Aurelia’s fingers tightened until the edge of her reticule pressed through the glove.
“My cousin has nothing to do with old unpleasantness.”
“No,” he agreed softly. “That is precisely my point.”
The words were mild. The meaning was not. Aurelia looked at him, and for the first time she understood that his danger did not lie in violence, nor even in anger. It lay in his certainty that the world would believe him before it believed her, that he need only step near enough to remind her how many doors could still be closed.
“You mistake me, General Langley,” she said, surprised by the steadiness of her own voice. “I have no wish to revive scandal.”
“Wise.”
“I have only ever wished to know the truth.”
His eyes sharpened. Then, he bowed.
“Then I hope, Miss Finch, that truth proves kinder to you than it did to your mother.”
For one suspended instant, Aurelia could not answer. Langley replaced his hat with unhurried care.
“Good afternoon.”
He walked away before she could accuse him of anything, before she could demand how he knew where she had been and before she could make his civility into something ugly enough to name.
The servant stepped forward at once.
“Miss?”
Aurelia turned back to the carriage. “Yes. Thank you.”
She allowed him to hand her in. She sat very straight as the door closed, with her eyes fixed upon the opposite seat. Only when the carriage began to move did she look down.
Her hands were shaking.
Chapter 20
Aurelia had not intended to enter the circulating library. She had meant only to walk a little, to clear the feeling of Lord Langley’s voice from her mind and the memory of his smile from her skin.
Yet London offered very little quiet to those who required it, and after ten minutes of passing carriages, brisk servants, and ladies who seemed to look at her with more curiosity than knowledge, she found herself pausing before the bow window of Mr. Bronson’s Library and Bookseller.
There were books displayed there in tidy ranks: sermons, travel journals, poetry, a newly published novel whose heroine appeared to be in distress upon a cliff, and several newspapers folded in a neat pile upon the lower shelf.
Aurelia looked at the newspapers longer than she ought. Then, annoyed with herself for hesitating in the street like a guilty person, she went inside.
A small bell sounded above the door. The shop smelled of paper, dust, leather, and rain that had not yet fallen. It was not empty, but it was quiet enough that voices did not have to compete with one another. A gentleman at the counter was arguing mildly over the price of a volume of sermons. Two young ladies stood together over a table of novels, whispering with the solemnity of conspirators.
Aurelia moved toward the shelves at the back, where older periodicals and bound volumes were kept in less fashionable disorder. She did not know precisely what she sought, some printed mention of the old scandal, or some fragment that had survived because no one had thought it worth destroying.
Her gloved fingers moved along the spines.
Annual Register. Parliamentary Debates. The Gentleman’s Magazine.
She drew one volume partway from the shelf, only for another hand to reach the same book at almost the same moment.
Aurelia started and looked up, only to find Owen standing beside her. For a second, neither of them spoke.
Then he withdrew his hand at once and bowed. “Miss Finch.”
Her surprise must have shown, for his expression softened slightly.
