He held her gaze. “That is not a matter that need trouble you.”
The steadiness of the answer, and the expression that accompanied it, made it clear he meant her not to feel guilty on his account. More than that, he looked almost pleased with himself, as though this fictitious courtship had delivered him from some ongoing domestic campaign and he had no intention of regretting the relief.
That, at least, made it easier to breathe.
Once Clara at last found some excuse to leave the room altogether, though not before giving Aurelia a look so full of delighted implication that Aurelia wanted to sink into the carpet, Owen leaned slightly forward.
“May I see the notebook?”
The shift in tone was subtle but immediate. The drawing room performance remained in place, yet beneath it something more purposeful had come alive. Aurelia rose without a word andcrossed to the escritoire, where the battered little volume lay hidden beneath other harmless papers. She always kept it close by, depending on which room she occupied. She hesitated only a moment before bringing it back.
It looked unimpressive in her hands: worn leather, edges softened by time, pages crowded with hurried notes and names and half-legible marks that had seemed to mean more to her father than they ever had to her. To Aurelia, it had always felt like holding the last surviving shard of him.
When she placed it between them, she did so carefully.
Owen’s expression changed as he looked down at it. The easy social politeness left him altogether, replaced now by concentration so intent it seemed almost intimate.
Together, they bent over the pages. There was not much to see, not really. There were fragments of correspondence copied in abbreviated form, a list of names, dates without explanations, mentions of units and places Aurelia barely understood, and several lines crossed out so fiercely that the ink had nearly torn the paper.
Yet Owen moved through it with patience and seriousness that made Aurelia feel that perhaps the notebook was not only a relic of grief, but a real source of answers.
Here and there, he pointed something out, such as a military shorthand or a likely reference to a dispatch. Aurelia, in turn, showed him the entries that had long troubled her most, small notes written in her father’s hand after midnight, when his script had grown sharper and more erratic.
Then at last, they found it again.
William Carter.
It was not mentioned once, but several times, in different places and different contexts.
Owen drew a breath. “There.”
Aurelia leaned closer. “You see it?”
“Yes, here and here.” He touched the page lightly, careful not to smudge the old ink. “It is not accidental. Your father was tracking him deliberately.”
Aurelia’s pulse leapt.
“And this,” Owen said, turning a page, “this may be the same name again, only abbreviated. W. Carter. Beside a note about witness statements, I think.”
Aurelia looked from the page to him, hardly daring to believe it. “So he mattered.”
“He mattered,” Owen agreed with certainty now.
Aurelia’s hand moved instinctively toward the page at the same moment his did. Their fingers brushed, and it lasted but a moment, yet neither withdrew at once. Owen looked down at that small point of contact as though it had startled him more than the discovery itself.
“Forgive me,” he said quietly, though his hand had not yet moved.
“There is nothing to forgive,” Aurelia replied, and wished at once that her voiced sounded steadier.
The excitement that passed between them in that moment was so sharp and immediate that it stripped away all the careful formality of the afternoon. Aurelia forgot to sit like a lady. Owen forgot to look like a suitor. For one bright instant, they were simply two people leaning over the same clue, equally intent, equally alive to the possibility that they had found something real.
She looked up at him and found him already looking at her.
His eyes were brighter than before. They were warmer, too.
“Yes,” she told him softly, unable to help the smile that touched her mouth. “That is something, is it not?”
“It is,” he said.
