Chapter 19 #3
She turned away. His words were unnecessarily harsh, though the tone was likely deserved given her own. The room felt suddenly very warm.
Behind her, Roman took a step closer. “I—I thought this would relieve you.”
With a trembling hand, she massaged her left temple. “Relieve me? Of what?”
His tone seemed genuinely confused. “Of having to spend the remainder of your day settling a problem that is not yours to settle.”
Something in her chest tightened. “Henry is not a problem.”
“I did not say he was.”
“Yes. You did.” She turned, giving him a hard stare. “You just said you settled a problem.”
“Yes, but not that it was Henry.” He gestured with both hands, trying to placate her as he would an animal, which only irritated her more. “I should have said that the matter of his schooling is not your responsibility.”
“So you decided I need not interfere while you made it yours?” Tamsin wished, immediately, that she could take the words back. Not because they were untrue. Because of the way they landed.
His face didn’t harden exactly. Roman rarely showed anger so plainly.
Instead, something inside him closed. “I saw you were worried. I knew you would go there. You would speak to Henry, then your stepmother, then your father, and the governess, and your sisters, and very likely Leopold if anyone could locate him. And then Cook would have asked something of you, and you would have been pulled into a different argument, and been required to judge a debate, more and more and more. By the end of the day, you would have assumed responsibility for determining what ought to be done for Henry because no one else would do it, and taken upon yourself several other duties besides.”
That he was right only served to bruise her already aching heart, so Tamsin focused on the one thing that mattered. “So you took Henry’s situation upon yourself.”
“Yes.” The answer was immediate. And unapologetic.
Tamsin gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
Roman’s expression sharpened. “I fail to see what is amusing.”
Clearly he did not. “Nothing about this is amusing.”
“Clearly something is.”
“You decided I should not be responsible for Henry,” she said, trying to make her speech as factual as possible. “So you took responsibility for me and my decisions.”
That silenced him.
Tamsin looked down at Anne’s letter. The anger had come quickly, but something else sat beneath it. Something she couldn’t quite name. Hurt, perhaps, though that seemed unreasonable. Roman had meant to help her. She knew that. Perhaps that was the worst of it. “I wanted to speak to him.”
“Henry?”
“Yes.”
Her husband shrugged. “You still may.”
“But by now he has been told he is not going to school, the whole purpose of the conversation.”
“Your father agreed—”
Another impatient remark slipped from her tongue.
One she had wanted to say but never dared before.
“My father agrees with the last person who makes a sufficiently confident argument while he is trying to read! You could have turned up and convinced him to sell all his possessions and turn his children out onto the street if you’d spoken in a firm voice! ”
Roman blinked.
Despite herself, Tamsin nearly laughed again. Instead, she pressed her lips together. “And you still do not know why Henry wants to leave home.”
“Neither do you.”
“No.” Her voice softened. “That is why I wanted to see him. Even from this distance, I can see there is more to it than school, Roman.”
Roman said nothing, merely stared at her while Apollo softly whined, looking between them.
Tamsin took another deep breath. “He is a little boy who has never asked to leave home before. He doesn’t ordinarily quarrel with his mother, or anyone else.
Something made him decide this mattered.
Perhaps Leopold said something foolish. Perhaps he misses me.
Perhaps he thinks his governess treats him unfairly.
There might be something that is hurting him, or making him afraid, or lonely.
” She wanted him to understand how important this was to her.
“I wanted to speak to a child so he knew someone was actually listening to him. It is so difficult to live in a house where no one ever listens.”
Some of the certainty had gone out of his expression even as she carefully made sure her voice did not crack on her last word.
This time, he raised a hand helpless toward her.
“Tamsin, I was trying to keep them from pulling you back into the same position you occupied before we married. You were expected to take care of everyone’s problems, always at hand to take upon yourself what others were capable of doing themselves. No one was looking after you.”
“I know.” She squeezed her eyes shut and sighed. “I know what you were trying to do.”
He stepped closer and lowered his hand, no longer reaching for her. “You are still angry. I can feel it.” The man sounded surprised rather than disturbed by that fact.
She folded Anne’s letter once more along a crease that didn’t need folding. Her fingers were not shaking. “I am. I am angry. But not because you helped.”
“Then why are you angry?”
Because he decided what she needed before asking her.
The words came readily into her mind. They did not come readily to her tongue; perhaps because no one had ever asked Tamsin what she needed, or truly listened when she tried to speak on her own behalf.
Perhaps because, until this moment, she had hoped Roman would be different.
That being a wife would mean something different.
But it never was.
Her whisper escaped her before she could call it back. “No one ever seems to listen to what I have to say.”
Roman frowned down at her. “I beg your pardon?”
She swallowed. She had spoken as clearly and evenly as she could. He was an intelligent man. He had to understand. “You did not ask what I wanted you to do.”
“You were already preparing to go.”
“Yes.” Her eyes burned. She was not going to cry. She was not.
“And I knew why.”
“No.” She looked squarely at him, unflinching. “You thought you knew why.”
He stared.
Tamsin’s throat tightened. “I love Henry.”
“I know that.”
“Do you? Do you really know anything about me?”
The question hurt. She saw the pain flicker across his expression.
The sight made her want to soothe it, but instead she forced herself to keep talking. “I know my stepmother depends upon me too much. I know Father has always allowed things to become my concern because it was easier than making them his. I know Leopold and Charles leave, and the girls—”
No. That grievance was too large to open now.
Roman waited this time instead of trying to explain himself.
Tamsin could only shake her head and bring everything back to the one thing which mattered today.
“Henry is not an obligation someone has placed upon me. He is my littlest brother—Roman, I raised him, it is almost as though he is my own— Sometimes he needs me because I have been the one person who listened to him. Everyone else dismisses him because he is the smallest in a large house. And what happened today? No one even asked him.”
Roman’s jaw shifted. She did not recognize this expression, or was too tired to interpret it.
“Sometimes,” she continued, quieter now, “I want to be needed by him.”
That was the thing her husband hadn’t understood. Perhaps she hadn’t understood it herself until she said it.
His gaze moved away from her. “I see.”
She wasn’t certain he did. The silence between them stretched.
Finally Roman broke the quiet. “I should have spoken to you first.”
The fact was so plainly stated it did not sound like an apology. It certainly did not soothe her. He might have been acknowledging some oversight in the management of his estate rather than admitting he had injured his wife.
“Yes,” she said plainly. “You should have.”
He nodded curtly. “I will correct the matter.”
“No. I would rather you not.”
“Tamsin—”
“No,” She repeated firmly and stared up at him, helplessly. She had no more power here than she had in her father’s household. “Please, Roman. Listen to me. Do not attempt to fix this again.”
His expression changed. This one hurt more.
She hated how they were hurting one another when neither of them had intended harm.
His shoulders went stiff. “Very well. As you wish.”
“Thank you.” Relief flooded her at last, but the tension remained in her head and shoulders.
Roman nodded once and stepped through the door to his study, closing it behind him before the dogs realized what he was doing. Apollo went to the door and looked up at it, then back at Tamsin. He whined.
Tamsin left the drawing room with Anne’s letter in her hand into a large house echoing with silence. For the first time since becoming Lady Hartwell, she felt very much alone.
And they were perfectly civil at dinner.
Roman had never before realized how unpleasant civility could be.
His mother seemed unaware of anything amiss.
Or, more likely, she had noticed within the first five minutes of sitting at the table, and either possessed sufficient tact not to acknowledge it or had no desire to involve herself.
She spoke cheerfully of the callers who had come that afternoon, including one tiresome woman whose name Roman immediately forgot.
Tamsin responded when appropriate. She was entirely pleasant toward his mother.
She even laughed once. She did not look at Roman.
He noticed. He wished he had not.
“The Nelson family invited all three of us to dine on Thursday, Mother,” he said when a lull in the conversation permitted it. “Would you ladies like to accept?”
Tamsin looked at him then, but only briefly. “Yes. I think that would be pleasant. Mother?”
“Oh, I am afraid I have already accepted an invitation to another dinner on Thursday.” She smiled over the rim of her wine glass. “Mr. Conyers has come to town to enjoy time with his grandchildren, and has invited me to a little supper party to view some new rose varieties.”