Chapter 19 #5
And he could not find the rest—not while the servants were present. Obviously that was part of the difficulty. Even he could not fool himself that it was all of it.
“We should probably retire,” he said lamely.
Something in her expression dimmed. Roman knew immediately that he had said the wrong thing.
Again.
“Yes,” Tamsin said quietly. “I think so. I am rather tired. It has been a long and somewhat trying day.”
He rose and offered her his arm. She thanked him, as she always did. They were perfectly civil.
He hated it.
They walked upstairs together, but in silence instead of speaking as they usually did.
Every night until this one, Roman had enjoyed this portion of the evening, a thing he had not expected, given its simplicity.
Escorting his wife to her chambers after dinner ought to have been a mundane act.
Yet it was the perfect end to his day spent before others.
Marriage had already introduced rhythms into his life so gradually he’d hardly noticed their establishment. Dinner with his mother and Tamsin. The dogs sprawled wherever they pleased, now closer to his wife than himself. The household quieting around them. And then the last part of the evening.
Tamsin, on his arm.
They had separate bedchambers, as was proper, connected by a door.
At some point after their servants departed, one of them usually opened it.
No agreement had been made aloud, they had no schedule of any kind.
It had simply begun. Sometimes Tamsin came to him.
Sometimes he went to her. Sometimes they talked until Roman realized an hour had passed.
Sometimes she sat beside him in bed with a book while he read something of his own.
Sometimes they kissed until conversation became entirely unnecessary.
But there was always a goodnight kiss at her door first. Roman had not realized until that evening how he expected it.
At Tamsin’s door, they stopped. He could still repair this. Not fix it. That distinction seemed important, though he wasn’t entirely certain what repairing something without fixing it was supposed to involve. “Tamsin.”
A soft sigh preceded her, “Yes, Roman?”
He wanted to say her question had been unfair, because he knew a hundred things about her. Last evening, he had watched her amongst his friends and thought—
What? That she’d belonged there? No. That sounded like he was granting her admission. That he’d been proud of her? Yes. But that wasn’t enough, either.
He wanted to tell her that yesterday she had understood something about him without requiring him to explain it, and today he had assumed the same understanding existed in the other direction.
But it hadn’t. And it was that realization which sat heavily in his chest. He, Roman Eastwood, Baron Hartwell, admired speaker in the Lords and among the citizens of York, did not know how to say any of it.
Tamsin’s eyes were heavy with fatigue. He could not ask her to stand in the corridor while he attempted to discover words he had never learned to use. At last, he gave up with, “I hope your head feels better.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Oh. Thank you. Good night, Roman.” There was no anger in her tone, only a measure of confusion.
“Good night, Tamsin.”
She entered her room and closed the door—without the kiss. That was significant in a way he did not like.
Roman stood in the corridor for another moment before entering his own bedroom, where his valet was waiting.
He endured the ordinary business of undressing with considerably less patience than usual.
By the time his valet had taken his coat, waistcoat, cravat, and boots and finally withdrawn, Roman wanted nothing so much as silence.
Yet he found himself listening for any sound at all coming from Tamsin’s bedroom.
There were faint noises he had come to recognize. Eliza moving around his wife’s room. A drawer opening. Footsteps. The low murmur of Tamsin’s voice, though he could not distinguish the words.
Roman sat on the edge of his bed, waiting for the moment she was alone. Which was absurd.
They had argued.
But most married people argued. Presumably. At least, that was what he had been led to believe. His parents must have done so, though Roman could not recall witnessing it. Lyness and Lady Emily disagreed from time to time and still seemed positively delighted with one another.
Surely he and Tamsin would be perfectly capable of putting the matter aside. Nothing catastrophic had occurred. Tamsin had expressed her displeasure when Roman made a mistake. He had apologized. Tomorrow he would set things right by—
He stopped that line of thought abruptly.
Tomorrow he would do nothing. She had asked him not to fix it, so he would not even try.
Was it taking longer than normal for Tamsin’s maid to finish her work? It certainly seemed so.
He picked up the book he’d left beside his bed. Read half a page. Read it again. Perhaps even read it a third time. Even still, he could not have said what it contained.
Eliza’s footsteps crossed Tamsin’s room with purpose. A few moments later, Roman heard the outer door open and close. At last, his wife was alone.
He looked at the connecting door as he closed his book. He had already determined nothing approaching catastrophe had occurred. They could continue on as normal. At dinner, things had been a little awkward, but she had not renewed their disagreement.
A proper gentleman would not presume, though—or would not appear to presume. Perhaps it would be best if she decided when to open the door. He would let her come to him.
And so Roman waited.
Two minutes passed. Another. He picked up the book again. He read another paragraph without retaining it. Five minutes.
Enough. He put the book aside and stood.
He would knock—that was polite yet restrained.
She would know he was waiting and that he respected her decision whether or not to open the door.
It was a logical, acceptable course of action.
Knocking was not demanding anything. When she came to the door, he could ask if she wanted company.
If she said no, he would listen, and leave her alone.
That was an entirely reasonable application of what he’d learned that afternoon.
Roman crossed the room. He reached the connecting door with his hand raised to make a light tap—when he heard the faint scrape of metal from the other side.
He stopped as he realized what the sound was. The key turning.
Snick.
Roman stared at the door. For several seconds, he did not move.
They had never locked it. There had been no need. He would never enter Tamsin’s chamber without an invitation. She knew that. If she’d wanted solitude, she need only have told him.
Which meant the lock held a different meaning. One he did not understand. Roman moved his hand to knock anyway, but stopped before his knuckles touched the wood.
Please, Roman. Listen to me. Do not attempt to fix this again.
His hand fell. There was nothing he could do, the realization unbearable.
Something had gone terribly wrong. His wife was hurting on the other side of a door because of a miscalculation he had made, and she did not want him to try to make it better. The only responsibility left to him was to respect the boundary she had clearly put in place.
Roman stood there another moment in frozen uncertainty.
Then he stepped back. He did not knock. He did not turn the handle or rattle. He did not even call her name. He simply stood there, on the wrong side of the door from her, staring at a piece of wood.
For once, doing nothing was the thing required of him. A thing some men might find a relief. But not him.
In that unsettling moment, Roman had never felt less useful in his entire life.