Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The fire in Roman’s dressing room had burned down to cinders by the time Dinsdale finished with his cravat, and Roman had been staring at his own reflection without really looking at it long enough that his valet had to clear his throat.
“Will that do, my lord?”
“Yes? Oh, yes. Thank you, Dinsdale.”
The valet withdrew, leaving Roman with the looking glass and the problem of his own behavior over the past four days.
He looked at his reflection. Jacket. Cravat. Hair. Everything in order. He looked exactly as he always looked for dinner, which was to say he looked like a man with nothing pressing on his mind.
An inaccurate image. Most inaccurate.
Still, the more like himself he appeared, the better.
“There will not be any objection,” he informed his reflection. “I am doing what is expected of me.” Though saying that and facing his family with his decision was another matter entirely.
Best consider the practical argument first. He had been assembling it ever since the carriage ride home, which had given him hours to think on it and produced the following logic: Miss Mayweather was a gentleman’s daughter of good character, respectable reputation, and clear intelligence.
She was capable—demonstrably, exhaustingly capable.
She was not being courted by anyone. Her family’s situation was such that a reasonable offer from a man of his position would be welcome.
These were facts. They formed a coherent argument.
His mother would see through them immediately.
Not because they were untrue. Because they were not, if he was honest with himself, the reason he was standing in his room putting together a debate the way he would for the House of Lords.
The practical points were the reason he could present the idea at all.
The actual sequence of events which had led him to his decision was considerably less dignified, and he had no intention of sharing the truth with anyone.
First, he had asked his groom to look into a woman because she had been kind to his dog.
Second, he had sat in his own study and listened at a door for the better part of half an hour rather than announce himself or close it, telling his brother Athena was to blame, which Lyness had not believed for a moment.
Third, Roman had called on a family he had never met, on the stated grounds that one of their youngest children had admired his dogs near the city walls, which was an explanation he had now offered twice and which sounded no more convincing the second time.
And this afternoon in a meadow he had a conversation that was, on its surface, entirely unremarkable—short, slightly halting, conducted at a careful distance—and had been unable to stop thinking about his conversational partner.
He adjusted his cuff.
The difficulty was not that he couldn’t explain any of this.
The difficulty was that the explanation, laid out plainly, amounted to: he had paid an unusual amount of attention to a woman he had spoken to for a combined total of perhaps half an hour, and the attention showed no sign of diminishing of its own accord.
Which was not a thing he was accustomed to. He was accustomed to being deliberate. Measured. To knowing why he was doing a thing before he did it.
He was unaccustomed to his dog’s behavior constituting evidence of sound judgment.
Yet here he was, prepared to go downstairs and tell his mother he thought Miss Thomasine Mayweather might make a fine baroness, with Athena’s opinion of the woman forming a not-insignificant part of the foundation of that position.
It was not, he thought distractedly, his finest hour as a rational man.
But the practical argument was also true. The two things together—the practical argument, and whatever the other thing was that he was not yet prepared to name—was more than enough to act on.
Roman took a breath and examined himself one last time. His mother needed to see a clear-eyed man who had made a decision and intended to stand behind it. Even the parts which did not reflect especially well on him.
The drawing room was warm enough that Lady Hartwell had drawn her chair closer to the lamp than the fire, the better to examine the catalog spread across her lap.
It was a substantial volume she had been studying for days—Roses of Europe, with illustrations detailed enough to satisfy a woman who took her garden seriously—and she turned its pages with a focused contentment he knew came from her love of the flowers.
Roman stepped into the room and took up a position at the window with his hands behind his back, staring out at the darkening street. “Do you know anything of the Mayweather family?”
“You came in so quietly, I had stopped expecting you to say anything at all.” She turned a page. “Mayweather. Mayweather. A unique name. The Mayweathers on the Tadcaster Road?”
“Yes.”
“Mm.” His mother tilted the catalog toward the lamp to better examine an illustration of a climbing rose.
“Mm.” She tapped the drawing. “These would not survive a Yorkshire winter.” She turned another page.
“I know Mrs. Mayweather through Mrs. Holly. A perfectly agreeable woman, very energetic on committees. No interest in gardening whatsoever, which is a shame. They have quite a decent bit of land out there and she does nothing with it.” A fresh page, a fresh examination of a new rose. “Why do you ask?”
Roman ensured his voice remained level. “I was curious what you knew of the family. Christopher Holly knows them through his sister. He said they move about Society a good deal.”
“Did he?” Lady Hartwell found a page on Italian varieties and paused.
“A Rosa gallica. I wonder if that would survive our climate?” She glanced up at Roman.
“They have daughters, I think. The oldest I have not seen in some time. Then there is a pair of them, out in Society, I have seen them at assemblies. Pretty girls, very close together in age.” She frowned slightly at the catalog.
“Do you think Rosa gallica would manage out of doors here, or would I need to give it a glass house? It wants full sun apparently, which is not something York offers with any reliability.”
Her obsession with roses could not be distracted, then—or at least, not yet.
“I could not say. But we have talked of the glass house before, Mother. I am certain it would not work within the city.” He knew if he let the conversation stray toward roses, there would be no pulling it back.
“As to the Mayweathers, I have encountered the eldest. Miss Thomasine Mayweather.”
“Indeed?” She looked up briefly. “I do not think I have ever seen her at anything. One hears of the others constantly. Miss Seraphina, the pretty dark one, and Miss Pearl, and a younger is coming out at Christmas, I believe. But the eldest?” She considered.
“No. I do not think I have ever seen her anywhere at all.”
Roman’s pulse did not flutter. It did not. “She does not go out much, I am told.”
“Apparently not.” Lady Hartwell returned to the catalog. “The Italian roses are beautiful. Whether they are beautiful enough to justify a hothouse is another question entirely.” She turned another page. “Roman.”
Why not a hothouse, if it could be a small one? “Yes, Mother?”
She gazed at him steadily. “Why are you telling me about a young woman I have never met?”
He remained facing the window. “I wondered if you might like to meet her.”
There was quite a pause before his mother answered him. “Why,” she asked slowly, “should I want to meet a young lady I have barely heard of and never glimpsed?”
He turned from the window, looking at the fireplace rather than her, not certain how to announce his thoughts without shocking her. Perhaps it was likely a lost cause, despite his mental rehearsals, given that his mind was still sorting out the reasons behind his decision.
Best to get on with it. “I think she could make a fine baroness.”
His mother grew still. Then she moved from the corner of his eye, closing the rose catalog.
“Roman.” She kept her voice gentle, in that motherly way of speaking to him about a small misunderstanding rather than his entire future. He knew that tone. It was the one she thought was the best way to get answers out of him. “Have you fallen in love?”
“No.” He replied with neither hesitation nor defensiveness.
It was an easy enough fact to admit. “No. I have tried, three times now, to engage myself to a woman I thought well of, building affection between us. Each time, the lady turned away in favor of someone else. I do not say this with bitterness—each of them did what was right for herself, and I hold no ill will.” He paused, untangling his thoughts.
“But I have been practical about a great many things in my life, and I think it is time I was practical about this as well.”
Lady Hartwell waited, hands folded in her lap, staring at him with a seriousness he had not seen in her for some time. “Have you spoken to the young woman yourself? Do you know anything about her?”
“We have spoken at length,” he admitted, “only today.”
“Today.” She touched her temple. “And you believe she would accept you?”
“Yes. I do.” In truth, the thought of her declining had not occurred to Roman.
She shook her head slightly, brow furrowed. “Why her, specifically?”
“Miss Mayweather is from York. She is a gentleman’s daughter, of humbler means than our family, but that is no obstacle.
She strikes me as practical. Frugal. Honest.” He pictured her in the meadow.
Wisps of hair loose from her bonnet, that quick smile as she watched her brothers and sister enjoy themselves.
“Pleasant-looking, too. She is being courted by no one and has no prospects I am aware of, so she will not turn away from a reasonable offer in favor of someone else.” He paced away from his mother to the other side of the hearth.
“Her family is in some difficulty at present—financial mismanagement, no scandal. I could do some genuine good there, for the younger children especially.” He straightened. “Everyone would benefit.”
Lady Hartwell looked at her son for a long moment. Roman could not hold her gaze, so he let his own fall to the carpet. It had been much easier to meet his own eyes in the looking glass.
“Do you truly believe that?” his mother eventually asked quietly. “A reasonable offer that benefits everyone… Is that really enough for marriage, Roman?”
Roman took in a deep breath. His mind turned over her words, but he did not immediately have the ability to mount a defense.
He was not uncertain, exactly. Marriages of quality had begun with less. “I believe she will accept the offer. I believe you will like her.”
“I am not worried about liking her. I am concerned about you tying your life to hers, forever.” She dropped her hand to her lap. “I wish you to be happy, Roman.”
He opened his mouth to answer as the door opened.
Lyness came in, adjusting the hem of his waistcoat.
“I apologize. A meeting ran late and I…” His voice trailed away, eyebrows raised as he took in the air of the room.
He looked at his mother. He looked at his brother.
He looked at the closed catalog in his mother’s lap and Roman standing at the fireplace with his hands behind his back. “What did I miss?”
Lady Hartwell picked up her catalog. “Your brother, being painfully practical.”
Roman winced. “Mother—”
The butler entered the room. “My lord, my lady, sir, dinner is served.”
Well. He would have to finish the discussion with her later.