also didn’t think he would be writing back the same evening, having the letter delivered immediately.
Aurelia’s hand was steady and elegant, her words measured at first, as if she too had intended to keep entirely to the matter at hand.
My Lord,
I am much obliged by your letter, and by the candor with which you wrote. I spent some time last evening again examining my poor father’s notebook, and I am now more persuaded than before that the name of Sergeant Carter was of particular consequence to him.
You were so open in what you said of war that I hardly know how to answer you properly, except to say that I was deeply affected by it.
It has often seemed to me that the world is eager to praise those who return from such trials, yet far less willing to understand what they must have suffered.
There is, I think, a cruelty even in gratitude, when it demands composure from those who have seen too much.
You asked what France has been to us, and I find it difficult to answer simply. It has been a refuge, certainly, and I shall always be thankful for the quiet we found there; yet it has never wholly felt like home. One may live somewhere many years and still remain a stranger in one’s heart.
As for my mother, I cannot regret that she stood by the truth, whatever it cost her.
I am proud of her for that, and always shall be.
Yet it grieves me more than I can say to see what it has made of her.
She was once so much stronger in spirits.
Now there is a sadness upon her that never seems quite to leave her, and if I feel pain in any part of all this, it is far less for myself than for her, and for all those in our family who have borne the consequences of what was done.
You have my gratitude for treating these matters with seriousness and kindness. I remain hopeful that, by joining what you know with what little my father left behind, we may yet arrive at something true.
Yours sincerely,
Aurelia Finch
There was nothing self-pitying in the letter.
That struck him more than anything else.
Aurelia said very little of herself, and when she did, it was only in relation to others: to the burden her mother carried, to her aunt’s illness, to Clara’s future, to the family name that had been dragged through the dirt and never fully cleaned again.
She seemed to think of her own pain as the least significant part of the matter.
He folded the letter once, then opened it again and reread the final lines.
He was not sure why that struck him as it did.
Perhaps because it was so rare to be met in seriousness rather than in sentiment.
Most people, when the war was mentioned at all, wanted stories fit for public consumption, which had to include courage, sacrifice, triumph, and perhaps some tolerably softened grief.
Very few wished to hear that it had been ugly, confusing, and full of the sort of memory that lodged in a man’s bones and refused to leave.
Aurelia had not turned away from it. That mattered to him more than it ought to have.
He folded the letter carefully and slipped it into the inner pocket of his coat just as his mother entered the dining hall.
“Was that a letter you were just reading?” she inquired curiously.
“Yes,” he affirmed.
“Since when do you smile at your correspondence?” she asked again.
He looked up at once. “Am I?”
“You are,” she replied. “And I am wondering if I like the cause of it.”
Owen reached for his coffee with deliberate calm. “Then I advise you not to study my face so closely over breakfast.”
She ignored this. “Was it from Miss Finch?”
He said nothing, which in itself answered the question well enough.
His mother sat down opposite him. “Really, Owen.”
He drank his coffee.
“I had hoped,” she continued, “that yesterday’s nonsense would pass for what it was … a momentary absurdity. You cannot mean to persist in this.”
He lowered the cup. “In what?”
“In this attachment.”
“It is hardly an attachment if I have called on the lady once in broad daylight.”
“Do not trifle with me,” her mother said. “Half the park apparently saw you with her two days ago, and this morning you are receiving notes from her household. What am I meant to conclude?”
“That I am conducting myself as I please.”
She drew herself up. “You are conducting yourself very unwisely.”
Owen looked at her across the breakfast table, and for a moment he was sharply reminded of every argument they had had since his return to England: her insistence upon suitable alliances, upon appearances, upon the weight of the family name and his growing weariness with all of it.
“In your view,” he told her, “wisdom and obedience appear to be the same thing.”
“In this case they are.”
He set down his cup and rose.
“I am afraid I have no more appetite for this conversation.”
Her mouth thinned, but she said nothing further while the servants moved in and out of the room. Owen was grateful for the restraint. He had no wish to quarrel before breakfast. Still, the moment he escaped to his dressing room and changed for the day, he knew the matter was not finished.
Sure enough, as he came down again some time later, coat on and gloves in hand, he found his mother waiting for him in the entrance hall.
She stood beside the long table beneath the mirror, as if she had been prepared to hold the house hostage until he passed through her line of fire.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
Owen stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Out.”
“I had gathered as much.”
He crossed toward the door. “Then your curiosity is satisfied.”
“It is not,” she replied crisply. “Are you intending to see that woman again?”
Owen’s hand tightened on his gloves. “Miss Finch has a name.”
She stepped closer. “Owen, this must stop before it goes further.”
“It has already gone farther than I wished it to.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“I am entirely serious.”
She stared at him, and in her face he saw not only displeasure but also disbelief, as though the son she had successfully managed through rank, duty, and expectation had suddenly become someone less governable.
“You may choose to ignore it,” she told him, “but the Finch scandal still carries weight. There are people who remember it very well. A military man in particular ought to have the sense not to entangle himself with that family.”
Something in Owen hardened. Perhaps it was the word entangle.
Perhaps it was hearing Aurelia reduced to the old public wound that had already cost her family so much.
Or perhaps it was only that he had read, not ten minutes earlier, the quiet dignity with which she wrote of her mother’s suffering and her own concern for everyone but herself.
Whatever the cause, when he answered, his voice was colder than before. “You will have to grow accustomed to it.”
His mother blinked heavily. “To what?”
“To the courtship.”
She stared at him. “Owen—”
“All the women you have pressed upon me,” he said, cutting cleanly across her protest, “may have been suitable in rank and fortune, but they have been entirely unsuitable in character.”
Color rose in her face.
He went on before she could interrupt. “I have no wish to marry a pedigree. If I pay attention to anyone, she will be whom I choose.”
“That is a very fine sentiment,” she spoke in annoyance, “until you remember you do not belong only to yourself.”
“I belong sufficiently to myself when it comes to whom I visit.”
The hall seemed suddenly very still. Even the servants at a distance had the tact to make themselves scarce. His mother’s expression changed again, sliding from affront into cold disappointment.
“You have returned from the Continent with a most unfortunate tendency to imagine yourself answerable to no one.”
“No,” Owen corrected her, reaching for his hat. “I returned from war with a most unfortunate tendency to value substance over display.”
Her silence at that was not consent, only fury too restrained to speak at once.
He bowed slightly, more from old habit than present inclination. “Good morning, Mother.”
“Owen.”
He paused, though he did not turn back.
“This will not end well.”
For one brief instant, the letter in his pocket seemed to burn against his chest. Perhaps she meant the scandal, perhaps society, perhaps only herself.
But Owen thought of Aurelia’s careful hand, of the quiet ache in her words, of the way she had written of truth as if it were a burden one carried because to do otherwise would be worse.
Then he opened the door.
“That,” he said without looking back, “remains to be seen.”
And he left her there, standing in the entrance hall with all her certainty and all her displeasure, while outside the spring air struck cool against his face and the day opened before him with the peculiar brightness of a thing already in motion.
As he stepped into the waiting carriage, he slipped a hand briefly inside his coat and touched the folded edge of Aurelia’s letter, as though to reassure himself it was still there. Then he sat back and told the driver to take him to White’s Club.
But all the way there, his thoughts remained with a quiet room in another house, and with a woman who, on paper at least, seemed to trust him with truths she would not yet speak aloud.