Chapter 6
Chapter Six
The solicitors’ offices on Stonegate of Mr. Christopher Holly’s practice had a calmness and sense of order that Roman appreciated every time he entered.
He had spent enough hours there to stop noticing details, except when there was a change, and the following Thursday walked through the door to where a clerk sat at a desk, scribbling something until he saw Roman.
The man stood quickly, chair scraping, and bowed. “Good day, Lord Hartwell. Is Mr. Holly expecting you?”
Roman inclined his head politely. “Not today, Peters. But if he is available, I have matters to address with him.”
“Of course, your lordship. Standing orders are to always show you in when Mr. Holly is alone.”
The clerk led Roman through one of the thick oak doors directly into Holly’s domain, announcing Roman with a bow.
Holly dismissed the young man with a single nod before Roman had fully crossed the threshold.
That was one of Holly’s economies, never wasting a word where an expression would do the same work.
Beyond the window the street carried on with its ordinary business—a newspaper boy dodging a dray, someone’s hat lost to the wind—but none of it touched the room itself.
The fire was, as ever, well-tended. The desk sat in a state of order Roman privately suspected Holly maintained as much for Holly’s comfort as for any client’s benefit.
Ledgers squared to the desk’s edge, correspondence sorted into stacks whose logic only Holly could have named, not a smear of ink anywhere in evidence.
His friend was someone who found disorder genuinely offensive, and Roman had always felt entirely at home in that particular prejudice, which probably said something about both of them.
Holly rose and gestured to the chair across from his desk, and his face was the same as ever: acknowledging his friend and client, but otherwise giving nothing away. “Hartwell. One moment, if you would.” He continued his writing in a thin notebook. “I was not expecting you.”
“I was in the neighborhood.” This was true, though York was not a large city.
He was nearly always in the neighborhood, or near enough to it.
It was also not the reason he was here, and Holly would know that immediately, so there was little point elaborating.
Roman drew off his gloves one finger at a time as he crossed to the chair, laying them precisely across one knee as he sat—a habit Holly had once called fussy and Roman had called orderly.
Neither man had ever conceded the point.
“How was your journey? The paperwork for Lyness’s cottage… I assume everything is in order?”
“Entirely.” Holly ran his pencil down a list in his book, at ease in his natural habitat. “Your brother will have everything he needs for a comfortable establishment. Lady Emily should be quite pleased, though I gather she has opinions about libraries, and the roof is not yet replaced.”
“She can have all the opinions she wishes, since it will be hers.” Roman looked at the fire for a moment.
Then, with careful casualness, he said what he had rehearsed on his way.
“I understand you are acquainted with a Mr. Mayweather. A solicitor, near our age. I believe I might have encountered one of his brothers recently.”
Holly’s expression did not change. “Charles Mayweather. Yes, I know him. We have worked in proximity on several matters. He is clever enough, pleasant company, unremarkable in his ambitions but sound in his judgments.” A pause. “What is your interest in him?”
“None specifically. I was curious about the family as a whole.” Roman kept his tone even. “Large household, I understand. Father of independent means. They live out on Tadcaster Road.”
“They do.” Holly studied him, gaze sharpening. “May I ask how you came to be curious about them?”
“I have met a few of the family here and there.” He kept it vague intentionally. Holly was far too clever by half. Roman pressed on before Holly could ask another question. “I understand the family might be experiencing some…financial difficulty at present.”
A silence stretched, long enough that the settling of the fire seemed loud.
Holly’s head tilted several degrees to one side, which on another man would have been a mild reaction.
On Holly, who had spent a professional lifetime training his face into blandness, it was practically an outburst. “My sister hinted at something of the sort this morning. She is friendly with the eldest daughter.” Another pause, longer this time, the kind Holly used when deciding how much of a question to ask outright.
“How do you know about any of this, Hartwell?”
“I have my sources.” Roman adjusted his cuff, avoiding eye contact with his far too observant friend.
“I have no intention of prying into private matters. I am merely aware of the situation, and I find myself wondering whether a call at Sycamore Lodge might be appropriate from someone like yourself. A social call, perhaps, to see what might be done to strengthen their position. Nothing noteworthy, of course. When a genteel family of the city experiences hardship, those within their circle ought to help where possible.”
Holly looked at him for a long moment before looking at the notes he had been working on when Roman arrived.
He set his pencil down with great deliberateness, not slowly enough to be theatrical, simply with care, laying it exactly parallel to the edge of the notebook before he gave his full attention elsewhere. He folded his hands on the desk.
In the outer room, someone laughed loudly. Neither of them so much as twitched.
“A social call,” the solicitor repeated.
“Yes.”
“And you wish to come, I gather?” Holly’s gaze seemed to look through him. “Visiting a family you have no close acquaintance with. Outside of the city walls.”
“I believe I might have briefly encountered one of the younger children near the walls some days ago. A boy. He was quite taken with my dogs.” Roman met Holly’s gaze without difficulty.
He had said nothing untrue. He was aware this was not the point.
“I thought it might be a pleasant thing to call. A kindness, nothing more. The boy seemed lively.”
Holly was quiet for a moment that lasted precisely long enough to make Roman aware of exactly how thin his stated reasoning was.
The man knew how to use silence to drive someone mad.
“This,” his friend said at last, “is the most peculiar idea you have ever had.” He unfolded his hands and rose, opening a closet almost invisible in the wall.
He reached inside for his greatcoat and shrugged into it with an unhurried manner.
He was always methodical and calm. Roman had yet to ever see his friend flustered.
“As your friend, I have a thousand questions.” He picked up his hat, turning it once in his hands before settling it.
“As your solicitor, I will humor your strange whim without asking a single one of them.
Shall we take your carriage or walk? ‘Tis a distance.”
Roman stood. He had not actually expected this to work quite so smoothly, which meant he had not entirely thought through what came next. A rarity in his life.
“The carriage,” he suggested. “The dogs are at home, and we must fetch them first.”
Holly fixed him with a look. “Of course we must,” he said, with no inflection whatsoever, and led the way to the door. “One cannot meet new acquaintances without Apollo and Athena.”
After they collected the dogs they did not speak much on the ride to Tadcaster Road.
Holly stared out the window, and Roman thought the man appeared to be enjoying this unexpected interruption to his day.
The carriage turned toward Micklegate, and he watched the barbican rise ahead of them through the glass.
Outside the city walls they went, on a thoroughfare the Romans were rumored to have paved into a road over a thousand years before.
Roman looked at the hat in his hands. Trusting his intuition had never served him wrong. The visit with Holly was another instance of that. He was a man who had built a political career on reading situations accurately and acting on what he observed.
He had observed something worth investigating in Miss Mayweather.
He was entirely certain that was all this was: a curiosity. Once he visited her, saw her again, he would know why his thoughts kept circling back to her.
Athena grumbled from where she sat on the carriage floor and dropped her chin on his leg. The dogs preferred to run alongside the carriage for short stretches, but he wanted their energy and best behavior for the Mayweather children, however many of them there were.
As the carriage turned onto a small lane off Tadcaster Road and a house came into view, Roman caught the very edge of something cross Holly’s face; a suspiciously knowing smile, which disappeared before it fully arrived.
Roman decided not to mention it.
The twins had been tolerably well-behaved for nearly half an hour, which was approaching their natural limit.
Daisy had produced a creditable sketch of the apple tree at the garden’s edge, though she had given it considerably more fruit than it currently possessed, and George had drawn what he described as a horse but which bore a stronger resemblance to a very confident dog.
Tamsin praised both with equal sincerity and was in the process of redirecting George toward a second attempt when Henry’s voice reached them from the direction of the house.
“They are here! They are HERE! Tamsin, TAMSIN, the LION-DOGS—”
He came around the corner of the house running breathlessly, arms swinging with abandon, face incandescent with a joy suggesting the second coming of something genuinely miraculous.
Behind him, moving at a considerably more dignified pace, came her stepmother—and behind her stepmother, acting as if it was a perfectly ordinary thing to happen on a cloudless afternoon in September, came Lord Hartwell.