Clara nodded, accepting what comfort there was in that, and went away. When the door closed, Aurelia remained very still. The anonymous letter lay upon her lap, its ugly words hidden by the fold but not erased.
Aurelia rose and crossed to the writing table, reaching for Owen’s letter.
My regard for you is real.
She touched the line with one fingertip. Then she looked at the anonymous letter in her other hand.
How much truth could one pursue before everyone near it began to bleed?
***
That evening, Aurelia met Owen at the theater and knew at once that something had altered.
It was not anything he said. He greeted her with perfect civility, bowed to Clara with equal correctness, and exchanged a few easy words with Captain Harrow as though nothing in the world were amiss. Yet there was a restraint in him she had not felt in his letter. The candor of those written lines, the quiet confidence he had placed in her, seemed to belong to another man entirely.
Or perhaps, she thought with a small inward chill, to another moment, one he now regretted.
She had spent the whole afternoon turning over the same impossible questions. Should she tell him about Langley? About Clara? About the cruel little warning that had made her cousin grow pale and quiet when she thought no one observed her? Should she draw him further into a danger that was not his own? Or should she retreat, while retreat was still possible, and spare them both the consequences of a connection that had already become far less sensible than it ought?
By the time he stood before her, composed and distant beneath the bright theater lamps, her courage deserted her.
“How do you find the performance, my lord?” she asked, and hated herself a little for the emptiness of it.
“Very fine,” he replied. “Though I confess I have never been an excellent judge of the stage.”
“No,” she said. “Nor I.”
There. Nothing could be safer. Nothing could be more dreadful.
Captain Harrow and Clara did better. They spoke softly together between the acts, with Clara’s brightness returning in shy, uncertain flashes beneath his attention. Aurelia watched them and said nothing.
Each time Owen turned toward her, some careful remark passed between them, polished and proper and utterly inadequate. She answered as she ought. He behaved as he ought. And the fragile intimacy of their letters seemed to fold itself away, hidden beneath gloves, bows, and public composure.
Once, she caught him looking at her as though he wished to say something else. Then, a lady in the next box leaned forward to greet him, and the moment vanished.
By the end of the evening, Aurelia had decided. She would not tell him, not there, not yet, and perhaps not at all.
Later, in the foyer, while cloaks were being retrieved and carriages called, Aurelia noticed that Captain Harrow was approached by a young man in plain dark clothes. The man murmured something close to his ear. Captain Harrow’s expression changed at once.
Aurelia saw the color leave his face, then rush back with sudden animation. He turned sharply to Owen and spoke in a low voice, too low for her to catch.
Owen went very still. Then, he looked at Aurelia. For the first time all evening, the restraint broke. His eyes lit with something so unguarded, so fiercely relieved, that she forgot every careful resolution she had made.
“Miss Finch,” he revealed to her, watchful that no one overheard them. “Carter has been found.”
For one second, Aurelia could not understand him. Then the meaning struck.
Found.
Her breath caught, and before she could think better of it, before propriety could seize her wrist and hold it down, she reached for him. Her hand closed around his. The contact shocked them both into silence. His hand was warm beneath her glove. For the briefest instant, his fingers tightened around hers as though the same instinct had moved through him.
Then Aurelia remembered where they were. She withdrew at once, her heart beating painfully hard.
“I beg your pardon,” she addressed him in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “I was merely … overjoyed by the news.”
He looked down at his hand, then back at her. Whatever he might have said was lost as the theater erupted in full movement. Cloaks were being brought forward, names were called, carriages summoned. All of it should have helped. It should have given Aurelia the chance to recover herself, yet it didn’t.
She folded her hands more tightly together, but the effort was useless. She could still feel the warmth of Owen’s hand beneath her glove and the brief answering pressure of his fingers before sense had returned to them both.
