“Then do not abandon it today.”
The line between her brows eased a little.
“Only today?”
“Today is often sufficient tyranny without borrowing tomorrow’s.”
That earned him a real smile.
“I did not know you could be philosophical.”
“I did not know it either. Harrow will be insufferable when he hears of it.”
At Harrow’s name, Clara turned back at once. “Did someone mention Captain Harrow?”
Aurelia laughed. The sound was small, but it loosened something in Owen’s chest.
“We were only discussing his many faults,” he teased.
Clara came nearer, indignant. “Captain Harrow has very few faults.”
“That,” Owen added, “is one of yours.”
Clara looked at Aurelia. “Is he always so severe?”
“Yes,” Aurelia was still smiling. “Except when he is being kind, which he disguises as severity.”
Owen glanced at her. Her eyes met his, and for a moment the heaviness of the morning lifted. They walked on. Gradually, the conversation moved away from Lady Ashcombe’s garden.
Clara pointed out a ridiculous hat in a milliner’s window and insisted no woman could wear so many plumes without endangering nearby gentlemen. Owen remarked that Harrow, having survived artillery, might yet be defeated by ostrichfeathers. Aurelia suggested that London fashion had long been more perilous than war, which made Clara laugh and Owen feel, for a brief and dangerous moment, almost content.
After a while, Clara drifted ahead again, drawn by the promise of a bookshop window. Owen and Aurelia followed more slowly.
Their shoulders did not touch. Their hands remained properly apart. Their conversation, when it came, was no longer urgent. They spoke of paintings, of whether Lady Ashcombe’s roses had been forced too early, of Clara’s fondness for novels, of Harrow’s inability to lose a game without pretending he had meant to do so.
It was ordinary … that was what made it extraordinary.
Chapter 27
But by the time Owen’s carriage reached home, relief had been overtaken by urgency. The matter had to be solved. That was why Owen shut himself in his study, for one final look through before they went looking for Carter.
The papers lay spread across his writing table in uneven piles: old dispatches, copies of field reports, private notes obtained through former contacts, and memoranda written in hands so crabbed and faded that reading them required patience bordering on virtue.
At first, the inconsistencies seemed small. He found a time altered by an hour, a road described in one account as clear and in another as impassable. Carter’s name was attached to a report of confusion among the forward companies, then absent entirely from the official version Owen remembered being circulated afterward.
One field note referred to contradictory orders received before dawn. Another mentioned uncertainty in command and hesitation. The published report had been cleaner.
Owen leaned back, the paper between his fingers, and felt the familiar coldness of anger settling under his ribs. He remembered that official account, with its polished phrases had praised discipline, lamented unavoidable loss, and placed blameupon faulty communications from below. It had made the failure sound tragic but honorable.
He turned again to Carter’s first report. The man had been careful. That struck Owen most. He had described confusion rather than incompetence, and delay rather than cowardice. But the meaning was there, buried beneath a soldier’s restraint. Orders had been given from above before the intelligence was settled. Men had advanced because someone had wanted victory more quickly than prudence allowed.
He was still bent over the reports when Thomas came in without ceremony, as he always did. He took one look at the papers and whistled softly.
“If scholarship improves your temper, I see no evidence of it.”
Owen did not look up. “Carter’s reports were altered.”
Thomas’s levity vanished. “You are certain?”
