Yours sincerely,
Aurelia Finch
There was nothing self-pitying in the letter. That struck him more than anything else. Aurelia said very little of herself, and when she did, it was only in relation to others: to the burden her mother carried, to her aunt’s illness, to Clara’s future, to the family name that had been dragged through the dirt and never fully cleaned again. She seemed to think of her own pain as the least significant part of the matter.
He folded the letter once, then opened it again and reread the final lines. He was not sure why that struck him as it did. Perhaps because it was so rare to be met in seriousness rather than in sentiment. Most people, when the war was mentioned at all, wanted stories fit for public consumption, which had to include courage, sacrifice, triumph, and perhaps some tolerably softened grief. Very few wished to hear that it had been ugly, confusing, and full of the sort of memory that lodged in a man’s bones and refused to leave.
Aurelia had not turned away from it. That mattered to him more than it ought to have.
He folded the letter carefully and slipped it into the inner pocket of his coat just as his mother entered the dining hall.
“Was that a letter you were just reading?” she inquired curiously.
“Yes,” he affirmed.
“Since when do you smile at your correspondence?” she asked again.
He looked up at once. “Am I?”
“You are,” she replied. “And I am wondering if I like the cause of it.”
Owen reached for his coffee with deliberate calm. “Then I advise you not to study my face so closely over breakfast.”
She ignored this. “Was it from Miss Finch?”
He said nothing, which in itself answered the question well enough.
His mother sat down opposite him. “Really, Owen.”
He drank his coffee.
“I had hoped,” she continued, “that yesterday’s nonsense would pass for what it was … a momentary absurdity. You cannot mean to persist in this.”
He lowered the cup. “In what?”
“In this attachment.”
“It is hardly an attachment if I have called on the lady once in broad daylight.”
“Do not trifle with me,” her mother said. “Half the park apparently saw you with her two days ago, and this morning you are receiving notes from her household. What am I meant to conclude?”
“That I am conducting myself as I please.”
She drew herself up. “You are conducting yourself very unwisely.”
Owen looked at her across the breakfast table, and for a moment he was sharply reminded of every argument they had had since his return to England: her insistence upon suitable alliances, upon appearances, upon the weight of the family name and his growing weariness with all of it.
“In your view,” he told her, “wisdom and obedience appear to be the same thing.”
“In this case they are.”
He set down his cup and rose.
“I am afraid I have no more appetite for this conversation.”
Her mouth thinned, but she said nothing further while the servants moved in and out of the room. Owen was grateful for the restraint. He had no wish to quarrel before breakfast. Still, the moment he escaped to his dressing room and changed for the day, he knew the matter was not finished.
Sure enough, as he came down again some time later, coat on and gloves in hand, he found his mother waiting for him in the entrance hall.
