Chapter 8 #4
Lady Hartwell sat on the bench near the far wall, Apollo a warm weight at her feet, her hands folded in her lap.
The rose canes around her were bare and dark against the pale afternoon sky, stripped of everything that made them remarkable.
She stared at nothing—or perhaps at something only she could see.
The light filtered in low and golden, the way it did as autumn crept into summer, the sun setting earlier each day.
It caught the silver in her hair and the stillness of her features.
He knew that expression. He had seen it before, in quiet moments his mother did not know he’d witnessed. Something between remembering and waiting. He had never found a way to address it that did not feel like an intrusion into her private thoughts, so he never had.
She ought to have a companion. Someone to sit with her in gardens and fill the quiet with something pleasant.
When he married, his wife would be that. It was not the smallest of reasons to act sooner rather than later.
Princessa chose that moment to wriggle in his arms and whine, and his mother turned at the small sound. “Roman.” Her expression shifted into something warmer. “You have found my dog.”
“She found me.” He came down the steps into the garden and held Princessa out toward her. “I thought you might want to trade.”
Lady Hartwell looked at Apollo, who had lifted his head at Roman’s arrival and now watched him with the mild interest of an animal who had long ago taken his measure. Then she looked at Princessa, still extended in Roman’s hands like a small offering.
She smiled and took the little dog, settling Princessa in her lap. “Roman, sit with me a moment.”
The garden was quiet around them, nothing moving but the last of the autumn light shifting slowly across the stones. He had always found this garden insufficient. Too small, too contained, too much a compromise. His mother had never complained of it whenever they were in town.
“I called on the Mayweathers this afternoon,” Lady Hartwell said lightly, wearing a most innocent expression.
Roman went still.
He was aware of it—the quality of stillness that came over him when something caught him unprepared—and he made a deliberate effort to ease before she noticed. He looked at the bare canes along the wall and kept his voice even. “Did you.” It was not a question.
“I did.” She stroked Princessa’s ears with one finger, unhurried. “I thought it was high time I made their acquaintance.”
He waited. His mother never arrived at a point before she was ready to arrive at it, and pressing her had never once produced a faster result.
“Well?” he said, after a moment. “Would you like to share your findings?”
She glanced at him sidelong, and he had the distinct impression she was amused.
“The oldest daughter, from Mr. Mayweather’s first marriage, caught my attention.
She is pretty. Polite. Quieter than I expected, which I mean as a compliment.
” A pause. “Thoughtful. She said something about York that I found—interesting.”
He did not ask what. He was fairly certain he already knew its tenor.
His mother was quiet for a moment, looking at her sleeping roses. “Roman. Do you really want to marry without love?”
He had known that question was coming too. She asked it every time the subject arose, with the patience of someone who believed the answer might change if she gave him enough opportunities to think on it.
“I want to marry well,” he said measuredly.
“And soon. Lyness will be married before Christmas. Our family is here, her family is here. Her family needs assistance. The timing is right.” He kept his gaze on the garden.
“Love is not something I am opposed to. I would not resist it, with my future wife. It is simply not something I am willing to wait indefinitely for.”
Lyness had not waited for the right moment. He had simply chosen and been chosen in return. Roman had begun to suspect that was the whole of the mechanism.
His mother’s brows drew together. Apollo put his head back down on his paws.
“Then,” she said at last, her voice gentle and without pressure, “you had better make good on your plans. Sooner, rather than later.”
He looked at her then. She was watching him with an expression he could not entirely read, which was unusual. He could generally read his mother.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I had better.”
Roman stayed a little longer, until the light began to fade and the cold crept into the garden in earnest. When he rose to go inside, the decision which had been forming for days had settled into something solid and certain.
He would arrange the drive. He would speak to her properly, and soon, before the political season swallowed everything and the moment passed.
He was not afraid of what came after. He was simply finished with beginning things that other men completed.
He paused at the garden door and looked back at his mother, still sitting in her sleeping garden with both dogs, her face turned toward the last of the afternoon light.
He would give her a companion. He would do his duty as the baron. He would rescue a family.
That was reason enough.