Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Three days before the ceremony, Lady Hartwell sent an invitation for Tamsin to visit. A carriage with a coachman and groom arrived at Sycamore Lodge, a maid tucked inside with a smile.
The groom opened the door for Tamsin, and she paused before stepping inside. He made only brief eye contact before offering his hand to assist her inside, yet she immediately recognized him. He had been the man holding Lord Hartwell’s two enormous dogs steady while Henry made a study of them.
“You had charge of Apollo and Athena, that day on the walls I was with Henry. My brother.”
Something shifted in the groom’s weathered face and he grinned. “Aye, miss. You’ve a good memory.”
“Henry has spoken of it often since. He is convinced Apollo remembers him and likes him.”
The groom chuckled. “Wouldn’t put it past the old fellow.”
“What is your name, if I may ask?” She wanted to be polite. Did baronesses deign to know their servants’ names? They must. Surely. And if he cared for the dogs, the dogs that meant so much to Lord Hartwell, she ought to make a point of it.
“Jones, Miss Mayweather.” He bowed at the waist.
“Thank you, Jones.”
After accepting his hand and settling her skirts, Tamsin watched as Jones latched the door and climbed up to his seat with an ease suggesting he’d done it ten thousand times. He glanced back at her once more before nodding to the coachman with a smile, warm and faintly amused.
Had asking his name amused him? Surely not. Was it her attire? Oh dear. Best to put that smile from her mind.
The maid, Eliza, introduced herself and started talking at once of how lovely the countryside was and what fine weather they were having.
The carriage arrived in front of Hartwell House on Castlegate, and Tamsin took in a deep breath before the footman opened the door.
This was not an official visit for presentation to the staff, that would not come until the wedding day.
But it was a visit her future mother-in-law had suggested, to help Tamsin feel more comfortable in the place that would soon be her home.
She would be shown all the rooms, both public and private.
As the front door opened, every nerve in her body tingled. Would Lord Hartwell be present? The invitation from the baroness had not said. Tamsin had not seen him since the proposal, though she had received notes from him with practical communication for their wedding plans.
What would it feel like to see him now in their future home, with their wedding date settled and approaching swiftly?
Lady Hartwell stood inside the entryway, dressed in a mauve morning gown with her hands folded primly in front of her. “Miss Mayweather, you are most welcome.” Her gaze lingered on the door as the butler closed it behind Tamsin. “Oh. Did your stepmother not accompany you?”
“Thank you, Lady Hartwell. And no, I am afraid my stepmother is quite busy with wedding preparations and ensuring the household is ready for my departure.” Tamsin kept her smile serene as she shared the partial truth.
Anne was quite busy…but Tamsin had not invited her. If Anne walked through the home, there was no telling how well she would keep her opinions to herself, or how much unsolicited advice she would rain down upon Tamsin about household decor and management.
The home was to be Tamsin’s, and she wanted no one to influence how she saw it and planned her future. Perhaps it was a selfish desire, but she did her best to ignore that guilty thought. This house was to be her domain. Not her stepmother’s. She wanted to feel that from the off.
“I am certain she will enjoy a tour all the more when you are the one to give it, my dear,” her ladyship said politely, gesturing to the first door on the right. “Let us begin here.”
Tamsin had been in that room before, though she did not say so as Lady Hartwell led her through into the front sitting room with the comfortable authority of a woman showing something beloved to someone new.
She could at least look around with more interest than the last time she had come to that place, full of anxiety for her family.
There was no graceful way to explain she had sat in this same chair on a desperate afternoon not so very long ago, hands folded in her lap, her family’s financial situation laid out with as much dignity as she could manage, speaking to Lyness Eastwood about a problem she could not solve herself.
She looked at the fireplace. The mantle was the same. The artwork and decor the same. The light came through the same windows to illuminate the place where her life had begun to change in ways she had not known at the time.
Yet she was certainly not the same.
“We had it re-papered three years ago,” Lady Hartwell said, following Tamsin’s gaze with a smile of satisfaction.
“Roman thought the previous pattern too dark. He was right, though I did not tell him so immediately. Now it has a much lighter, brighter feel to it. I think I much prefer a cheerful room for welcoming friends.”
“It is quite lovely,” Tamsin said, and meant it. She tucked away the knowledge, without quite deciding to, that Roman had opinions about wallpaper. Her father certainly never had expressed any when her stepmother redecorated.
Lady Hartwell tapped lightly at a connecting door before opening it so Tamsin could step inside.
Her eyes immediately found Roman’s, and all else in the room had to wait for her attention. His eyebrows went up, his lips turned at the corners, and Tamsin’s chest tightened. He was as handsome as ever, and his presence as reassuring as it had been on the carriage ride.
Movement to the side pulled her attention to the dogs.
Two large heads rose and tails thumped against the floor, but neither Apollo nor Athena moved to greet Tamsin or the baroness.
Roman was at a desk, and rose the moment the door opened, the sort of thing Tamsin was beginning to understand he simply did.
Not for mere performance, but as the reflexive courtesy of a man for whom certain things were non-negotiable.
“Mother, Miss Mayweather.” He came around the desk to bow as she curtsied. “I did not hear you arrive, Miss Mayweather, else I would have come to greet you. I hope you do not think me rude.”
“Not at all, Lord Hartwell.” She found she suddenly did not know what to do with her hands as he approached. Should she hold them out to him? Tuck them behind her? She settled for folding them before her the same way his mother had.
“You are hardly necessary to the tour,” his mother said serenely. “We are only beginning, and getting along well enough. I think you would get in the way, in truth.”
He did not quite smile, but Tamsin caught the amusement glittering in his eyes.
“I defer to you in this matter, of course, Mother.” He gestured to the desk and window behind him.
“This is my study when I am in town, Miss Mayweather, and am in this room often. With the overlarge lap dogs you have already met.”
When he gestured to the dogs, one of them actually let out a soft whine.
Roman shook his head and signaled for them to stay with his hand, palm out toward them.
The dogs both immediately dropped their heads to their paws, one of them huffing.
Tamsin had to bite her lip to keep from giggling at their disappointment, though she was grateful she did not have to contend with their excited affection.
“I am usually more tidy than this.” Roman moved toward his chair, straightening a book so it aligned better with the corner of the desk’s surface.
Tamsin looked at the desk as her future husband stepped behind it. The papers were arranged with the precision of someone who would notice immediately if anything were disturbed. The inkwell was capped. Two books were stacked at a careful angle to the blotter, spines aligned.
“If this is untidy, I certainly must have a word with my father about his own study.” She did not hide her amusement, but the comparison in her mind was most extreme. “His papers and books always appear one sneeze away from an avalanche.”
Her words brought a soft laugh from the baroness.
Tamsin glanced from his desk to the door they had come through.
If he was often at his desk, it was a good thing he had been away the day she had spoken to Mr. Eastwood about finances.
The rooms were small enough, and the desk close enough, that he could have easily eavesdropped if he wished.
Perhaps that was the purpose of the study adjoining the sitting room.
It allowed the man of the house to keep an ear out for whatever else went on around him.
Not that she suspected him of listening to private conversations.
Roman seemed too proper for such a thing.
Still, how interesting, that he could have heard it all from the beginning, rather than gleaning information in whatever way he had…
. Except… At what point had he learned of her family’s hardships?
He must have known on the day he accompanied Mr. Holly to her family home. Had the solicitor told him before or after the visit? And why?
She had many questions she could not ask. Yet.
“Shall we continue?” Lady Hartwell asked pleasantly, and Tamsin followed her back into the corridor.
The house was quiet in a way that would take some getting used to.
Not empty, exactly—she could hear movement somewhere above, a door closing softly, the efficient sounds of a well-run household—but quiet.
No small voices. No boots tromping on the stairs.
No one calling her name from three rooms away because they could not find a thing she had put somewhere sensible six months ago after declaring to the family precisely where it was.
The church bells struck somewhere outside, muffled through the thick walls, and Tamsin counted them without thinking. Twelve. She had always counted the bells, a habit from years of managing a household by the hour.