“I did not say that.”
“You did not need to.”
“No, my lord.” Thompson’s eyes met his at last. “But you will need more than what I did not say.”
There it was again, the truth, visible and untouchable, standing behind a screen of caution.
Owen rose slowly. “Thank you.”
Thompson looked almost startled. “For so little?”
“For confirming that I am not chasing shadows.”
Thompson gave a bitter little laugh. “No. Shadows would be safer.”
At the door, Owen paused. “If Carter is in Greenwich, we will find him.”
“Then pray you reach him before others hear you are looking.”
Owen looked back.
Thompson’s face had gone pale. “And if you do find him, remember this: he has been silent for years not because he has forgotten, and not because he has forgiven. He is afraid. Men ashamed of fear often deny it. Carter will not. If you want him to speak, you must give him a reason stronger than terror.”
Owen said nothing for a moment. Then he inclined his head and left. Outside, the Strand was noisy with carts, voices, and the press of ordinary life. Thomas fell into step beside him, uncharacteristically quiet.
Owen looked toward the east, though the city lay thick between him and the place. That was all they could do … for now.
***
Owen returned home with Thompson’s words still lodged beneath his ribs. There was a kind of mercy in shock, in the brief stunned interval before the mind began arranging facts into meaning. But Owen had not been shocked. He had felt, instead, the heavy confirmation of something long suspected and long resisted.
The report had been altered.
Carter had been silenced.
The Finch family had been ruined because they stood too near the truth.
By the time he reached his study, the house seemed intolerably orderly. The fire burned in its grate. The decanter stood where it always stood. His letters were stacked neatly beside the blotter. Everything in its place, while the past lay broken and bleeding beneath respectable hands.
He shut the door.
For several moments he did nothing. He stood in the middle of the room with his gloves still in one hand, breathing as thoughhe had come from battle rather than a coffee house off the Strand. Then he crossed to the writing table, sat, and drew out a sheet of paper.
He did not allow himself time to become prudent.
Miss Finch,
I met today with Lieutenant Thompson, formerly attached to the dispatch office during the campaign. He confirmed what I had begun to fear. Carter’s reports were altered before the official account reached the public record. The confusion in command, the conflicting intelligence, the orders given before that intelligence was properly weighed, all of it was softened, shifted, or removed.
The pen moved faster.
I do not yet have enough to accuse any man before the world, but I have enough to know that your father was right to question what he questioned. Your mother was right to refuse what she refused. She was not wrong.
He stopped there. The sentence struck him with such force that, for a moment, he could not go on.
How little, and yet how much, those words might have meant years ago had someone with rank, with consequence, with avoice society could not so easily dismiss, stood beside Lady Finch and said them aloud? Would she have remained in England? Would Aurelia have grown to womanhood under kinder eyes? Would her father have died less burdened by unanswered questions?
Owen pressed his hand briefly over his eyes. Then, he wrote on.
