Aurelia set down her cup with care. “It is very proper, I hope.”
Clara gave her a look of exaggerated innocence. “Of course it is proper. You are to come.”
“Ah,” Aurelia said dryly. “Then propriety survives.”
Clara laughed and dropped into the chair opposite her, leaning forward across the breakfast table as though she could not contain herself.
“He said the weather would be too fair to waste indoors and that Hyde Park would be full of respectable people. He could not possibly have chosen anything more suitable.”
That, Aurelia thought, was probably true. A walk in Hyde Park in broad daylight was one of the few freedoms afforded to young people under strict observation. There would be no privacy in it at all, which was precisely what made it acceptable.
She buttered a piece of toast more slowly than necessary, watching Clara from beneath her lashes. The girl looked absurdly happy already, and the walk had not even begun.
“You are very taken with him,” Aurelia observed.
Clara looked scandalized that such a thing should even require stating. “Naturally I am.”
Aurelia smiled faintly. “Naturally.”
She hesitated, then said, as lightly as she could. “And has no one else caught your eye? Not even a little?”
Clara’s expression turned solemn, as though Aurelia had asked whether the sun might be persuaded to rise in the west. “No.”
“No one at all?”
“No one at all,” Clara repeated with certainty. “Why should they, when Captain Harrow exists?”
Aurelia laughed despite herself. “That is not quite how a season is meant to work.”
“It is how mine is working.”
Clara’s answer was so immediate and so cheerful, that Aurelia did not attempt to argue further. In truth, a part of her would have preferred Clara to cast her net a little wider. It was dangerous, perhaps, to fasten so quickly and so completely upon one man. Hearts were vulnerable things, and London was not kind to vulnerable things.
Yet the sharper, more practical part of her that had survived scandal and exile and years of watching every word before it left her mouth, could not deny that there was safety in a smaller circle. The fewer connections Clara made, the fewer opportunities there would be for whispers to spread.
The Finch name still carried its old stain, however politely some people pretended otherwise. If Clara’s world could remain narrowed to a handful of decent people, perhaps the season might pass without trouble.
Perhaps.
Clara was already talking again, smiling into her plate as if she were seeing not eggs and toast but an entire future laid out before her. Aurelia let her chatter wash over her. She answered when required, smiled when necessary, and kept her own thoughts mostly to herself.
Captain Harrow would call. And, despite her better judgement, she found herself wondering whether the Marquess of Westbridge would come with him.
She told herself it was only because the two men always seemed to be together. It would be natural enough if he accompanied his friend. Convenient, even. Lord Westbridge had made plain enough that he had no interest in marriage, and that alone made him feel safer than most men Aurelia had met in London. Therewas a kind of ease in speaking to someone who wanted nothing from her.
And she had enjoyed their conversations. He made London less exhausting, less false.
She did not care to examine the thought too closely.
She reminded herself that there was also a practical advantage in his company. He had military connections. He knew names, places, the sorts of men her father had once dealt with before his death. If she were careful enough, mayhap she could learn something from him, some detail, some memory, some loose thread which, once tugged, might lead back to the truth.
Because though she had almost ceased to admit it even to herself, she had never entirely given up the old desire. She wanted her family’s name cleared. She wanted the ugly shadow over her mother’s life lifted, if only in some small measure. She wanted to know that her father had not died grasping at ghosts. She wanted, selfishly perhaps, to stand in a room without feeling the weight of what had been done to them pressing between her shoulder blades.
She wanted the truth.
By the time they went upstairs to dress, Aurelia had scolded herself soundly for hoping the marquess might appear.
Hope was dangerous. It was also foolish and utterly unnecessary.
