Chapter 9 #2
“Evidence that perhaps our traditions and folklore have some basis in fact,” she said with a blithe grin.
“My own brothers have found odd bits about the woods. Buttons. Coins. They play at treasure hunting quite often, though sometimes the treasure will merely be an interestingly shaped rock.” Miss Mayweather was quiet for a moment, looking out at the landscape ahead.
Not the polite forward gaze of someone waiting for conversation to resume, but taking time to observe.
“It is easy to forget, at times, how very long people have lived on this land.”
“Indeed.” Roman turned forward as the city walls came into view. “Many take it for granted that the stone walls are simply there, and have always been, and will always be.”
After a moment, she said, “It doesn’t announce itself.
” When he glanced sideways at her, she clarified.
“The city, I mean. You come along this road and the fields, the trees, the hills, are all quite lovely. And then the city—it is suddenly there. All at once, like something out of a fairy story or a tale of King Arthur’s court.
” A small smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.
Roman’s heart made a most inconvenient movement. He wasn’t certain he liked it. But it jumped in response to that smile even as she looked away.
He looked firmly at the road. Micklegate Bar rose ahead, above the rooflines, and he knew precisely what she meant.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t shout about itself much.” He found, without quite deciding to, that his shoulders had relaxed.
He did not plan to slow at Micklegate Bar. He never planned to. He simply always did.
The horse dropped to a walk without much guidance from him, and Roman looked up at the gate the way he always looked up at it; the way people ought to look at something which has been there longer than anyone living can remember and will be there long after everyone currently passing beneath it was gone.
“Every monarch entering York has to stop here,” he said.
He wasn’t trying to lecture, but that was what came out.
“They ask the Lord Mayor’s permission before they can proceed.
Even a king waits at this gate.” He let his gaze travel up the stone.
“Richard of York’s head was displayed up there after Wakefield.
Paper crown and all, if you believe the accounts.
The last Jacobite skulls went up in 1746—the city was still putting heads on its gates within living memory of our oldest citizens.
” He paused. Talking of severed heads wasn’t something one ought to do while courting, was it?
He cleared his throat. “It has received kings and tragedies through the same arch. Generally with equal ceremony.”
Miss Mayweather was looking up at the barbican. She remained silent as she took in the structure, brow furrowed as she spoke thoughtfully. “The stone does not distinguish, does it? Between the triumphant entries and the terrible ones.”
Roman looked at her without quite knowing what to say to that observation. She was right, of course, and she had not winced at his lecturing or the mention of the beheadings, that detail his mother ordered him to omit when he gave tours to their friends visiting York for the first time.
Did her easy attention to the matter make her strange? Or mark her as a woman with less delicate sensibilities than was common?
He couldn’t find it in him to care on either point. Tamsin’s unusual response made her someone interesting, which made him quite curious about what she might say next.
The Ouse Bridge carried them over the river at an easy pace, and Roman let the horse slow to accommodate the foot traffic crossing in both directions. The water below was pewter-gray and moving steadily, a fisherman’s boat passing beneath, the Ouse indifferent to the city built along its banks.
They cleared the bridge and he turned the gig right toward the first item of interest on his usual tour route. “Clifford’s Tower.”
She was already looking ahead with her eyes bright beneath the brim of her bonnet.
“I know it. I have taken Edward and the twins there twice, Henry is still too small to resist the temptation. George tried to scale the mound on his own and managed to climb halfway before he thought better of it.” Here she paused, her smile the soft sort that came from a pleasant memory.
“My stepmother has a firm fear of the structure collapsing and will not hear of anyone going inside.”
“It has stood in some way or another for six hundred years.” He had been inside it many times himself, which he did not mention.
“I did not say the fear was rational.” Her eyebrows raised, her head tilted to the side as she regarded the old stones. “Or that I shared her cause for anxiety.”
His mouth did something that was almost a smile. “I could arrange a proper tour. Of the interior.”
Miss Mayweather turned to look at him, the interest on her face unguarded and immediate. “Yes, if it is possible, my lord. I would like that very much.”
He faced forward and noted, without dwelling on it, that she had not deflected or gushed with gratitude.
She had simply said yes. He preferred that directness to the overly polite way other ladies had of agreeing to things.
So often it seemed to Roman that women thought it best to mask their eagerness or disinterest. He understood the game of social niceties, but he also appreciated when they were ignored for practical reasons.
Castlegate opened before them, and Roman guided the horse through the street without comment until the familiar facade of Hartwell House appeared on their right.
“My family has kept a home here since 1758,” he said. “My grandfather’s doing. My father was born at the estate in the country, but I was born here. In York itself.”
She looked at the house with an expression he could not entirely read. “I have seen it before.”
Roman did not ask when. He knew when, and why. And that event had led him directly to this moment.
They moved on, with a quick flick of the reins and a toss of the gelding’s head to the Shambles, which hit the senses before it came into view—though less offensive now than in summer, with the days growing cooler.
Roman glanced at her, wondering if it was best to skip this stop.
Miss Mayweather did not reach for a handkerchief.
Instead she looked up at the upper stories of the buildings crowding toward each other overhead.
“My oldest brother dared me to walk the length of the street when I was seventeen in the middle of August. My stepmother was furious with him.” She tilted her head, still looking up.
“I imagine the people in those upper rooms could pass a loaf of bread across to their neighbor without going downstairs.”
“They have been known to,” Roman said with a chuckle. How had that chuckle escaped him?
She turned to him with a crooked smile. “Truly?”
“I have no documents or eye witnesses,” he admitted. “But I believe the tale entirely.”
That made her laugh, brief and unguarded, and Roman’s heart did that unfortunate thing again. But was it so unfortunate when a lightness remained in his chest? Her laugh, bright and cheery, was the sort he wanted to hear again.
The Minster stopped conversation the way it always did as they approached the magnificent stone edifice. He had timed it correctly for the noon bells to begin at any moment.
Roman drew the horse to a walk and said nothing, because there was nothing useful to say about it from the outside. One either felt the spirit of the vast monument to mankind’s reach for the eternities…or one did not.
The bells began to toll the hour. Beside him, Miss Mayweather went still. Her face lifted toward the towers, and for a moment he did not think she even drew breath.
“All the people who stood here before us,” she said quietly, perhaps to herself.
“Hearing the same bells. It is incredible to think upon. They all had lives. Hopes. Struggles. Rivers of people have flowed around this place, as the river flows. Their prayers pressed into these stones. And these stones continue to stand.”
A pull beneath his ribs, a warmth in his chest, and his mind taking in what she said with satisfaction…all of it gave Roman leave to think he had chosen well.
She would do well as a baroness. As his wife.
The bells finished. Miss Mayweather released a soft sigh, still looking up, still drinking in the sight of the magnificent structure.
Thus far she had taken in everything he had shown her with interest, if not reverence.
There was one more place he rarely took others; not because it was a secret or sacred to anyone but him, but because it was simple.
Unassuming. Yet it was on every map he had seen of his home city, as far back as such things reached.
“There is one more thing I would like to show you,” he said gently. “If you are willing.”
Miss Mayweather focused on him again, her intelligent eyes bright and untired. “Yes,” she said, before he had told her what it was. “I am not at all ready for our adventure to end.”
Roman believed her, much to his pleasure. Nothing about her attitude or tone struck him as mere indulgence, but instead curiosity. His choice to propose matrimony settled in his mind, weightless as a feather as his shoulders relaxed.
Thomasine Mayweather would be an excellent match for him, in every way that mattered.