Chapter 21 #4
Charles was in the middle of saying something which had brought color into her cheeks and laughter into her eyes, while Henry interrupted him with exclamations.
“No, Tamsin would never do that! Would you, Tamsin?”
Remaining in the doorway, Roman studied the scene before him. Something about the picture unsettled him.
No. That wasn’t quite right. He was not unsettled. He was surprised, and perhaps uncertain how to enter the pleasant atmosphere, or even if he ought to. He had no doubt his sudden appearance would change the climate in the room.
Hartwell House had been his mother’s preferred home for years.
His, too, when he was in Yorkshire instead of London.
Lyness came and went with enough frequency that the household had scarcely learned to consider him a visitor, despite his approaching marriage and upcoming independent household.
There had always been family within their walls.
But this was Tamsin’s family. Her brother was sprawled in a chair with the attitude of a man who had sat there a hundred times.
Henry was trailing a happy Apollo about the room.
Tamsin had evidently ordered tea, and a plate on the table held the remains of whatever Cook had sent up with it. They did not look like mere guests.
“Roman.” The sound of his own name startled him. Tamsin had finally seen him. Her smile changed, growing smaller, but it did not disappear entirely. Everyone in the room stood, including the dogs. “You are home.”
As she did not sound disappointed, he allowed himself to feel a touch of relief. “So I am.” A ridiculous answer. He quickly remembered his manners and bowed. “My lady.”
Charles bowed, still wearing his grin. “Hartwell.”
“Mayweather.”
After making his own quick bow, Henry abandoned Apollo’s side. “Lord Hartwell, did you know Apollo knows how to find things?”
Roman glanced at his dog. “He knows how to find food with remarkable efficiency.”
Henry disregarded that with a quick shake of his head. “No, things people hide.”
“Does he?” That made his lips twitch as he looked up at Tamsin to see what she made of the game. Her eyebrows raised but otherwise she gave little away.
“I hid his ball three times.” Henry pointed excitedly. “Behind the curtains.”
Roman looked toward the curtains. “Three times?”
Henry nodded enthusiastically.
“And did you hide it in the same place each time?”
The boy hesitated. “Yes.”
Roman forced himself not to smile. “I begin to suspect Apollo had an advantage.”
Charles laughed.
Henry frowned. “He still found it.”
“Indeed.” Roman tucked his hands behind him and spoke with more sobriety. “My groom tells me the best way to train an animal is repetition. It seems you instinctively did exactly the right thing.”
The little boy beamed.
Roman stepped deeper into the room. Apollo’s tail wagged in greeting, and after receiving a brief scratch behind the ears, the large dog returned immediately to Henry.
Traitor. First Athena to Tamsin and now Apollo to Henry. The Mayweathers were bewitching his hounds.
Tamsin’s lips twitched, and when Roman caught it something inside him eased.
“How was your meeting?” she asked.
“Long.” He took a step closer. A few times, he had ventured to kiss her cheek upon his return home, but not since their disagreement, and certainly never before company.
“But promising. The petition is certainly better prepared than it was this morning.” He wanted to say more.
He could have told her what Salmond had proposed, or which signatures they already counted as secured, or why the wording of one paragraph had consumed nearly half an hour.
Instead he found himself aware of Charles watching them.
Not critically. Simply watching. Roman felt the urge to take Tamsin’s hand and ask her to step out of the room with him, or send her family away.
He wanted, most irrationally, to have her attention all to himself, especially after receiving less of it in the preceding days.
He ignored the impulse and mentally prepared himself for the duration of his brothers-in-law’s visit. “What have I interrupted?”
“My sister was telling us about the time she climbed onto the roof,” Charles said.
Tamsin’s head snapped toward him. “I was doing no such thing.” She sounded amused rather than defensive. “You were telling tales to Henry.”
That brought Roman’s brows up as he studied his wife. “I could believe you capable of roof-climbing. Under the right circumstances.”
Shaking her head, Tamsin pointed at Charles. “He was telling a grossly inaccurate account of an incident that occurred when I was fourteen.”
“Twelve.”
Tamsin gave a look of mock shock. “I was not twelve.”
“You were twelve,” her older brother insisted.
“I was at least thirteen.”
“You were twelve because I had just gone to—”
“Charles.” She sat down in her chair again, crossing her arms with apparent indignation, though her eyes sparkled.
Roman took the empty chair nearest Tamsin. “Why exactly were you on a roof?”
“I was not on the roof.” She huffed.
“She was.”
That made her narrow her eyes. “You are telling tales to my husband, Charles.”
The youngest Mayweather looked delighted. “Then you tell the story, Tamsin.”
Roman settled back and dropped his chin in his palm, watching her. “Yes, my lady wife. Tell the story yourself, and I promise to believe your version of events, as is my duty as your husband.” This was already more interesting than anything he’d done all day. “You cannot object to that, surely.”
That brought her attention squarely to him, and when her eyes widened with surprise, he allowed himself a smile. Tamsin looked from one brother to the other, plainly realizing she had been outnumbered. “Oh. Very well. I climbed out of a window.”
That had not been what he expected, and Roman had to pull back the desire to laugh. “That…is not the improvement to the tale you appear to think it is.”
“I did not climb onto the roof.” His wife looked perturbed. “There was a ledge, not the roof proper.”
That brought a wry gesture from Charles, the wave of his hand accompanying a crooked grin. “Ah, yes. The appropriate definitions have forever been part of Tamsin’s arguments. A ledge, then. Not a roof.”
Steepling his fingers together and sitting straight, Roman focused entirely on his wife. “You climbed out of a window.”
Her hands folded in her lap. “Yes.”
“Why?”
Charles answered before she could. “There was a bird.”
That made her nose wrinkle.
“A bird,” Roman repeated. Once again he had the absurd desire to laugh, but he kept his tone steady. “Indeed, I think birds are commonly found outside of windows. Famously, they enjoy rooftops and ledges both.”
His wife glowered at her brother, then met Roman’s gaze again with the air of one accused of a crime. “It was injured.”
“Obviously,” Charles said with an exaggerated grin. “Otherwise there would have been no emergency—”
“I did not say there was an emergency!”
That pulled a laugh from Charles. “Not this time, but I believe that was precisely how you described it before.”
Still lavishing Apollo with attention, Henry asked, “How can a bird have an emergency?”
With an upward, defensive tilt, Tamsin replied with a matter-of-fact tone. “It had caught its wing.”
Roman found himself smiling. This woman. How did she keep surprising him?
With an affronted huff, Tamsin folded her arms again. “You needn’t look so pleased—it is about a time long-since passed.”
Clearing his throat, he adjusted his expression to one more appropriate to the House of Lords than the story unfolding in his home about his wife’s childhood adventure. “I beg your pardon, my lady. I am pleased because I am discovering useful information.”
“There is nothing useful about this.”
Oh, she had no idea how much he delighted in this new picture of her: imagining a girlish Tamsin, climbing out a window, to tend to a creature in distress. It was a precious image. One that gave him an absurd sensation of delight. “That remains to be seen.”
Charles laughed. “You know, I like him.”
Redirecting her glare to her brother, Tamsin refused to share in his merriment. “I am very pleased for you both, that you find this all so amusing.”
Henry settled onto the footstool in front of his brother’s chair. “Tell us what happened next.” The story was entirely new to the boy, it seemed, riveted by his sister’s every word.
“I would rather not.” She sighed and gave Charles a look of warning. “But it is likely for the best you hear the entirety of the story. Accurately.”
Apparently, her brother decided to ignore the pointed glare. “She fell.”
“I did not fall.”
Was this another definition discrepancy?
“You nearly fell.” Charles smirked, and Roman relaxed.
His wife fidgeted in her chair. “I slipped.”
Roman’s amusement disappeared as his stomach plummeted.
Tamsin noticed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. It was seventeen years ago.”
He leaned forward, gaze fixed on his wife, and asked carefully, “You climbed out of an upper-story window and slipped?”
“There was the ledge.” Tamsin’s protestation was gentle.
“That does not answer the question.”
She did not meet his eye. “It was a very broad ledge.”
Charles made a doubtful sound.
Tamsin pointed at him. “You were not even there when I climbed out.”
The man snorted. “I was there when they brought the ladder.”
Roman turned to Charles. “There was a ladder?”
He looked delighted. “Eventually.”
“Charles.”
“And Father standing beneath it, telling everyone not to make too much noise because we would frighten the bird.”
That sounded sufficiently like Mr. Mayweather that Roman could picture it without difficulty. The man had an affection bordering on obsession for fowls of the air. But that he would worry over such a thing while his own daughter’s safety was in peril?
His opinion of the man slipped as surely as Tamsin had from that window.