Carter continued more quietly now. “My friend says Miss Langley was overheard boasting of it afterward, not in open company, but where she thought herself safe, laughing that they had been warned to stay away from respectable society, and still had the impudence to appear.”
Owen’s stomach twisted. He promised Aurelia that she was not alone. He promised himself he would protect what could still be protected. And while he had chased proof through old reports and frightened men in cottages, the danger had walked straight into drawing rooms and put its hand upon her.
“This is my fault,” he sighed.
Carter looked startled. “My lord?”
“I knew Langley was capable of malice. I knew he had reason to fear her questions. I should have seen that he would strike where she was most vulnerable.”
“No man can be everywhere.”
“I told her she need not bear it alone,” Owen told him, the words bitter in his mouth. “And then I left her to bear it.”
Carter was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, he did so more confidently than before. “That is why I cannot remain silent.”
Owen looked at him. Carter’s face was pale, but there was something more confident in it now than there had been in Greenwich.
“I told myself the damage was done,” Carter continued his half-confession. “The men were dead. Finch was dead. Lady Finch ruined. There was nothing I could say that would restore them. But this thing is still reaching forward. It is hurting another generation now, young women who had no hand in any of it.” His voice roughened. “I cannot let it continue.”
Owen held his gaze. “Can your friend be trusted?”
“Yes.”
“Is he certain no one overheard him speaking to you?”
“Certain enough. He knows how to be careful.”
“Careful will have to suffice.” Owen crossed to the writing table and pulled out paper, ink, and a clean pen. “Will you give me a statement?”
Carter looked at the page as though it were a loaded pistol.
“I will write what I know,” he told him. “And I will sign it. But I will not stand in court. I will not present myself before a board of officers, if it comes to that. I am sorry. I know what you will think of me, but I cannot.”
Owen wanted to argue. He did not. A signed statement was more than they had possessed an hour ago. It was more than Aurelia had possessed in all the years of her mother’s disgrace.
“Write,” he urged.
Carter obeyed and sat down. The scratching of the pen seemed very loud in the quiet drawing room. Owen stood near the hearth and watched him set down the truth line by line: that hehad served closely under Langley, that he had seen the orders confused and warnings ignored, that Finch’s observations had not been fanciful, disloyal, or mistaken, that the official report had been altered to remove what would have reflected badly on men of rank.
Carter wrote that Langley had known, that Langley had acted to conceal his own culpability and that those who questioned the final account were warned, threatened, or quietly ruined.
By the time Carter signed his name, his hand was shaking. He folded the page, then pushed it toward Owen.
“There,” he concluded hoarsely. “It is done.”
Owen took it carefully, though every instinct in him wished to seize it. He read enough to know it was clear and damning. Then, he folded it and placed it inside his coat.
Carter stood at once. “I am leaving Greenwich.”
Owen looked up.
“Two, three days at the latest. I cannot be there when Langley discovers what I have done.”
“I can arrange protection.”
Carter shook his head. “No. Protection from men like Langley is only another kind of attention. I have lived too long by being unnoticed. Let me continue that way.”
Owen studied him for a moment. He still saw fear in the man. But fear had not stopped him from coming.
