“This will not end well.”
For one brief instant, the letter in his pocket seemed to burn against his chest. Perhaps she meant the scandal, perhaps society, perhaps only herself. But Owen thought of Aurelia’s careful hand, of the quiet ache in her words, of the way she had written of truth as if it were a burden one carried because to do otherwise would be worse.
Then he opened the door.
“That,” he said without looking back, “remains to be seen.”
And he left her there, standing in the entrance hall with all her certainty and all her displeasure, while outside the spring airstruck cool against his face and the day opened before him with the peculiar brightness of a thing already in motion.
As he stepped into the waiting carriage, he slipped a hand briefly inside his coat and touched the folded edge of Aurelia’s letter, as though to reassure himself it was still there. Then he sat back and told the driver to take him to White’s Club.
But all the way there, his thoughts remained with a quiet room in another house, and with a woman who, on paper at least, seemed to trust him with truths she would not yet speak aloud.
Chapter 15
White’s was already busy by the time Owen arrived.
It had the composed and rather self-satisfied air of a house long accustomed to consequence. The rooms were handsomely proportioned, warmed by well-kept fires and furnished with that solid comfort which spoke less of display than of expensive habit. There was a faint mingling of wax, wine, coffee, and tobacco in the air.
The afternoon had drawn a respectable number of men into the club, and the familiar atmosphere met him at once. It was all exactly as it had always been, and yet Owen found that since his return to England, these rooms no longer offered quite the comfort they once might have done. There was too much idleness in them and too much leisure arranged around the habits of men who had never been made to question whether comfort was a thing one had any right to keep.
Still, Thomas was there, and that mattered.
Owen spotted him near one of the windows, relaxed into an armchair with a glass in hand and the look of a man entirely at ease with himself and the world. It was a look Thomas had worn more often of late. Clara Blackmore, Owen thought, had a good deal to do with it.
He crossed the room toward him.
His friend rose at once, grinning. “Westbridge! You look as though your mother has tried to marry you off before noon.”
“She attempted it before breakfast,” Owen said. “By noon she had settled for reproach.”
“Then the day is progressing as expected.”
They sat, and glasses were set before them.
“How are things with Miss Blackmore?”
The question had barely left him before Thomas’s expression altered. It softened first, then brightened in a fashion so unguarded that Owen might have laughed had the answer not been so obvious.
“They are going very well,” Thomas grinned. “I like her exceedingly.”
“That is plain.”
“Is it?”
“Painfully.”
Thomas leaned back, untroubled. “Then I am glad it shows.”
Owen gave him a dry look. “You are becoming insufferable.”
“And you,” Thomas supplied at once, “are the last man from whom I expected to hear such a complaint. Particularly now.”
Owen already knew the tone. He reached for his drink. “No.”
“Yes,” Thomas said cheerfully. “I insist upon it. You spent weeks declaring yourself immune to all schemes of courtship, all the charms of London, all the nonsense of romantic feeling and yet somehow you are the first man in our set to announce an attachment.”
“There is no attachment.”
