Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Matilda Elgin arrived at half past ten, which was early enough that the household was still in its morning disorder—Edward's boots cluttering the entryway, Daisy and George audibly arguing somewhere above, the remains of breakfast cleared by their limited staff.
Daphne was already in the morning room when Matilda was shown in, and the tale escaped the young woman before Tamsin could catch it back.
“Tamsin is engaged!” Daphne declared before Matilda had barely bent to sit. “To Lord Hartwell—yesterday—in a gig!”
Matilda, half-frozen in an indelicate position, turned to Tamsin, who was standing in the doorway with a shawl she had not yet wrapped around her shoulders.
“In a gig,” Matilda repeated.
“He drove her through York,” Daphne continued, with great enthusiasm, obviously waiting since yesterday to tell this news to someone who would appreciate it properly. “And proposed—and she said yes, and he went straight in to Papa. Tamsin is to be married in only two weeks!”
Tamsin forced a smile. Though she had wanted to tell her best friend in private, at least the initial shock of the news was out of the way.
“Thank you, Daphne,” Tamsin said at last, shoulders falling.
“You are most welcome.” Daphne showed no sign of understanding Tamsin’s tone nor her pained smile as a dismissal. She picked up a cushion and hugged it to herself. “Is it not incredible news, Mrs. Elgin?”
“Indeed. Most incredible.” Matilda’s eyebrows had raised high enough to hide behind her curls.
Tamsin winced and shrugged at Matilda. Her friend looked back at her with an expression carefully composed over something that might have been delight, or alarm, or both.
“Have you come for our walk?” Tamsin looked meaningfully at her guest. She and her friend had planned no such thing.
“Yes, and I should like to begin immediately,” said Matilda, rising quickly to her feet. “Thank you for sharing the news, Miss Daphne.” She hastily curtsied and joined Tamsin in the corridor.
They did not say a word until they were out of doors, though they linked arms at once.
The garden was not much—a lawn, an apple tree past its fruit, the kitchen beds rotated and planted for the coming winter—but it was outside, and outside meant the conversation was theirs.
The younger children materialized within minutes, as younger children always did when the weather permitted, but Daisy and George were immediately absorbed in something competitive involving a stick, and Henry attached himself to Tamsin's side for approximately half a minute before being lured away by the stick situation.
Matilda was clearly waiting until they were far enough from the house, and the sound of play, to ensure privacy. “Proposed to. In a gig,” she said again with a little delighted curl to her lips. “Tamsin!”
“It was practical,” Tamsin swiftly defended. “He wanted to show me something of York. We were not alone in any improper sense, you know, and my stepmother had given her consent to the trip. He has a perfect reputation. We were out in public the whole time. Or, well, nearly the whole time.”
“I am not concerned about impropriety, I am concerned about the fact that you appear to have agreed to marry a baron yesterday and you appear…” Matilda studied her. “Tamsin. You appear quite calm.”
“Everyone keeps remarking on that.” Her sisters, her stepmother, even her father at dinner the evening before.
“Because it is remarkable.” Matilda stopped walking and studied her friend closely. “How do you feel? I do not mean about what happened, nor what it means for the family. How do you feel, in this exact moment.”
Tamsin fell quiet, frowning at her friend. The children shouted something behind the hedges. Henry sounded triumphant. It seemed he had acquired the stick.
“I feel….” She considered her words carefully. “Uncertain, I suppose. Not about the decision. It makes a great deal of sense. I am a touch concerned about what comes after.”
With a lift of her eyebrows, Matilda adopted a tone of caution. “What exactly do you mean? After?”
“He is a very busy man.” Tamsin spoke carefully, the way she did when she was working out whether the things she said were fair.
“He has an estate to run—then there is the House of Lords. Politics, you know, he is quite involved. And his personal interests. He cares about York, deeply, more than I think most people understand. There will be dinners, obligations, campaigns, and—” She tried to speak with greater calm.
“I know how to be useful. I will make myself useful. But if he is gone often, will I be needed at all? I do not know what I am when I am not needed.” Tamsin looked back at Sycamore Lodge.
“They will not need me anymore here, if Lord Hartwell holds true to his promises. His life is already arranged to his liking, I have no doubt. He has a household full of staff to take care of things. He has managed all this time without a wife. What if I am of no use to him at all?”
Matilda was quiet for a moment, then carefully took one of Tamsin’s hands in her own and looked directly into her eyes.
“Do you think a man who re-arranged his schedule to drive you through the city is planning to ignore you? A man who met you such a short time ago and decided to propose with such speed cannot find you dull, my dear.”
Tamsin did not have an answer for that, except, “I would rather be found dull than be ignored.” As she watched her father ignore his wife and children almost every day, preferring books or birds to their conversation or company.
That elicited an empathetic frown and gentle press of her hand.
“Oh, Tamsin, my dear. I do not think he will ignore you. Lord Hartwell has been a friend to my brother for many years, and I know he takes his responsibilities seriously.” Tamsin wasn’t certain that was much better, but her friend continued.
“Is it possible that what you think of as being ignored is in reality not being needed every minute, for every decision? A lack of dependency upon your person is not the same thing at all.”
“I know they are not the same thing.” Tamsin huffed and looked toward the children, almost wishing they required correction to distract from her friend’s observation. Which she probably should not examine too closely. “I am used to being wanted, or needed. That is all.”
“I am not sure that you know the difference. Not yet.” Matilda said it without accusation, yet it stung Tamsin to hear her dearest friend’s doubts.
“You have been needed every minute, of every day, for fifteen years. The idea of not being sought for every minor decision—it probably feels like being set down and forgotten. But what if it is not that way at all? What if it is simply…restful?”
Tamsin looked at the apple tree. Henry had abandoned the stick and was now attempting to climb the fence at the garden's edge, which he knew full well he was not supposed to do.
“Henry,” she said, voice pitched to carry without having to shout, a technique she had perfected over the course of many years.
He climbed down without argument, which was either obedience or strategy. Her eyes narrowed.
“You deserve quiet,” Matilda said, not letting the matter drop. “That is all that I am saying. You are allowed to want it, too.”
Tamsin thought about the gig: the drive through York, the streets she had known all her life made briefly strange by having someone beside her who saw them differently.
The quality of his attention, when she spoke, had taken her aback.
No one, save Matilda and perhaps one or two other friends, paid that much attention to what she had to say.
“There is quiet in my life.” Tamsin thought of the many nights at the dining table, when everyone had left but her.
There were the silent hours in her bedchamber when the house went quiet, too, and her mind remained awake to think on all the precious things she saved up throughout the day without having anyone to share them with.
“I cannot say I enjoy it overmuch. It is quite lonely.”
Matilda looked down at the paving stones.
“I understand that. Which is why I am not living in the house my late husband left me. Oh, Tamsin. I do not think it will be terrible.” Her smile, though it retained gentleness, turned teasing.
“Lord Hartwell asked you to marry him. We all thought him a confirmed bachelor. Something about you must have captured his attention, and a man such as him will not forget that quickly.”
But what if Lord Hartwell did forget?
Tamsin had watched it happen again and again. If her father, a married man with ten children, could forget to pay attention to them, a baron with much more important things to do certainly could.
“I think,” she said slowly, the thought gently emerging, “I am more afraid of wanting his attention than I am of not getting it.”
Matilda squeezed her arm and said nothing, which was likely the only right response.
Henry appeared at Tamsin’s elbow. He had grass on his knee from the fence attempt and wore a most studious little frown. “Tamsin, I have a question. When you get married, are you going to live somewhere else?”
Tamsin nodded and brushed his hair into some semblance of order. “Yes, that is what happens when one marries. You live with your spouse.”
“You will be in York?”
“Yes. Not far at all, in fact.”
He considered this with the gravity of a seven-year-old conducting a serious interview. “Will you still come back to visit us?”
Her heart fell at the earnestness of the question.
She had been with the little boy near constantly since his infancy.
Indeed, he ran to her more often than he did his own mother, a fact that weighed her heart down with guilt on more than one occasion, though her stepmother had never said a word about it.
“I will visit as often as I can,” she said, holding back her sudden sorrow. “And you may visit me.”