Chapter 15
White’s was already busy by the time Owen arrived.
It had the composed and rather self-satisfied air of a house long accustomed to consequence.
The rooms were handsomely proportioned, warmed by well-kept fires and furnished with that solid comfort which spoke less of display than of expensive habit.
There was a faint mingling of wax, wine, coffee, and tobacco in the air.
The afternoon had drawn a respectable number of men into the club, and the familiar atmosphere met him at once.
It was all exactly as it had always been, and yet Owen found that since his return to England, these rooms no longer offered quite the comfort they once might have done.
There was too much idleness in them and too much leisure arranged around the habits of men who had never been made to question whether comfort was a thing one had any right to keep.
Still, Thomas was there, and that mattered.
Owen spotted him near one of the windows, relaxed into an armchair with a glass in hand and the look of a man entirely at ease with himself and the world. It was a look Thomas had worn more often of late. Clara Blackmore, Owen thought, had a good deal to do with it.
He crossed the room toward him.
His friend rose at once, grinning. “Westbridge! You look as though your mother has tried to marry you off before noon.”
“She attempted it before breakfast,” Owen said. “By noon she had settled for reproach.”
“Then the day is progressing as expected.”
They sat, and glasses were set before them.
“How are things with Miss Blackmore?”
The question had barely left him before Thomas’s expression altered. It softened first, then brightened in a fashion so unguarded that Owen might have laughed had the answer not been so obvious.
“They are going very well,” Thomas grinned. “I like her exceedingly.”
“That is plain.”
“Is it?”
“Painfully.”
Thomas leaned back, untroubled. “Then I am glad it shows.”
Owen gave him a dry look. “You are becoming insufferable.”
“And you,” Thomas supplied at once, “are the last man from whom I expected to hear such a complaint. Particularly now.”
Owen already knew the tone. He reached for his drink. “No.”
“Yes,” Thomas said cheerfully. “I insist upon it. You spent weeks declaring yourself immune to all schemes of courtship, all the charms of London, all the nonsense of romantic feeling and yet somehow you are the first man in our set to announce an attachment.”
“There is no attachment.”
“Oh, no?” Thomas’s brows rose. “Then what, precisely, does society imagine is taking place?”
“Society imagines a great deal that does not signify.”
“Very true. But in this case, society imagines you are paying your addresses to Miss Finch, and from what I observed yesterday in the park, society is not wholly unsupported.”
Owen endured this for perhaps a minute longer. Thomas teased with more delight than malice, but there was no chance of silencing him through mere indifference. He only took silence as encouragement.
“So, tell me, old boy,” Thomas went on, lowering his voice into a scandalized imitation of some drawing room matron, “when did the cold and rational Marquess of Westbridge discover he had a heart after all?”
“I have always had a heart,” Owen frowned. “It has simply not often been made into a public inconvenience.”
Thomas laughed outright. “Excellent. Then perhaps it incommodes you now.”
Owen looked at him levelly over the rim of his glass.
Thomas’s grin widened. “Come, man, have pity. You cannot expect me to let this pass. You, of all people. You who looked as if marriage were a civic punishment. And now here you are, solemnly attached before the season has properly found its footing.”
Owen set down his drink.
“Very well,” he sighed. “Since you appear determined to turn yourself into a fool if I leave you uninformed, I may as well spare us both the effort.”
Thomas blinked, startled by the shift in tone.
“It is not what it appears,” Owen spoke in a conspiratorial manner.
The grin faded, though not entirely. “No?”
“No.”
That single word, delivered flatly enough, was enough to sober Thomas almost at once. He leaned forward.
“What is it, then?”
Owen did not answer immediately. He glanced once about the room, though no one sat near enough to overhear. Even so, the habit of caution had taken root in him these last days.
“At the dinner,” he revealed at last, “Miss Finch told me more of the scandal attached to her family. It concerns … that old military affair.”
Thomas’s expression changed at once. Whatever lightness had animated him a moment earlier vanished. “The campaign report?”
“Yes.”
Harrow sat back slowly. “Good God.”
Owen gave a short nod. “She believes her father had begun investigating before he died. He left notes, fragments, names, scraps of correspondence. Among them is the name of a soldier: Sergeant William Carter.”
Harrow repeated it under his breath. “Carter.”
“The name struck me too, though I could not place it at first. Miss Finch and I spoke further. Langley and his daughter interrupted us in the park yesterday, and it became immediately apparent that if we were seen together too often, there would be gossip enough to harm both her and Miss Blackmore.”
“And so?” Thomas asked quietly.
“And so,” Owen continued with some reluctance now that he heard the words aloud, “I suggested society be allowed to believe I am courting her. It gives us freedom to continue our inquiries without raising more suspicion than the appearance itself explains.”
Thomas stared at him. Then, to Owen’s annoyance, a flicker of amusement returned to his face.
“You proposed a false courtship.”
“Yes.”
“To Aurelia Finch.”
“Yes.”
“And she agreed.”
“She did.”
Thomas exhaled through his nose and shook his head once, as though struggling to decide whether the matter was absurd or admirable.
“At least now,” he grinned, “I understand why your expression has looked so particularly grimly satisfied all day.”
“It does not.”
“It does.”
But the teasing did not return in full. Thomas’s mind had already moved where Owen’s had hoped it would: to the military matter underneath.
He grew still. “If the scandal is truly attached to that affair, then it is a serious thing.”
“It is.”
“And if Langley was involved—”
“He was involved,” Owen interrupted. “He was in charge of the mission, after all. Nothing could have taken place without him knowing of it.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened. Among all the men Owen knew, Thomas Harrow possessed perhaps the lightest social manner, the easiest laugh and the readiest charm.
But military matters were another thing entirely.
In those, he had a sternness that could surprise people who knew him only in drawing rooms. He cared deeply for the honor of the service.
He believed, stubbornly and sincerely, that it ought to be better than the men who occasionally disgraced it.
“If that report was altered in any way,” Thomas mused, “and if people were hurt for the sake of preserving some senior officer’s reputation, then we cannot leave it where it lies.”
“That was my thought.”
Thomas nodded without hesitation. “Then you have my help.”
Owen looked at him.
Thomas returned the look steadily. “Whatever I can do. If there is rot in it, I would rather drag it into the light than pretend it is not there. The army is meant to stand for more than protecting the pride of men too highly placed to be contradicted.”
Some of the tension in Owen eased. “I hoped you would say as much.”
They spent the next hour gathering together what little each of them remembered of Carter.
It was not much. What they recalled of the man was that he was a capable sergeant.
Neither man could immediately call his face to mind, which irritated Owen more than it ought.
Thomas thought Carter might have been attached to one of the companies nearest the original dispatches.
Owen thought he might later have disappeared from general notice far too quickly for a man of no consequence.
They pulled at half-remembered fragments and found that none of them held together.
“We should ask around,” Thomas suggested, glancing at the room.
The club was full enough that afternoon to provide several possibilities. Owen and Thomas made their inquiries carefully, almost casually, speaking first to one former officer and then another, men who might have known the old campaign or remembered names from it.
A few recalled Carter vaguely. One thought he had been a decent fellow. Another said he believed the man had left the army soon after the affair in question. A third was not even certain whether Carter had been promoted or merely transferred before vanishing from view.
The result of all these conversations was frustratingly slight.
Knowledge broke apart in their hands as soon as they touched it. No one knew enough. No one remembered clearly. Or perhaps, Owen thought more darkly, some remembered rather more than they wished to admit and had long since trained themselves to say less.
By the time he and Thomas settled again into their chairs with fresh drinks before them, they had learned little beyond the fact that Carter had indeed existed, had likely been regarded as competent, and had not remained in any obvious military position long enough to become easily traceable.
“We shall need more time,” Thomas told him.
Owen disliked the words at once because they were true.
“Yes,” he agreed. “And more discreet inquiries elsewhere.”
Thomas drummed his fingers once against the arm of his chair. “I know one or two men who might know where to look next. Not today, perhaps. But I can begin asking.”
“Do so.”
“I will.”
It was as Thomas said this that laughter rose from across the room, in a sound that was loud, coarse, and triumphantly unembarrassed. Owen knew the voice before he turned.