Chapter 26
Owen called upon Miss Finch the following morning with the unpleasant conviction that he was about to be dismissed from the strange, fragile arrangement that had placed them together in parks, galleries, ballrooms, and letters.
Their courtship had begun as a shield, and now the shield was cutting those standing nearest to it.
He had read her letter too many times.
By morning, he could have recited the whole of it. The lines haunted him through what remained of the night, for beneath every sentence he could hear what she had not quite written: that she would rather bear injury herself than allow Clara to suffer one more cruel glance because of the Finch name.
When the door to the drawing room opened, Aurelia entered in a morning gown of muted blue, simple in cut and unadorned except for a narrow ribbon at the waist. She looked pale, composed, and tired, as if she had spent the night building a fortress and had not yet decided whether he was to be admitted through the gate.
He bowed. “Miss Finch.”
“My lord.”
The formality pricked him, though he deserved it no less than any other man.
“I hope I do not call at an inconvenient hour.”
“No,” she replied, then paused. “Or rather, I suppose the hour is convenient enough. The subject may not be.”
It was so like her, honest, even when she would rather be guarded. His heart gave a strange, painful movement.
“I am sorry for that.”
She lowered her eyes briefly. “You need not apologize for answering a letter I chose to send.”
“I would apologize for the necessity of it, then.”
That drew the faintest curve of her mouth, but it vanished almost at once.
A small silence followed. He could hear movement above stairs, Clara’s lighter voice somewhere in the distance, and the faint clink of china being set down in another room.
They were not alone in any dangerous sense, yet the space between them seemed charged with all they could not say beneath a servant’s roof and a cousin’s protection.
“I thought,” Owen suggested, “that a walk might allow us to speak more easily.”
Aurelia’s fingers tightened very slightly around the back of a chair.
He saw the hesitation. For one miserable moment, he thought she would refuse.
He had not considered, until that instant, how much he had counted upon her agreement.
He had told himself he came to discuss the investigation, Clara’s safety, the proper course of action.
Yet beneath those reasons lay the simpler one he had tried to ignore: he wished to see her.
At last, she inclined her head. “Yes. A walk may be best.”
Relief came too quickly. He hoped she did not see it.
Clara joined them downstairs with a brightness that struck Owen as deliberate.
She greeted him warmly, as though determined that yesterday’s mortification should not be visible upon her.
Her bonnet ribbons were tied unevenly, and there was a little strain about her eyes, but she smiled when he asked whether she would do them the honor of accompanying them.
“I shall chaperone you both with the utmost severity,” she declared. “Mama says I am not severe enough with anyone, but I intend to improve.”
“You will begin with us?” Owen asked.
“Only because you both look in need of management.”
Aurelia looked away, but not before Owen caught the small, unwilling smile that touched her lips.
They set out a few minutes later, choosing the quieter streets near the apartment rather than the busier promenades where every acquaintance might become an obstacle and every pause an invitation to speculation.
The morning was mild, with a thin brightness over the rooftops and the pavements still damp from rain in the night.
Carriage wheels sounded from the larger road beyond, muffled by distance.
Clara walked ahead, not so far as to be improper, but far enough to examine a milliner’s display and then a basket of early flowers outside a shop. Her steps had something of their natural spring again, though every now and then she glanced back, as if to assure herself they had not vanished.
Owen and Aurelia walked side by side. For the first several minutes, neither spoke of what mattered. Aurelia remarked upon the improvement in the weather. Owen agreed. He asked after Clara’s headache. Aurelia said it had lessened.
Owen could bear it no longer. “Miss Finch, I would not have you think I asked you to walk merely so that we might discuss the weather.”
Her gaze flickered toward him.
“No,” she answered. “I didn’t think so.”
Owen looked at her, and after a little sigh, she began speaking.
“I would like you to know that I said very little. I did not wish to encourage Charlotte and her malice. But I think she meant to unsettle me, and I am ashamed to say she succeeded. I don’t think she knows anything, but she is clever enough to guess near the truth and cruel enough to enjoy it. ”
Owen’s hands curled once at his sides.
“She had no right.”
“No. But people rarely wait upon rights when malice serves them better.”
There was the sharpness he admired. Yet it did not disguise the weariness beneath.
“It was afterward that Mr. Johnson refused Clara?”
“Yes.”
Aurelia’s voice altered then, losing its edge. She spoke of Clara’s tears with a steadiness that cost her something. She spoke of Harrow’s arrival and of how he had led Clara out again before everyone. At that, Owen felt a fierce rush of pride in his friend.
“Thomas did well,” he murmured.
“He did more than well. He gave her back her dignity when I could not.”
The pain in the admission struck him.
“You comforted her.”
“I held her while she cried. That is not the same thing.”
“It is not nothing.”
Aurelia looked toward Clara. “It did not stop the whispers.”
“No. But neither did Harrow’s dance … not entirely.”
“No,” she agreed. “It may have made them worse.”
“He would think it worth the cost.”
“I know. That is part of what troubles me.”
Owen glanced at her. She kept her gaze ahead.
“He is good. Better than society deserves, perhaps. And Clara is so young. She believes kindness ought to be enough to silence cruelty.”
“It ought to be.”
“But it is not.”
“No,” Owen told her. “It is not.”
They walked on in silence for several steps. A carriage rattled past at the end of the street. Clara skipped around a puddle, then glanced back with an anxious little smile. Aurelia returned it at once, though Owen saw the effort in it.
He had come prepared to speak of strategy, alternatives, and discretion. Instead, all those words seemed bloodless beside the sight of Aurelia trying to protect Clara from a world that had already taught her too much.
“When I received your letter,” he revealed, “I feared you might wish to end everything.”
She looked at him quickly.
“The investigation,” he added, though not soon enough to disguise the breadth of what he had meant.
Her expression shifted, only slightly.
“I did suggest it.”
“You suggested we consider it. That is not the same thing.”
“It may become the same.”
“Yes.”
He forced himself to be honest. “I feared you might wish to end the investigation. I feared also that you might wish to end our acquaintance.”
Her steps slowed. He slowed with her. Clara, thankfully, had found another window to examine.
Aurelia did not speak. The faint wind stirred the ribbons of her bonnet against her cheek.
Owen looked down the quiet street rather than at her, because if he watched her too closely, he might lose the discipline required to say only what he had a right to say.
“The first fear I could understand,” he continued. “The second troubled me more than I expected.”
There … it was said. It was not everything, not nearly everything, but enough that his heart beat harder in the silence following it.
Aurelia turned her face toward him.
“My lord—”
“Owen,” he said before caution could stop him.
The word stood between them. He had signed it. That had been easier. Ink allowed bravery to appear almost accidental. Spoken aloud, it was different. It asked to be either accepted or refused.
Aurelia’s eyes widened the smallest degree.
Then, very softly, she whispered back. “Owen.”
The street did not alter. No window flew open, no passer-by stopped, no carriage halted to observe the imprudence of a Christian name spoken beneath a pale morning sky. Yet to Owen, something shifted so entirely that the ordinary world seemed to have moved half an inch out of its former place.
He drew a breath.
“I do not ask you to continue for my sake, nor do I ask you to bear danger because I have grown accustomed to your confidence. If you decide we must stop, we will stop. If you decide our association does Clara more harm than good, I will not argue you out of protecting her.”
Aurelia’s expression closed a little at that, as though the very offer hurt her.
“But,” he continued, “I do not believe silence will protect her forever. Charlotte has already begun. Langley has already shown his hand. Whether we search or not, they know your return threatens them. If we withdraw now, they may only learn that pressure succeeds.”
“That is what I fear,” she confessed. “And yet … We brought Clara into all of this. She believed the season would be all music and admiration and pleasant dances. Yesterday, she learned that my name can wound her. How am I to ask her to bear that?”
“You need not ask her to bear it alone.”
“She should not have to bear it at all.”
“No.”
The answer seemed to disarm her more than argument would have done. Owen wished to take her hand. The wish came so strongly that he had to clasp his own behind his back.
“Aurelia,” he said, then paused, still struck by the liberty of it. “We shall find a way forward that does not sacrifice Clara to the truth, nor the truth to fear.”
She gave a small, sad smile. “That sounds very noble. I am not certain it is possible.”
“Most worthwhile things sound improbable before they are attempted.”
“And if we fail?”
“Then we will fail having tried not to injure those who trust us.”
Her gaze rested on him. He had the sense, not that he had persuaded her, but that he had given her permission not to decide in despair. Perhaps that was all that could be done that morning.
“I cannot lose her happiness,” she said quietly. “And I do not wish …”
She stopped. He waited.
“I do not wish to abandon what my father began.”
“Then do not abandon it today.”
The line between her brows eased a little.
“Only today?”
“Today is often sufficient tyranny without borrowing tomorrow’s.”
That earned him a real smile.
“I did not know you could be philosophical.”
“I did not know it either. Harrow will be insufferable when he hears of it.”
At Harrow’s name, Clara turned back at once. “Did someone mention Captain Harrow?”
Aurelia laughed. The sound was small, but it loosened something in Owen’s chest.
“We were only discussing his many faults,” he teased.
Clara came nearer, indignant. “Captain Harrow has very few faults.”
“That,” Owen added, “is one of yours.”
Clara looked at Aurelia. “Is he always so severe?”
“Yes,” Aurelia was still smiling. “Except when he is being kind, which he disguises as severity.”
Owen glanced at her. Her eyes met his, and for a moment the heaviness of the morning lifted. They walked on. Gradually, the conversation moved away from Lady Ashcombe’s garden.
Clara pointed out a ridiculous hat in a milliner’s window and insisted no woman could wear so many plumes without endangering nearby gentlemen.
Owen remarked that Harrow, having survived artillery, might yet be defeated by ostrich feathers.
Aurelia suggested that London fashion had long been more perilous than war, which made Clara laugh and Owen feel, for a brief and dangerous moment, almost content.
After a while, Clara drifted ahead again, drawn by the promise of a bookshop window. Owen and Aurelia followed more slowly.
Their shoulders did not touch. Their hands remained properly apart.
Their conversation, when it came, was no longer urgent.
They spoke of paintings, of whether Lady Ashcombe’s roses had been forced too early, of Clara’s fondness for novels, of Harrow’s inability to lose a game without pretending he had meant to do so.
It was ordinary … that was what made it extraordinary.