Chapter 22 #2
She told herself she had given him sufficient time to attend to whatever business had called him away. She told herself she had spent the whole of the day without speaking more than a dozen sentences to him, and that there could be nothing unreasonable in wanting a few more.
She was halfway to the study before she realized she had no pressing reason to knock.
She could tell him about Anne’s letter—but no, nothing there needed deciding tonight, though she was quite pleased with how she had answered it.
There was Daphne’s coming out, of course, but that wasn’t until Christmas—
Tamsin stopped in the corridor and looked down at Athena. “Must I have a reason?”
She had spent the morning deciding she need not do things merely because someone expected them of her. Surely the reverse must be true as well: she need not invent some pretext for Roman’s attention merely to justify wanting it.
The thought was uncomfortable enough that she nearly turned around, but eventually she continued down the corridor and knocked.
“Come.” The single word command in Roman’s deep voice sent a pleasant shiver down her spine, even as anxiety for interrupting him tried to speed her along as she opened the door.
Roman sat behind his desk, his coat discarded over the back of another chair and his sleeves pushed back from the wrist—a small enough disorder, for him, that it caught her eye before anything else in the room did.
Papers covered nearly every surface. A pamphlet lay open at his elbow, and beneath several sheets of foolscap she could make out the edge of a map.
His expression eased when he saw her—something she had noticed of late. “Tamsin.”
She liked the way he said her name when pleased to see her. Still, he had not expected her. She lingered near the door, though Athena had no such qualms and went directly inside to lay down by the fire next to her mate. “Am I interrupting?”
“Yes.”
Oh. Her eyebrows rose.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “But I find I do not mind.”
A soft laugh escaped her as her shoulders relaxed. “That is fortunate.”
Roman moved several papers from the chair on the nearer side of his desk. “Come, sit.”
Tamsin did, and for a moment simply looked over the collection spread on its surface: the petition, or at least one version of it; lists of names in several different hands; a copy of the York Herald folded near Roman’s elbow.
“What are you working on at present?” The answer would be the barbican, the bar, the gate. It always did.
Roman sighed. “An attempt to satisfy six reasonable men who all agree upon the substance of an argument and none of whom will agree upon how it ought to be expressed.”
Oh dear. “That sounds tedious.”
“It is excruciating.”
“It sounds rather like when I tried to appease my stepmother and all my sisters at once, when deciding upon dress patterns.” Tamsin smiled up at him, allowing the warmth in her heart to seep through into her expression.
“Would that I could fix this with the right sort of lace.” Roman reached for one of the papers, then paused when he noticed her still looking at the others. “Did you need something?”
There it was again—the same question he had asked that morning, only dressed in different clothes. Tamsin might have told him about Anne. She might have asked whether he intended to be at home the following afternoon, or mentioned some household matter that could reasonably require his opinion.
“No,” she said, with complete honesty.
Roman waited, to his credit, and did not appear the least put out, which gave her some confidence in telling the whole truth.
She swallowed. “I wanted to see you.”
His expression changed—only slightly, but she saw it. “Oh.”
Tamsin immediately wished she had found a more elegant way to say it. She folded her hands tightly in her lap. “You have been gone a great deal.”
“I know.” Roman’s brow furrowed. “I am sorry for it.”
“It was not a complaint.” She shifted in the chair, looking down at her lap a moment.
“It sounded rather like one.”
Bother. “Then I expressed myself poorly.”
Roman’s mouth twitched. “You? I was not aware you suffered from such things.”
That made Tamsin smile, despite herself. “Do not become accustomed to hearing me admit it.”
“Ah, then I shall treasure the moment as a rarity.”
Her gaze dropped to the map. “Why are you so worried about Micklegate?”
Roman leaned back. “What makes you think I’m worried?”
Tamsin shrugged. “You have spent the better part of a month thinking about it, even when you are supposedly thinking about other things.”
He grimaced.
“You also lost your coffee this morning while your hand was resting six inches from it.”
The grimace softened. “That proves nothing.”
“It proves you were thinking quite hard.”
Roman laughed quietly, sobering as he looked at the papers. “The petition is doing well. Better than Patchett expected, I think.”
“That ought to please you.”
“It does.” He certainly did not look it.
Tamsin leaned forward. “However…?”
He hesitated. Rather than give her the short answer she expected, he began to explain.
The petition had gained signatures; men who had initially refused to attach their names had reconsidered, preferring to be preservers of history rather than destroyers of ancient monuments.
Merchants now discussed the struggle to get through the passage more openly.
The pamphlets were circulating beyond the gentlemen Roman and Mr. Salmond had first approached.
Their success had brought complications of its own.
Tamsin did not understand every detail. There were questions involving the Corporation, the cost of alterations, traffic through Micklegate’s barbican and the other three at each main city entrance, and several gentlemen whose positions seemed to depend less upon the merits of the matter than upon which other gentlemen had already taken the opposite side.
And in all of it, she understood Roman. He cared about the thing itself: not merely because he wanted to defeat Mr. Patchett, though Tamsin suspected that had become an increasingly pleasant prospect.
He cared because people used the road every day, and they had for centuries past. Because inconvenience and expense fell most heavily upon those who possessed the least influence over the men making the decisions.
Because Roman could not see a piece of his beloved city that might reasonably be kept and understand why everyone else did not mind ridding themselves of it entirely.
Once he began talking, he seemed to forget he had intended to work. He pulled a sketch of the barbican and an open road toward them, and Tamsin moved her chair closer.
“And this is the proposal for removing the barbicans?”
His voice was low, intimate. “Yes.”
“The road certainly looks much larger without them.”
Roman looked offended on the stone passage’s behalf. “The barbican is quite large enough—traffic has been passing through it since before written history.”
“I shall defer to your expertise,” she said with a most solemn nod.
Her husband narrowed his eyes at her a moment, then his lips twitched. “You are teasing me.”
Tamsin had to concede the point. “A little.”
He pointed to another place on the map and continued explaining why he believed there was no need to tear down the barbicans, and that removing them would result in more expenses than maintaining them.
Tamsin listened, asking questions when she did not understand: sometimes Roman answered immediately, sometimes her question made him stop and consider.
It was pleasant. More than pleasant, actually. She liked hearing Roman speak about something that mattered to him, and knowing why it mattered.
A knock sounded at the door and Roman glanced toward it. “Yes?”
A footman entered carrying a folded paper. “This was delivered for you, my lord. The messenger said Mr. Hargrove wished you to see it this evening.”
Roman took the paper from the salver and the servant withdrew. Tamsin watched him unfold the note, his face hardening as he read, the only sounds in the room the soft crackle of the fire and Apollo’s quiet snoring.
Eventually she could not resist. “What is it?”
“Nothing worth your concern.” He spoke absently rather than with any sharpness, his thoughts already retreating from her to rush toward the new problem.
But she wasn’t ready to be so dismissed. Tamsin held out her hand. “May I read it, Roman?”
With a sigh, he passed her the paper which was an article. Or perhaps a printed commentary; Tamsin was not entirely certain what to call it. It was not long, and no author’s name appeared beneath it.
Lord Hartwell’s name appeared quite frequently, though.
The writer had taken a remarkable interest in Roman’s political opinions. Her husband’s sympathies toward Catholics were mentioned, as were certain Irish gentlemen with whom he associated, his activities in Parliament, and his determination to involve himself in the affairs of York’s tradesmen.
None of it was precisely false. Taken together, however, the writer had created a Lord Hartwell who Tamsin scarcely recognized: a young upstart peer perpetually in search of an injustice against which he might publicly rail against, more interested in appearing enlightened than attending to those responsibilities properly belonging to him.