Chapter 21 #2
He had wanted, then, to go to Langley and demand satisfaction of a sort no drawing room could permit. Instead, he had written back with restraint. Restraint was becoming a trial.
“I fear for Miss Finch.” Owen admitted. “I also fear for the truth, for what it may require and eventually, for what it may fail to repair.”
Thomas nodded. “That is better.”
“Than what?”
“Than pretending you are moved solely by justice and old reports.”
Owen looked up sharply. There was the turn he had sensed approaching and had hoped to avoid.
“I know you do it when you are attempting to hide something from yourself.”
Owen gave him a cold look. “You take great liberties.”
“I earned them in Portugal.”
“You earned a bullet wound in Portugal.”
“And with it the right to be inconvenient.”
Despite himself, Owen almost smiled. Thomas saw it and grew bolder, as he usually did at the worst possible moment.
“You care for her.”
“I respect her,” Owen corrected him.
“That, too.”
“I admire her courage.”
“Also true.”
“That is all,” Owen concluded.
“Then why do you look for her whenever you enter a room?”
Owen said nothing.
“Why do you read her letters before letters of every other obligation, including the ones from your steward which actually determine whether your tenants have roofs?”
“That is an exaggeration.”
“A mild one. And why did you nearly break Lord Fenton’s potted palm when you saw her upset at the ball?”
“I did no such thing.”
“You put your hand on it with murderous force. The poor plant may never recover.”
Owen turned toward the window again, because Thomas’s face had become intolerable.
His friend’s voice softened. “And why, when I ask whether we ought to withdraw for safety’s sake, do you speak of justice, but look as though I have suggested you never see her again?”
The question entered him with unpleasant precision.
Never see her again.
He had not permitted the thought to form plainly. It had hovered at the edge of all his recent considerations, present but unnamed. Their false courtship was temporary. It had been designed as a shield, not a bond.
When the investigation ended, so too would the necessity of calls, walks, letters, and all the small permissions society granted to a man believed to be courting.
Aurelia would return to her mother. He would remain in England.
His mother would resume her campaign. The season would swallow whatever gossip survived. Life would proceed.
He found he disliked the prospect intensely.
“She sees things clearly,” he tried to explain.
Thomas made his admission fuller. “And you like being seen clearly by her.”
Owen looked back. Thomas did not smile this time. That was the worst of it. Had he been teasing, Owen might have dismissed him. But he spoke now with the sober affection of a friend who understood what the admission cost and would not make sport of it.
Owen sat again, slowly.
“I do not know what I feel,” he said.
It was not quite true. He knew more than he wished to know. He knew he looked for her. He knew her letters affected his mood with an influence wholly disproportionate to paper and ink.
He knew that when she smiled reluctantly, as though happiness had surprised her against her better judgement, he felt an absurd wish to stand between her and every person who had taught her to distrust it.
He knew that the thought of another man discovering her worth and being free to offer what he himself had only pretended to offer produced in him a sensation very like jealousy.
He also knew she had never asked for any of this. Their bargain had been clear. To alter it now, even in his own heart, felt like a breach of faith.
Thomas seemed to follow some portion of this without being told. “Then perhaps begin by admitting that you feel something.”
Owen exhaled. “I feel … something.”
“Excellent. Progress enough for one afternoon. Shall I ring for champagne?”
“Do not be ridiculous,” Owen frowned.
“I should not dream of it. I reserve ridicule for your denial, which was becoming tedious.”
Owen took up Ellison’s letter again, more to occupy his hands than his mind.
“I care about what happens to her,” he said carefully, “and that makes the matter more dangerous, not less. Still, we cannot abandon the search. We just need to proceed with greater care.”
“That sounds like the sort of compromise men make before doing exactly as they intended.”
“Then I must become a better man.”
“Ambitious,” Thomas teased.
“I shall require your assistance.”
“Then you are doomed, old boy.”
Owen smiled faintly, but only for a moment.
His mind had already turned toward Aurelia.
He had to write to her. The thought displeased him because he knew what her answer would be.
Aurelia would continue. Courage in her was not loud.
It did not proclaim itself or seek admiration.
It simply endured, and then moved forward.
If he asked whether she wished to stop, she would likely refuse with all the quiet determination that made refusal impossible to dismiss.
Yet he had to ask.
It would be arrogance to decide safety on her behalf. Men had made decisions around and over her family for years, calling it prudence, order, necessity.
He would not add his own authority to that history, however protective its impulse.