Aurelia let that settle between them.
Dangerous ground.
Yes. That was exactly what it was.
For years, she had been forced to pretend that the ground did not exist at all, that there had been no lies, no intimidation, no destruction, only a disgrace everyone else seemed to understand better than she did. To hear someone else acknowledge the danger of it aloud felt oddly bracing.
She drew a breath.
“My father began to investigate before he died,” she repeated what he already knew.
He looked at her sharply then, the reserve in him giving way at once to attention. Aurelia kept her eyes on the path ahead. It was easier that way.
“He never believed the official version of events,” she continued. “He gathered letters, notes, fragments of reports, anything he could. He thought if he could collect enough of it, he might force someone to listen. After my mother refused to say what was wanted of her, most of it was taken or destroyed, but not all.” She thought about it for a moment, then continued. “They demanded his notebook first, I think. My mother had hidden what little she could before they came. It was the only victory allowed her, and even that was a dangerous one.”
He was silent, and in that silence she heard not indifference but care.
“I brought what remains with me to London,” she divulged. “A notebook of his. It is not much. Only scraps, really. Names and half-finished thoughts. I … look through it more often than I ought.”
“As though one day it might yield its meaning,” he added quietly.
She turned her head at that.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
She looked into his eyes and there was no mockery there, and no impatience, only an intent stillness that made her feel, absurdly, that she had said something important and it had been properly heard.
“Has anything in it stood out?” he asked.
She hesitated.
She had not shown the notebook to anyone. Had scarcely spoken of it. Even with Clara she had been careful, unwilling to awaken questions she could not answer. The book felt too bound up with her father’s memory, with the last fierce hope he had carried, with all the things that had been lost after his death.
And yet, Lord Westbridge had already told her more plainly than most people ever did. He had not flinched from discomfort. He had admitted concern, not hidden it behind false civility.
So, she answered. “There is one name that appears more than once. Sergeant William Carter.”
He repeated it under his breath, as if testing its shape against memory. “Carter.”
“My father seemed to think he mattered. Whether he witnessed something, or carried some report, I cannot tell. Half the notes make no sense to me. They were written as if he expected to understand them later and never had the chance.” She clasped her hands more tightly before her. “But I have wondered whether Sergeant Carter might have seen the truth of what happened. If he is still alive, he might know enough to prove that the report was false.”
He inhaled slowly. She could see a spark in his eyes.
“You know the name,” Aurelia noticed.
He looked at her, thoughtful now in a way that seemed to reach well beyond the park, beyond the morning, perhaps even beyond her.
“I think I may,” he agreed.
Chapter 11
Carter.
The name struck against something in his memory like flint, throwing off sparks but no steady flame. He knew it. He was certain he knew it. Yet when he reached for the detail, it slipped away again, buried beneath years of orders, dispatches, names half-remembered from a world in which too many men had bled and vanished.
“At least, I ought to know it,” he replied slowly. “I cannot yet place it, but I am certain I have heard it before.”
She said nothing, though he felt rather than saw how sharply her attention fixed upon him. Ahead of them, Thomas and Clara stopped beside a stand of trees where the path widened. Clara was laughing at something Thomas had said. Her whole person was animated by a brightness so open it seemed almost foreign in comparison with the conversation Owen now found himself having. There was no burden there, no caution, no history pressing at every word. Just youth, and delight, and the extraordinary simplicity of two people who had taken to one another at once.
