Chapter 15 #2
General Arthur Langley was seated at a card table not far off, with a cigar in one hand and a glass of brandy in the other.
He was well into some game or other with three other men, none of whom looked particularly pleased by either their cards or their company.
Langley, by contrast, was enjoying himself immensely.
He had won a considerable heap already, if the pile before him meant anything, and every time one of the others lost another round, Langley appeared to take fresh delight in it.
He made some cutting remark that brought a strained laugh from one of the gentlemen and visible irritation from another.
The general only smiled, drew on his cigar, and swept more money toward himself with the ease of a man entirely accustomed to prevailing.
Owen watched him in silence.
Yesterday in the park, Langley had been controlled, polite enough to remain unchallengeable.
Here, in the company of men over cards and drink, something uglier showed itself with less effort.
There was cruelty in the man’s amusement.
It was not the hot cruelty of temper, but the colder sort that enjoyed humiliation because it proved superiority.
Thomas followed his gaze. For a moment neither spoke.
“There he is,” Thomas whispered.
“Yes.”
“You once thought well of him.”
Owen’s eyes remained fixed on the table. “I thought him worth admiring.”
“And now?”
Owen took his time answering.
“I do not know what to think,” he said at last. “Only that each day I like him less.”
That, if anything, was too mild. He felt in Langley’s presence now a growing disquiet that had little to do with simple dislike.
The old respect of a junior officer for a powerful superior had begun to fray, and what lay beneath it was not yet fully shaped.
Suspicion, yes. Anger, perhaps. But also something nearer to betrayal, though Owen did not care to name it so.
Thomas’s mouth thinned. “We will get to the bottom of it.”
Owen glanced at him.
“We will,” Thomas repeated. “If Langley is clean, we shall know it. And if he is not, then he ought not to remain protected merely because men once saluted him.”
Across the room, Langley barked another laugh and took another man’s money.
“We will get to the bottom of it,” Owen repeated.
This time, the words felt less like determination and more like an oath.
They did not approach the card table. There was no purpose in it, and Owen would not reveal by one misplaced look that Langley occupied his thoughts more than a dozen other men in the room.
Still, when he and Thomas eventually rose to leave, Owen felt the general’s presence like a stone under the skin.
***
That night, back in his study, with the house gone mostly quiet around him, Owen sat down to write to Aurelia again.
At first, he meant only to report the practical facts, that Thomas now knew the truth of their arrangement and of the investigation, that he had pledged his help, and that the inquiries made at White’s had confirmed Carter’s existence but yielded little else of use.
But once he began, his pen did not stop there.
He wrote of Carter, yes, and of Thomas’s seriousness once he heard what was at stake. He wrote that Thomas wished the honor of the military upheld and would not see it quietly blackened by cowardice or deceit if he could help it.
Then, before he quite intended to, Owen found himself writing of his growing uncertainty regarding the official report itself.
He wrote that he had long accepted the report because it was easier to do so than to imagine the alternative, that it was easier to believe in confusion than manipulation, in the necessities of war than in the vanity of men protecting themselves.
Yet the more he considered what Aurelia had shown him, and the more he thought of Langley, the less certain he became that what had been published bore any honest resemblance to what had occurred.
He paused over that sentence after writing it.
He had never said as much to anyone. Not to Thomas, and not to any of the men who would sooner speak of campaigns in terms of glory than of consequence.
And yet here, with Aurelia, it felt almost natural.
That was the strangest part. He found it easier to put his mind on paper for her than to voice it in any room, no matter how private.
Something about her seriousness invited honesty.
Something in her own restraint made him want to set down what was true and trust that she would read it as it was meant.
He wrote, too, of Langley, though carefully. He admitted that he was beginning to mistrust the general in ways that would once have seemed impossible to him. He wrote that respect, once given, was not lightly withdrawn, and that perhaps this was why he had resisted his own suspicions for so long.
When he had finished, he sat back and looked over what he had written. It was too open by half, and yet he did not cross any of it out. Instead, he folded the letter slowly, sealed it, and sat for a while longer with it in his hand.
It occurred to him then that he was pleased to have Aurelia to write to. He was pleased not merely because the investigation required it, though that would have been reason enough. He was pleased because the act of telling her things seemed to lessen their weight.
That was a dangerous sort of comfort.
Still, when at last he rang for a servant and instructed that the note be sent first thing in the morning, he did so without hesitation.