Chapter 22 #2
“You need not be sorry,” he whispered back.
“I think I must be.”
His hand moved, not to cover hers, but almost. The restraint was itself a kind of touch. He opened his mouth as though to say more.
“There you are!” Clara’s bright voice rang out behind them, interrupting the moment. “Captain Harrow has been attempting to explain why that admiral looks heroic, and I am afraid I have understood almost none of it.”
Aurelia drew her hand back at once. The room returned with all the paintings, the visitors, the shining floors, and the rules.
Owen stepped half a pace away, and by the time Clara and Captain Harrow reached them, his expression had settled into its usual composure.
Only Aurelia, whose fingers still remembered the warmth of his arm, could tell that anything had passed between them.
Captain Harrow glanced from one to the other with a look far too perceptive for comfort.
“I have explained it perfectly,” he said. “Miss Blackmore has merely chosen not to be instructed.”
“I chose to be spared,” Clara teased.
Owen gave a faint smile. “A wise distinction.”
They continued through the gallery, but Aurelia saw very little afterward. She answered when spoken to, admired when admiration was required, and disagreed once with Captain Harrow on the color of a sky without having the least notion whether the sky in question was blue, gray, or purple.
Her thoughts had remained before General Wolfe, or rather beside the man who had stood before it and spoken, for a moment, from some place of pain he rarely allowed to show.
The carriage wasn’t yet brought round, and Captain Harrow, discovering that Clara hadn’t seen the little print shop beside the gallery declared such ignorance a matter requiring immediate correction. Clara went with him at once, laughing.
Aurelia and Owen remained beneath the shallow portico, where the afternoon light fell pale and clean over the steps. For once, neither spoke of names, letters or old accusations.
“It is odd,” she mused.
“What is?” he asked.
“To have spent an afternoon in London and not disliked it.”
His eyes moved to her face. “Only not disliked?”
“I am cautious in my praise.”
“I’ve noticed.”
She glanced at him and found the slightest smile at his mouth. It did something dangerous to her.
“Very well,” she amended. “I enjoyed it.”
“I am glad.:
The words were simple, yet they warmed her more than they ought to have. She looked away toward the street, where a flower girl was rearranging violets in a basket with grave concentration.
“I used to enjoy London, you know,” she told him. “Not always, of course. It was often too loud and too certain of itself. But there were mornings where everything seemed… possible.”
“And now?” he asked almost tenderly.
She sighed. “Now I wonder what they are all concealing.”
The carriage drew up then, and Clara emerged from the shop with Captain Harrow, both arguing over some picture.
The journey home was short, and filled with Clara’s laugher.
At the door of their house, Captain Harrow was occupied in making Clara laugh again over some absurdity concerning a statue whose expression he claimed had reminded him of an offended colonel. Owen turned to Aurelia and bowed.
“Thank you for allowing me to escort you.”
“Thank you for the invitation.”
The words were formal. Their eyes were not. For a heartbeat too long, neither looked away. Aurelia felt a shiver pass through her, not from cold, but from the sudden, dangerous conviction that she did not want him to leave.
Then, he stepped back. Owen’s gaze dropped to her lips, so quickly she might have imagined it, had her own breath not caught in answer. The space between them was perfectly proper, and yet it seemed suddenly far too little.
“Aurelia,” he said her name without the protection of Miss Finch, and it sent a million little goosebumps down her back.
“My lord,” she replied in an effort to regain steadiness.
He entered the carriage with Captain Harrow, and Aurelia stood in the doorway longer than propriety required, watching until it turned the corner and was gone. Only then did she go into the house.
Clara chirped away throughout the rest of the day, but Aurelia could scarcely wait for the evening when she would write to Owen.
The moment could not have arrived soon enough.
She meant to ask whether he had heard more of Carter.
She meant to mention General Langley, Charlotte’s watchfulness, Clara’s happiness, all the necessary subjects that belonged to their arrangement.
Instead, she wrote of the gallery.
My Lord,
I ought to thank you only for your escort today, and for the civility with which you bore my opinions upon the pictures, but I find myself inclined to be more honest than such a note requires.
When I first returned to London, I did so with very little pleasure in anticipation. The very sound of wheels in the street seemed to announce some judgement I had little courage to meet, and I came resolved to endure the season for Clara’s sake, then quit it as quietly as I had entered.
I cannot now say that London has become agreeable to me. That would be too bold a falsehood. Yet I may say that your friendship has made it less formidable, and, at moments, almost pleasant.
It is a strange liberty these letters allow us. In a drawing room, one must guard every look and measure every word, but on paper, sincerity seems less perilous. Perhaps that is why I write more freely than I ought, and why I trust you will understand the gratitude I cannot always express aloud.
Yours sincerely,
Aurelia Finch
When the letter was sealed, Aurelia rested her fingertips upon it a moment longer than necessity required. Then she rang for it to be sent, and sat alone beside the fading candle, wondering whether honesty, once permitted onto the page, could ever be persuaded back into silence.