Chapter 10 #2
“Yes. Today I watched you laugh at a joke about bread passed between windows, and put your hand against a thousand-year-old wall, expecting it might tell you something, and I find I am curious about what else you might do, given the chance to simply exist rather than manage anyone other than yourself. I suspect you have not been given much opportunity to consider your thoughts and plans before others’ in some years. ”
He was right. That startled her more than his proposal had.
“How soon do you want to be married?” Tamsin asked, putting away the rest of the conversation to examine later.
“As soon as I can arrange for a Common License, if that suits.”
Quickly, then. Within days.
Did she mind? It gave her little time to plan or think through what this change would mean. Then again, Tamsin had spent the last decade of her life considering marriage and never had the opportunity to put her theories into action. Here, at last, was the opportunity.
“Of course. You had better speak to my father at once.”
He gave his attention to the horse. “As you say, Miss Mayweather.” He guided the horse onto the path and the road toward home, where she was quite certain her news would cause a stir far bigger than Lady Hartwell’s visit—or indeed, anything else, ever had.
In short order, Lord Hartwell was sequestered with her father in the study at Sycamore Lodge. Tamsin stood in the corridor outside the room and waited for the shock to arrive.
Somehow, she remained perfectly calm.
A baron had proposed marriage to her not forty minutes past, in a gig, beside an old Roman wall.
She had said yes. He had brought her home and walked directly into her father’s study with the calm of a man who had already decided how this afternoon would proceed.
She had watched the door close behind him. She was still watching it now.
What Tamsin felt was not shock, exactly. It was quieter than shock. Something like the moment after finishing a very long list of household duties—that relief when the rooms were clean and quiet, and there was nothing left to catch the attention of one’s mind.
That seemed significant.
The sound of her sisters on the stairs brought her attention back to the present, and it was Seraphina who saw her first. “You’re back early. Did something—” She had a good look at Tamsin’s face. “Something did happen.”
It was not a question. Seraphina had always been able to read Tamsin well.
“Lord Hartwell is speaking with Father.” Tamsin declared it plainly, for there was no better way to say it. She pursed her lips and considered how best to explain what she herself was still puzzling out.
A pause. Pearl, two steps behind, pressed forward. “Speaking with Father about what?”
Tamsin looked at them both. Then at Daphne, who had appeared at the top of the staircase, only her head peeking around the banister. The seventeen-year-old had evidently not yet decided whether what she had sensed from three rooms away warranted coming downstairs.
“Come with me,” Tamsin said with a sigh.
The sitting room was mercifully empty of small children, which unfortunately begged the question where they were.
Once her older sisters were inside, Tamsin closed the door.
The three of them arranged themselves in the attitudes of women who intended to receive information and intended to receive it thoroughly: Seraphina on the settee with her hands folded, Pearl perched on the arm with her feet not touching the floor, Daphne standing against the wall near the door, as if she might slip out the moment the conversation grew dull.
“I had best say it simply, as I do not entirely understand it myself. Lord Hartwell asked me to marry him.”
The other young ladies produced sounds that were high-pitched and rather delighted.
“When?” Pearl demanded.
“During the drive.”
“Which drive? The one today? There has only been the one time—”
“Yes, the one today.”
“And you said—” Seraphina leaned forward, brow furrowed deeply for one so young.
“Yes.” Tamsin took in a short breath. “I said yes.”
Another cacophony of surprise emitted from all three. Daphne pressed both hands over her mouth, emitting a most unladylike, smothered scream that marked her youth.
Tamsin dropped into the chair across from the couch, because sitting seemed like the appropriate response to being exclaimed upon. “You may ask your questions. I can see that you have them, and I will do my best to answer.”
They had plenty. Did she love him? No, not yet.
Did he love her? She couldn’t say with certainty, but she did not think so.
Did she find him terribly handsome? He was handsome, yes.
Was he kind? She believed so. Did she want to marry him, truly?
And here Tamsin paused, because this was the question which mattered most to them, and she owed her younger sisters—already hoping for matches of their own—an honest answer.
“Yes,” she said. “I want to.”
Seraphina’s expression shifted from surprise into something softer. “You are remarkably calm about all this.”
Yes, Tamsin found it odd too. “I know.”
Pearl had cupped her own cheeks in her hand, eyes large as saucers. “You should be more—I do not know, should you not be more—”
Her struggle to find the right word was most unusual.
“Tumultuous of spirit or mind,” Seraphina supplied, patting Pearl on the hand.
“Yes.” Pearl relaxed somewhat. “Distraught. Plussed. Befuddled. Aflutter!”
Tamsin nodded. “I thought I would be. I am still waiting for something other than this.”