Chapter 24
Owen found Thomas at White’s in a posture of such deceptive idleness that no one unfamiliar with him would have suspected he had been about anything more serious than the newspaper in his hand. But when Owen entered, Thomas folded the paper at once and rose.
“You are late,” he pointed out.
“I am exactly on time,” Owen corrected him.
“Then I have been impatient, which is less dignified.”
Owen glanced toward the other gentlemen in the room.
It was not a place for unguarded conversation.
Thomas seemed to understand, for he nodded toward a quieter corner, where two chairs stood beneath a gloomy portrait of some long-dead nobleman who looked as if he had disapproved of everyone beneath him and expected to continue doing so even from the canvas.
“Well?” Owen asked when they were seated.
Thomas’s levity faded. “I may have something.”
Owen sat straighter.
“I asked Marlborough. You remember him?”
“Vaguely.”
“Tall fellow. Too many teeth. Thinks himself irresistible to widows.”
“I remember him,” Owen nodded.
“He has a cousin in the Navy Office, and that cousin swears he saw a man answering Carter’s description near the gates of Greenwich Hospital. Not once, either. Twice. The second time, he was coming out of a narrow lane by Church Street, close by the market.”
“Greenwich Hospital,” Owen repeated.
Owen felt the first true lift of hope in days. Until then, Carter had been a rumor walking through fog.
Alive? Perhaps. Near London? Perhaps. Willing to speak? Perhaps not.
But Greenwich Hospital, Church Street, the market … these were places, not shadows. They could be visited. Men could be questioned. Alehouses had ears. Lodging houses kept memories when paid sufficiently for them.
“That narrows it,” Owen echoed.
“Yes, not enough to knock on the fellow’s door by breakfast tomorrow, but enough to make the thing less impossible.”
“Who else knows?”
“Just Marlborough. He thinks it only an old regimental matter. I gave him no reason to imagine otherwise.”
“Good.”
“I am occasionally useful,” Thomas grinned playfully.
“Occasionally.”
Thomas accepted the friendly insult with a small bow.
“We might begin with the hospital, though I doubt Carter would lodge there if he wished to remain unseen. More likely he keeps near it. There are taverns, coffee rooms, lodging houses. Men who have served drift where other men have served. They do not always desire company, but they often desire to be understood without explanation.”
Owen looked at him.
Thomas’s smile thinned. “We are not so different from them, you and I, except that our coats are better cut.”
Owen said nothing to that. He had no wish to be understood quite so accurately before noon.
“We should go quietly,” he urged. “Not together at first, perhaps. Or if together, without drawing attention.”
“You are a marquess,” Thomas observed. “Your very attempt at not drawing attention may draw attention.”
Owen frowned. “We ask after old soldiers, after men from the campaign, after Carter only when it can be done without showing too much interest. We start near Church Street and the market. Taverns first.”
“I shall make a list,” Thomas agreed. “I do love a respectable excuse to enter disreputable establishments.”
Owen almost smiled. The movement came unbidden, not from the search alone, though the search had given him more hope than he had felt in some time, but from the thought of telling Aurelia. He imagined the light in her eyes when she read the news.
“There it is,” Thomas suddenly said.
“What?” Owen inquired.
“That look.”
“I have no look,” Owen replied defensively.
“You have several. That one,” Thomas actually pointed at him with his finger, “is new.”
Owen reached for his glass. “You are fanciful.”
“I am observant. It is one of the qualities Clara most admires in me.”
At Miss Blackmore’s name, his expression changed so openly that Owen was spared reply. Thomas looked down at the table, turning his glass a little between his fingers.
“How is Miss Blackmore?” Owen asked.
“Radiant,” Thomas answered, and then laughed at himself. “Good God, listen to me. A month ago I would have mocked any man who answered so.”
“A month ago you mocked most men regardless of their answers.”
“True. It was a simpler life.”
Owen leaned back. “You are serious, then.”
Thomas’s humor softened into something far less practiced. “Yes. More than I expected to be. More than is convenient, perhaps, though I cannot bring myself to regret it.”
“Does Miss Blackmore know?”
“I should think half of London knows, if half of London has eyes. Clara certainly does not discourage me.” He smiled, and it was unlike his usual smile, quieter and almost boyish.
“It was the first ball of the season, Owen. The very first. I had gone because you were going, and because Lady Westbridge terrifies even braver men than I. Then there she was, delighted by everything, as if the whole room had been lit for her particular pleasure. I thought her charming. Then, I thought her kind. And then, I thought I was in very grave danger.”
Owen watched him with affection he did not trouble to conceal. “And now?”
“Now I think no weight would feel quite so heavy if she were near enough to laugh at it. She has a way of making life appear less like a campaign to be endured and more like something one might enter gladly.”
Owen opened his mouth to congratulate him and did so with sincerity.
“I am glad for you, Thomas.”
“Thank you.”
“You deserve that kind of happiness.”
Thomas’s smile warmed. “So do you.”
Owen looked away too quickly. It was a mistake.
Thomas pounced upon it, though gently. “Ah.”
“There is no ah.”
“There is very much an ah. It stood between us like a third gentleman.”
Owen cleared his throat. “I was speaking of you and Miss Blackmore.”
Thomas grinned. “And thinking of yourself and Miss Finch.”
Owen’s hand stilled around his glass. “Do not make more of the matter than it is.”
“I do not think I could make more of it than your face just did.”
Owen gave him a warning look, but Thomas only grew kinder, which was worse.
“No one could blame you for becoming attached to a woman of intelligence, courage, and more honesty than the rest of London combined.”
Owen hesitated. “She is not in a position to receive such attachment.”
“Has she told you so?”
“She need not. Our arrangement was made for protection and inquiry, not for … ” He stopped.
“Not for feeling?” Thomas supplied.
Owen looked toward the window. A carriage rolled past outside. For one foolish instant he saw, not the square beyond White’s, but the gallery, and he felt again the slight pressure of her gloved hand upon his arm.
Most people wanted something: praise, influence, confession, gratitude, obedience. Aurelia had wanted nothing from him in that moment. She had merely been sorry that he had suffered.
It had undone him.
He had almost told her that something in their false courtship had ceased to feel false to him. He had almost placed before her a truth she had not asked to carry. Then Clara had come upon them, bright and innocent, and the moment had ended.
He had been relieved. He had also been disappointed.
“There is nothing to say,” Owen revealed.
Thomas’s gaze remained steady. “There is always something to say. You simply prefer writing it because paper cannot look back at you.”
That struck too near.
Owen’s mouth tightened. “You overstep.”
“Constantly,” Thomas grinned. “Why, it is the very foundation of our friendship.”
“She entered this arrangement trusting me not to make her position more difficult. I will not repay that trust by pressing feelings upon her which may be unwelcome.”
“And if they are not unwelcome?”
Owen looked at him then. Thomas’s expression was unusually serious. “I have seen the way she looks at you.”
“You have seen what you wish to see.”
“No. I have seen what she tries not to show. There is a difference.”
Owen stood, unable to remain seated beneath such observation.
“We should return to Carter.”
“Of course,” Thomas said, with no triumph in his voice. “Carter is safer.”
Owen disliked the truth of that enough to ignore it. “You are insufferable.”
“Yes, but useful … occasionally.”
Owen turned back toward him, and despite himself, despite Carter and Langley and the danger pressing closer with every new discovery, he smiled.
Harrow noticed at once. “There … that one again.”
Owen did not ask what he meant this time.
***
By the time Owen’s carriage drew up before the house, evening had settled damply over the street.
He stepped down, already considering how soon he might visit the lanes near the market and which taverns were most likely to shelter old soldiers.
He had scarcely crossed the threshold when his mother appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Owen,” she cried, “at last.”
Owen surrendered his hat and gloves to Harcourt. “Am I late for something?”
“For dinner. We have guests, dear.”
He frowned. “What guests?”
His mother descended with a rustle of silk and reproach. She wore her best amethysts, which should have warned him that ordinary domestic peace had been abandoned.
“General Langley and Miss Langley.”
For a moment, Owen said nothing. The name struck with such cold precision that all thoughts of Greenwich vanished.
“I was not aware we were intimate with General Langley.”
“Why, we’ve known the family for years. And besides, they are already seated, because you were late.”
“I was not late,” he corrected her.
“You were absent, which is worse.”
Owen drew a slow breath. The urge to turn on his heel and leave the house again was powerful enough to be almost comic. Instead, he allowed his mother to fuss at his cravat and endured her murmured instruction that he was to be civil.
Before he could answer, the dining room door opened and the butler announced him as though he had not already been master of the house for some months.
The sight within did nothing to improve his temper.