Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
By the first week of November, Tamsin had learned her husband could be physically present at breakfast but mentally in an entirely different part of the city.
At least they no longer had the bedroom door locked between them.
She had come to that decision after Charles and Henry visited.
She’d admitted that evening, too, as she curled up against his chest, that she had missed him.
He’d admitted the same as he kissed her forehead and they drifted off to sleep.
But the approaching vote had taken most of his attention, as she had expected.
Roman sat across from her at the end of the week, a cup of coffee cooling beside his elbow and three letters open before him.
He had already answered two others. Tamsin knew this because she had watched him write them between haphazard bites of toast. He frowned and put his free hand down, searching for something without looking, his fingers questing across the white linen tablecloth.
“Roman.”
He did not look up.
“Roman.”
“Mm?” He still did not look up.
She forced down a smile. “Your coffee is to the right.”
He looked at the cup, surprised to find it there. “Yes? Oh. Thank you.”
Tamsin returned her attention to her own breakfast. It had been like this for more than a week.
Mr. Salmond had called twice, Mr. Holly more often.
Roman had gone to the offices of the York Herald three times that Tamsin knew of, and there had been meetings she knew nothing about save they had taken him away before dinner and returned him long after.
The pamphlets were printed and reprinted, sometimes with changes but often without, and the petitions were passed from one gentleman or merchant to the next. Micklegate Bar was going to be saved. Her husband had decided it would be. And Roman was forever almost finished with the work.
It ought not to have bothered her.
This was, after all, precisely the sort of marriage which would suit most women: a husband with interests and occupations of his own.
She therefore had a household in which she was free to arrange her days as she pleased.
No one demanded an accounting of where she had been, what she had done, or why she had spent an hour walking with Matilda instead of making calls.
It was remarkably inconvenient to discover…she missed him.
Roman folded the letter in his hand. “I must go.”
“Of course.”
He came around the table, bent, and kissed her. Tamsin turned her face up automatically, her lips meeting his own, and the kiss lingered long enough to make her think perhaps he was not entirely consumed by barbicans, petitions, and obstinate aldermen.
Then he straightened. “I do not yet know when I shall be back.”
“I understand,” she said, not for the first time.
His hand paused against the back of her chair. Tamsin looked up at him, hope rising in her that the hesitation meant something.
A frown creased his lips. “Have I forgotten anything?”
Ah, that was it. “I do not think so. Our social schedule is fairly empty this week, and we have no invitations to dine with anyone. I will make certain to inform you if anything changes.”
“Thank you.” Still Roman did not move. “If you are certain…?”
She nodded. “Yes, I am. There is nothing pressing that requires your attention here.”
He studied her another moment, evidently unconvinced, but the clock on the mantel chimed the hour. Roman swore beneath his breath, then winced. “Tamsin, my apologies, I should not—”
Tamsin laughed. “I am not the least offended. This time. Now, go.”
He kissed the top of her head, wearing a rather sheepish expression, and went.
She listened to his footsteps retreat down the corridor and leaned back in her chair and sighed. Really. This was absurd. She should not smile and tell him to go, then wish to call him back the moment he closed the door.
Her mother-in-law discovered her an hour later in the morning room. Frances came armed with correspondence, which Tamsin had learned was never a promising sign. “I have had another letter from Lady Emily’s mother.”
Tamsin did her best not to wince. “Is she still worried about the breakfast?”
“The breakfast, the flowers, the weather, Lyness’s capacity to arrive at the church at the appointed hour—”
“That last concern is not entirely without merit.”
Mother gave her a look over the top of the letter and Tamsin smiled innocently.
She did not yet know her brother-in-law especially well, as he spent a great deal of time at the family’s country estate or with his bride-to-be, but he frequently arrived late to dinner when he did come.
Preparations for Lyness and Emily’s wedding had begun to creep into Hartwell House in a hundred small ways.
Fortunately most of them belonged to Frances, Emily, and Emily’s family.
Tamsin had offered assistance where she felt it pertinent, and her mother-in-law had accepted it when useful, and refused it when not.
Which remained a novelty.
“Oh.” Frances drew another letter from beneath the first. “And this came for you.”
Tamsin recognized the hand before Frances passed it across the table. Her stepmother had written to her. She braced herself, and broke the seal.
The letter was not long. Anne wrote first of the twins, then a cold which had kept Pearl at home for three days, though Tamsin suspected from the description that her sister had suffered more from boredom than illness.
Then came Daphne and concerns about the Christmas assembly. Tamsin slowed as she read that part.
Daphne was nearing eighteen now, and though the family had never intended anything so grand as a London Season for her, the assembly was important.
There would be dancing. Neighbors. Friends of the family.
Gentlemen of suitable age whom Anne had undoubtedly already considered with terrifying thoroughness.
But there was now an unexpected advantage to everything: Daphne had a sister who was Lady Hartwell. Tamsin read the relevant paragraph again.
Her mother-in-law was watching her, head tilted with curiosity.
Lowering the letter, Tamsin gave the tiniest of shrugs. “She wants me to help with the invitations.”
“Ah.”
A great deal was packed into that single syllable. Tamsin swallowed. “And she thinks perhaps Lady Gingell might invite Daphne to visit if I were to speak with her.”
“Possibly.”
Three syllables. Not much better. “There are several families she believes might be more inclined to call after the ball if the invitation came through me.”
The dowager baroness said nothing to that, though her eyebrows had climbed higher.
Tamsin folded the letter. None of the requests were unreasonable.
Daphne was her sister. She wanted her to have a lovely evening.
She wanted her surrounded by people who would be kind to her, wanted her to dance until her slippers wore thin and go to bed afterward convinced that no girl in Yorkshire had ever had such a wonderful time.
Lady Gingell liked Tamsin well enough. There were others she might approach.
She ought to make a list. Perhaps if she—
“And do you want to?”
Tamsin looked up.
Frances had taken up her own correspondence again.
“Do I want to what, Mother?”
“Do these things that your stepmother has asked of you.”
Tamsin stared, not truly comprehending the question. “Of course. It is all for Daphne.”
“That was not what I asked.” Frances took out her little notebook, the one she used to plan the wedding and Lady Emily’s family coming to stay in York.
Tamsin looked down at the letter. There were people Anne wanted her to approach.
Invitations she might extend herself. A suggestion that Tamsin come early enough to ensure everything was arranged properly, since Anne would naturally have a great many demands upon her that evening, with three grown-up daughters out all at once.
“I…I want to help Daphne.” That much she knew and felt in her heart.
Frances pursed her lips a moment. “I do not doubt that. You love your family very much. I have heard it in how you speak of them, I have seen it when you are with them.”
“I do love them. All of them. I want Daphne’s come-out to be a success.” Tamsin ran her thumb along the edge of the paper. “However, I…I do not think I want to arrange everything for my mother.”
“Then do not do so.”
The answer was so simple that Tamsin laughed. “Mother! I cannot possibly tell Anne such a thing so bluntly.”
Frances made a thoughtful humming sound. “No. I imagine you can make it sound considerably prettier.”
That prompted a laugh.
Her mother-in-law smiled and returned to her letter. Tamsin moved to the writing desk and pulled a clean sheet of paper toward her, sitting for a moment with pen poised above it.
She would help Daphne, and gladly. She would speak to Lady Gingell, and she would offer a few names. She would arrive in time to stand beside her sister and lend whatever consequence the title ‘Lady Hartwell’ might give to the occasion.
She did not have to arrange anything more.
Anne could do that with their father’s help. Leopold might bestir himself on behalf of his sister. Or, an astonishing thought, Daphne herself might have opinions about her own evening. Tamsin put her pen to paper.
My dear Mother, her letter began. For once, she did not follow it with, Of course, I will take care of everything.
Tamsin went looking for her husband after dinner.
She had spent much of the afternoon answering letters and making calls, and Roman had returned home shortly before the meal.
He had been attentive enough while they ate, though she had caught him staring into nothingness twice, and once he had asked his mother a question she had answered not five minutes before.
Then he’d excused himself to his study, and Tamsin waited nearly an hour before she followed.