Already, his patience had thinned to a thread.
“I think I shall take a little air,” he told them, rising. “The room is warm.”
“Of course,” his mother agreed, though her eyes suggested she knew warmth had nothing to do with it.
General Langley rose, too. “I will join you, if I may. A cigar after dinner is one of the few habits age has not persuaded me to abandon.”
Owen inclined his head. He could hardly refuse.
The terrace was damp from the evening mist, the stone dark beneath the lamplight spilling from the windows. The air was colder, carrying the smell of wet leaves, coal smoke, and the faint bitterness of Langley’s cigar as he struck a light.
The general exhaled a stream of smoke into the darkness.
“You have involved yourself in curious company of late, Lord Westbridge.”
Owen looked out toward the garden. “London offers little else.”
Langley gave a low chuckle. “Very good. But you know my meaning.”
“I prefer men to say what they mean.”
“Do you? That is a young man’s preference.”
“I had thought it a soldier’s.”
“A soldier, above all men, must understand the value of discretion.”
Owen turned his head. Langley was watching him now, with all trace of dinner table geniality gone.
“There are matters,” Langley urged, “particularly from the war, which do not improve by being handled years later by those with incomplete knowledge.”
“Truth is not altered by age.”
“No. But reputations are. A careless inquiry may disturb more than the man who begins it intends.”
Owen’s pulse slowed, as it always did when danger became plain.
“Is that a warning?”
The man shrugged. “Advice.”
“I have noticed that advice from powerful men often resembles a warning when examined closely.”
Langley smiled without warmth. “Then examine this closely. Miss Finch is not a suitable companion for you. Her family has already suffered from a regrettable inability to distinguish principle from agitation. It would be unfortunate if others were drawn into the same error.”
Owen’s hand closed around the cold stone balustrade.
“You speak of Miss Finch with remarkable confidence.”
“Both of you would be wise to consider how much damage old stories can do when repeated by the wrong mouths. There have been men before you who believed themselves brave enough to dig in ground better left untouched. Some lost commissions. Some lost friends. Some discovered that society’spatience is not inexhaustible when honorable families are made uncomfortable.”
“And some,” Owen said, “perhaps lost only their fear.”
Langley gave a small, hard smile. “Fear is often what keeps a man alive.”
“Not always honorably.”
“No one thanks a dead man for honor.”
