She ought to have withdrawn immediately. They were in public. Their courtship was false, whatever society believed and whatever her own foolish heart had begun to find in it. Yet she did not move. Beneath her fingers, she felt the firmness of his sleeve, the warmth of him, the slightest tension held in check by discipline.
“I am sorry,” she whispered.
His gaze lifted to hers. “For what?”
“For what you have seen.”
Something in his face altered then. It was not quite a smile, though it held gratitude. Nor was it quite sorrow, though sorrow lay beneath it. He looked at her as if she had reached him from a great distance and he had not known, until that moment, how far away he had been.
“You need not be sorry,” he whispered back.
“I think I must be.”
His hand moved, not to cover hers, but almost. The restraint was itself a kind of touch. He opened his mouth as though to say more.
“There you are!” Clara’s bright voice rang out behind them, interrupting the moment. “Captain Harrow has been attempting to explain why that admiral looks heroic, and I am afraid I have understood almost none of it.”
Aurelia drew her hand back at once. The room returned with all the paintings, the visitors, the shining floors, and the rules. Owen stepped half a pace away, and by the time Claraand Captain Harrow reached them, his expression had settled into its usual composure. Only Aurelia, whose fingers still remembered the warmth of his arm, could tell that anything had passed between them.
Captain Harrow glanced from one to the other with a look far too perceptive for comfort.
“I have explained it perfectly,” he said. “Miss Blackmore has merely chosen not to be instructed.”
“I chose to be spared,” Clara teased.
Owen gave a faint smile. “A wise distinction.”
They continued through the gallery, but Aurelia saw very little afterward. She answered when spoken to, admired when admiration was required, and disagreed once with Captain Harrow on the color of a sky without having the least notion whether the sky in question was blue, gray, or purple.
Her thoughts had remained before General Wolfe, or rather beside the man who had stood before it and spoken, for a moment, from some place of pain he rarely allowed to show.
The carriage wasn’t yet brought round, and Captain Harrow, discovering that Clara hadn’t seen the little print shop beside thegallery declared such ignorance a matter requiring immediate correction. Clara went with him at once, laughing.
Aurelia and Owen remained beneath the shallow portico, where the afternoon light fell pale and clean over the steps. For once, neither spoke of names, letters or old accusations.
“It is odd,” she mused.
“What is?” he asked.
“To have spent an afternoon in London and not disliked it.”
His eyes moved to her face. “Only not disliked?”
“I am cautious in my praise.”
“I’ve noticed.”
She glanced at him and found the slightest smile at his mouth. It did something dangerous to her.
“Very well,” she amended. “I enjoyed it.”
“I am glad.:
The words were simple, yet they warmed her more than they ought to have. She looked away toward the street, where a flower girl was rearranging violets in a basket with grave concentration.
“I used to enjoy London, you know,” she told him. “Not always, of course. It was often too loud and too certain of itself. But there were mornings where everything seemed… possible.”
“And now?” he asked almost tenderly.
