Aurelia swallowed. Suddenly, the shop around them seemed very far away. Then, he reached past her, carefully keeping enough distance that no impropriety could be imagined, and drew a volume from the shelf above her shoulder.
“If you are looking for older notices,” he told her, “you may have better luck with the bound newspapers. They keep them below the counter, not here.”
Aurelia stilled. “Do they?”
“I asked last week.”
“About notices?”
“Dispatches,” he clarified. “Casualty lists.”
She turned to him fully.
There was nothing theatrical in his expression, no invitation to pity. If anything, he looked as though he had not meant to say so much.
He held the volume out, though she had not asked for it. “This will be less useful than you hope.”
Aurelia accepted it. Their gloved fingers did not touch, yet the near contact seemed to register all the same.
“You do not know what I hope.”
“No,” he nodded. “But I know the look of someone searching for a thing they are not certain still exists.”
She could not answer him. The bell above the door sounded again. Voices entered with the damp air, bright and careless, and the spell of the narrow aisle broke.
Aurelia closed the book without having opened it. “I should return.”
“Of course.”
He stepped back to allow her passage. She moved past him, then stopped before she could prevent herself.
“My lord.”
He looked at her.
“Thank you.”
“For the book?”
“For not asking,” she revealed.
Something in his face changed, not enough to be called softness, but near enough to make her wish she had not noticed it.
“Then I shall continue not asking,” he promised.
Aurelia inclined her head and turned toward the front of the shop.
At the counter, Mr. Bronson was producing a stack of old newspapers for another customer. She saw them, marked the place in her mind, and knew she would return.
As she stepped back into the street, London seemed no kinder than before. The carriages still rattled, the faces still passed, the sky still held its rain in sullen reserve.
Yet for the first time that day, Aurelia felt a little less alone.
***
The ball at Lady Fenton’s house, an elegant residence in Grosvenor Square, had everything arranged with such taste that comfort seemed almost an afterthought. The chandeliers glittered above the assembly like frozen fountains of light, while the mirrors doubled every candle, every jewel, every guarded smile.
Clara was in white, with the pale-yellow ribbon finally chosen after one change of mind. She looked very young and very happy. Harrow had claimed her for the first dance with perfect correctness, and though Clara later danced with other gentlemen, her affection was evident. With others she was pretty, agreeable, and attentive. With him, she was illuminated.
