Chapter 19
Aurelia received Owen’s letter before breakfast, at an hour when London had not yet fully given itself over to the noise and business of the day.
The house was quiet, save for the faint tread of a maid upon the stairs and the far-off clatter of wheels in the street below, softened by the closed windows and the early dampness of the morning.
She had scarcely reached the little sitting room before the seal was broken.
At first, she stood by the window to read, the paper trembling very slightly between her fingers, though whether from the chill of the morning or some less easily excused cause, she did not inquire too closely.
Then, as his words unfolded, she sank into the nearest chair without being aware of having done so.
He had written of the investigation, and he had taken seriously what she had told him of Carter’s disappearance. But he had written of other things too, of the afternoon, of the strange comfort of ease, of finding himself unwilling to let the day end without writing to her.
Then, with a movement she would have mocked in Clara had she witnessed it, she pressed the letter lightly to her breast and smiled. He had opened something of himself to her. It was not much, perhaps.
A man such as Lord Westbridge would not pour out feeling merely because ink and paper permitted it.
Yet what he had given her was more precious for its restraint.
She could see, between the orderly lines, a loneliness he would never name and a desire, hesitant yet sincere, to be understood without being made ridiculous.
She folded the letter carefully and slipped it into the little writing desk beside her father’s notebook. She had not intended to place Owen’s words so near her father’s remnants, but having done it, she could not quite persuade herself to move them elsewhere.
A pretend courtship, she reminded herself. That is all.
She moved briskly and crossed to the breakfast table, where the tea had already begun to cool.
Clara entered a moment later in a frock of muslin and good spirits, bringing with her all the animation that Aurelia had been attempting to subdue.
Her cheeks were already pink, though the day had hardly begun, and she carried three ribbons over one arm as though she had been engaged in a matter of national importance.
“Aurelia, you must advise me,” she cried, without so much as a greeting. “Blue, rose, or the pale yellow? Do not say they are all very pretty, for that is what Mrs. Perry said, and it is no help at all.”
“For what occasion am I adjudicating?” Aurelia asked, glad to have her countenance turned toward the teapot.
“For this afternoon’s promenade, of course. Captain Harrow may be there.”
“Captain Harrow may be in many places, Clara. I do not think ribbon has yet acquired the power of summoning him.”
“No, but it may assist his happiness when he is summoned by ordinary means.”
Aurelia laughed despite herself, and Clara, encouraged by it, came to sit opposite her with an air of affectionate conspiracy.
“And did Lord Westbridge write again?”
The spoon struck faintly against the side of Aurelia’s cup.
“Lord Westbridge wrote upon a matter of business.”
“Business,” Clara repeated, in a tone that made the word an accusation. “How very convenient that business should require so many letters.”
“Many arrangements require letters.”
“Yes, but most arrangements do not make one smile at the fire before breakfast.”
Aurelia looked up then, intending to offer a reproof, but Clara’s face was so open, so hopeful and so entirely untouched by suspicion, that the words failed her.
Poor Clara believed in love because nothing in life had yet taught her to disbelieve it.
She saw correspondence and courtship, walks and looks, and built from them a whole future as easily as she arranged ribbons upon a gown.
Aurelia could not undeceive her. To do so would be cruel, and worse, dangerous.
“Our correspondence is quite proper,” Aurelia reminded her instead.
“Oh, I am sure it is dreadfully proper. That is what makes it so romantic. Improper people are never half so interesting as proper ones who are secretly attached.”
“Clara.”
“Well, I shall say no more. Only I think Lord Westbridge looks at you as if he had not expected to find you, and now that he has, he is not certain what he ought to do about it.”
Aurelia’s heart gave a foolish movement.
“You have been reading novels again.”
“Yes, and improving ones too, for they have taught me to observe.”
Aurelia smiled. “They appear to have taught you to imagine even more.”
“That is nearly the same thing when one is young.”
Aurelia could not help smiling, though she turned away to hide it.
Clara, satisfied with the victory, returned to the superior question of ribbons, and the morning passed into those small occupations by which the female portion of society prepared itself for public inspection while pretending the matter held no great importance.
Over the next several weeks, Clara’s affection for Captain Harrow became a fact with which all observant persons were forced to reckon.
It did not declare itself in any breach of propriety, for Clara had been too well taught for that, and Aurelia, whatever her private burdens, was not negligent in her guardianship.
Captain Harrow sought Clara’s hand for dances when he could do so without marked impropriety. He found reasons to stand near her at assemblies. He laughed at her remarks with a delight that did not flatter so much as reveal him.
Aurelia watched them from the edges of rooms. She had become practiced at the occupation.
There were few positions in society more suited to observation than that of a woman no longer young enough to be pursued with eagerness, not old enough to be invisible, and too complicated in reputation to be comfortably embraced.
Sometimes, Owen stood beside her. On those evenings the shadows seemed less like exile and more like shelter. He did not always speak much, and she liked him perhaps most dangerously in those silences. There was no need to perform cheerfulness for him.
Once, while Clara and Captain Harrow moved past them in a country dance, Aurelia stepped back to avoid a gentleman who had turned too suddenly with his elbow raised.
She might have collided with the pillar behind her, had Owen not reached out at once.
His hand closed lightly around her wrist, steadying her for no more than a heartbeat.
It was nothing. It was less than nothing, just a perfectly ordinary act of courtesy, performed in a crowded room where accidental contact could hardly be avoided.
And yet, Aurelia felt it everywhere. His gloved fingers were warm through the thin fabric of her own glove, and the care with which he released her almost made the touch more unsettling than if he had held on. She looked up before she could prevent herself.
“Forgive me,” he said quietly.
“There is nothing to forgive,” she replied, which was true and therefore, no comfort at all.
At other times, he was absent, detained by obligations or inquiries he did not fully describe until later in his letters. Then Aurelia felt the absence more than she approved, but at the same time, she began quietly to seek out women who had known her mother.
At first, she did so with no very formed intention.
There was a name overheard here, or a remembered connection there.
She approached carefully, asking after health, daughters, weather, or the inconvenience of crowded assemblies.
Only then, if she sensed no hostility, did she allow her mother’s name to enter the conversation.
The responses were not all kind. Some ladies grew cautious at once.
One looked over her shoulder before answering, as though scandal might be revived merely by pronunciation.
Another murmured something about unfortunate tempers and the danger of women involving themselves in gentlemen’s affairs.
Aurelia received such remarks with surface indifference, though the old heat rose within her.
But there were others.
Lady Renwick, who had grown stout and nearly deaf, remembered Arabella Finch as “the prettiest creature at Almack’s one winter, though never vain with it.
” Mrs. Selby, after a long silence, placed a gloved hand over Aurelia’s, while saying “Your mother was not mad, my dear. Whatever else was said, some of us knew that much.”
Some of us knew that much.
It was not vindication. It was not proof. It did not restore her father, nor heal her mother, nor undo the years abroad in which Arabella Finch had grown frailer beneath the weight of being disbelieved. But it was something. A small candle in a long dark passage.
***
Aurelia left Lady Renwick’s house with the peculiar sensation that the pavement beneath her feet had altered.
Nothing in the street had changed. The same neat row of houses stood in sober respectability beneath the pale afternoon sky.
The same carriage waited by the curb, its horses stamping faintly in the chill.
A servant stood ready to assist her. Yet Aurelia felt as though she had stepped out of one world and into another.
Lady Renwick’s words would not leave her. They had been softly spoken, almost reluctantly offered, but they had lodged in Aurelia’s mind with a force no louder declaration could have possessed. Her mother had not been wholly imagined, nor wholly dismissed. At least, not by everyone.
She had nearly reached the carriage when a voice spoke behind her.
“Miss Finch.”
Aurelia stilled. For one breath, she did not turn. Her gloved hand tightened around the small reticule at her wrist, and the fragile hope she had carried from Lady Renwick’s drawing room seemed to draw sharply inward, like a flame threatened by a sudden draught.
Then she looked back, only to find General Langley standing only a few paces away, perfectly at ease beside the iron railing of the neighboring house.
There was nothing improper in his position, nothing hurried or furtive in his manner.
He might have been waiting for a call of his own, or passing by entirely by chance.
His hat was in his hand and his bow exact.
That was what made it worse.
“General Langley,” she greeted him.
He straightened with a civility so complete it seemed almost polished into cruelty.
“I hope I did not startle you.”
“Not at all.”
The lie cost her very little. She had learned long ago that fear, when shown, became a weapon in another person’s hand.
His eyes moved briefly to the door behind her, then back to her face.
“Lady Renwick is an old acquaintance of your family, I believe.”
Aurelia felt the words like a hand closing softly around her throat.
“Yes, she was kind enough to receive me.”
“Indeed.” His smile was faint. “She has always been kind. Age often makes people generous with memories.”
Aurelia held his gaze. “Or honest with them.”
His eyes narrowed, though so slightly that another person might have missed it.
“How admirable,” he told her, “to have such faith in memory.”
“I have more faith in memory than in silence.”
His smile did not fade, but it became stiller.
For a moment, the street seemed to narrow around them. The carriage waited. The servant waited. London moved past them with all its usual indifference, and yet Aurelia was aware of nothing but the man before her and the terrible calm with which he studied her.
“You have been renewing several old acquaintances, I hear,” he mused.
Aurelia’s pulse struck once, hard.
“I was not aware my calls were of interest to you.”
“Interest is too strong a word.” Langley inclined his head. “Concern, perhaps.”
“For me?”
“For your cousin, certainly.”
At that, her composure nearly slipped. He must have seen it. A warmer man might have looked away. Langley did not.
“Miss Blackmore is making a charming beginning,” he continued. “So young and so hopeful. One would not wish old unpleasantness to attach itself to so fresh a reputation.”
Aurelia’s fingers tightened until the edge of her reticule pressed through the glove.
“My cousin has nothing to do with old unpleasantness.”
“No,” he agreed softly. “That is precisely my point.”
The words were mild. The meaning was not.
Aurelia looked at him, and for the first time she understood that his danger did not lie in violence, nor even in anger.
It lay in his certainty that the world would believe him before it believed her, that he need only step near enough to remind her how many doors could still be closed.
“You mistake me, General Langley,” she said, surprised by the steadiness of her own voice. “I have no wish to revive scandal.”
“Wise.”
“I have only ever wished to know the truth.”
His eyes sharpened. Then, he bowed.
“Then I hope, Miss Finch, that truth proves kinder to you than it did to your mother.”
For one suspended instant, Aurelia could not answer. Langley replaced his hat with unhurried care.
“Good afternoon.”
He walked away before she could accuse him of anything, before she could demand how he knew where she had been and before she could make his civility into something ugly enough to name.
The servant stepped forward at once.
“Miss?”
Aurelia turned back to the carriage. “Yes. Thank you.”
She allowed him to hand her in. She sat very straight as the door closed, with her eyes fixed upon the opposite seat. Only when the carriage began to move did she look down.
Her hands were shaking.