Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Leopold arrived at Hartwell House shortly before Tamsin had luncheon with Roman, a habit they shared with him when he was home, and asked for Tamsin. That alone was enough to make her suspicious.
Her brother had visited since her marriage, of course, but generally in company with someone else as escort, and he usually sought out the quiet of an unoccupied room.
He did not ordinarily present himself at her door in the middle of the day and ask specifically to speak with her.
She had not been alone much of late, but her mother-in-law had left for her annual visit to her sister in Leeds before the weather turned too cold.
Frances would be away for a month, leaving Tamsin to navigate on her own once again.
When she entered the upstairs drawing room, she found him standing before the windows with his hands clasped behind his back. “Leo?”
He turned. “There you are.”
“Here I am.” She frowned. Of course she was here, she lived here. Yet he spoke with the exasperation of a man who had searched for her everywhere to the point of lost patience.
Her brother crossed the room and kissed her cheek, immediately looking past her. “Are you alone?”
Tamsin glanced behind herself, though she knew perfectly well no one was there. “At present.”
“Good.” He stepped back and went to the long sofa, collapsing upon it before frowning dramatically at the ceiling.
That increased her suspicion considerably. “Is something wrong? Or did you not mean to display such melancholy?”
“No. Not wrong. Not precisely.” Leopold raised up again and tapped the arm of the sofa. “Augusta has returned.”
Tamsin stared at him, not entirely certain why that news merited a visit to her, or his display bordering on the dramatic. “Miss Despencer?”
He heaved a sigh. “Obviously Miss Despencer.”
Her brother clearly meant to take his time with this conversation, so Tamsin sat in a chair near the window. She may as well humor him, but only to a degree. “To hear you speak these past months, one would think an invading army had carried her off to Scotland. I wished to be certain.”
Leopold frowned at her. “I have not exaggerated the circumstances to that extreme, Tamsin.”
“Ah, but you admit there has been an exaggeration of less extremes,” she teased, and quickly followed with a question less likely to upset him. “When did she return?”
“More than a fortnight ago.”
That was surprising. “And you have recently learned of it?”
“I knew immediately.”
“Oh.” That explained absolutely nothing. If she had been in York that long, surely he had visited her, yet no one in the family had said a word of such a thing. How incredibly odd.
Leopold stood abruptly and gave her an irritated look. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, merely that I am uncertain how to react to that news. Sit back down, Leo.” She watched his expression transform from affront to agitation.
He did not sit. Instead he began to pace, reminding Tamsin uncomfortably of Roman of late when he seemed to forget they were in the same room. Roman’s pacing usually gave the impression that he was attempting to puzzle something out.
Leopold’s looked more like suffering. “I called upon her family.”
At least he had done that. “A good first step. And?”
“They received me.” He stood still as stone then, eyes on the window, peering into some tragic past instead of the outdoors.
Tamsin waited. Leopold continued pacing without a word. The determination toward dramatization had well-earned their father’s nickname of the peacock. It had little to do with arrogance and much to do with his propensity to act theatrically.
Had he not been a gentleman, he would have done well on the stage.
After he took another two dozen paces, Tamsin finally prompted him for more information. “And? What happened during the visit, Leo?”
“And…nothing.” He turned toward her and held both arms open wide with his announcement. “That is precisely the problem.”
It astounded her that Leopold could take so long to say so little, and how she used to wait patiently for such conversations to occur. Today, however, she had things she wished to attend to, and Roman would look for her soon.
If he was not too distracted with his own affairs. Again.
Perhaps she did have time to indulge her eldest brother. “I am afraid I do not understand.”
“Neither do I.” His shoulders drooped.
That, at least, appeared to be honest. Tamsin folded her hands in her lap. “Did you see Miss Despencer?”
“Yes.” His eyes widened, head bowed in apparent sorrow, and his pacing continued at a slower rate.
“Did she refuse to speak with you?”
Leopold grimaced. “No.”
“That ought to be a good thing, surely. Unless she was angry?”
Another heavy sigh. “No. She was not. She was composed.”
None of this made sense, but Tamsin had not expected it to. “Did she ask you to leave?”
“No.”
Really, her choices were either to demand the whole story at once or suffer through it with patience. The latter was more in keeping with how they usually interacted. “What happened when you spoke to her, Leo?”
Leopold finally stopped moving, his back to her. “She was polite.”
Staring at him, she repeated, “Polite.”
“Exceedingly so.”
Not encouraging, irritated, or any other sort of emotion.
Politeness was, for many women, their best possible defense against unwanted attention.
Many a mother taught a daughter such a thing, and it had been Matilda who had imparted the wisdom to a younger Tamsin, who in turn taught her sisters that indifferent politeness was a safe shield.
Poor Leopold. “I see.”
“You do not,” he immediately insisted.
“I am beginning to.”
Leopold dropped into the chair opposite her with a grimace. “She spoke to me exactly as she spoke to everyone else in the room.”
“Was she supposed to do otherwise?”
“Yes.” He groaned and shook his head. Tamsin’s eyebrows rose. “Not—that is not what I meant. How to explain?” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Before she went away…everything was different.”
Oh, yes, Tamsin remembered well enough. Leopold had known Miss Despencer for a remarkably short period before becoming convinced that no woman in England—or Scotland, apparently—could possibly compare.
Miss Despencer’s family had been less enthusiastic.
Her mother had sent the young lady to stay with her grandmother in Scotland, and Leopold had spent the intervening months alternately despondent and indignant.
He had turned it into a catastrophe of romantic proportions.
He had also apparently assumed Miss Despencer would return in precisely the state in which she had left.
There was not much Tamsin could do to help her brother. “What have you done since she returned?”
“I have called twice.”
A gentle nod did not placate him. “That seems reasonable.”
Leopold sighed. “I encountered her at the New Walk as well.”
“And?”
“She was polite there, too,” he declared, as though the very worst had happened.
“How dreadful for you.” The words were uttered lightly colored by amusement. Why was she amused? She ought to be either concerned for him or frustrated, surely.
“Tamsin.” His brow furrowed deeper, with his most disapproving older-brother frown.
She pressed her lips together. She was not going to laugh.
Leopold leaned forward, forearms upon his knees, dropping his face in his hands with his back curved beneath the weight of his troubles. “I think she has been turned from me, if not against me. I don’t know what they said to her in Scotland.”
Some of her amusement faded. “No. I suppose you could not.”
“Her grandmother never approved of me.”
“The Scottish grandmother?” That made her blink. “I did not think you ever met her.”
His face arranged itself into an eloquent expression of disgust. “Of course not, Tamsin. She lives in Scotland.”
The desire to lean forward and shake her brother by the shoulders to shake sensible words from him mounted. “Then how do you know she disapproved?”
“Augusta told me.”
Before she left, Tamsin presumed. That would hardly be in keeping with the polite facade she had shown him.
Still in the throes of his agitation, Leopold stood again. “I thought perhaps Father ought to call upon them.”
That stirred something familiar inside. Reluctant doubt.
Her thoughts immediately arranged into the likeliness of that happening, and the consequences.
Their father could call upon the Despencers to discuss Leopold and Miss Despencer, but that would signal serious intentions on Leopold’s behalf.
Depending upon what had previously passed between the families, perhaps it would help, but—
There was still so much missing from this story. “Why?”
Her brother groaned, apparently exasperated still. “Why what?”
“Why should Father call upon them?”
He spoke as though the answer were obvious. “To speak with her father.”
“About what, precisely?”
“Me.” Leopold made an impatient gesture. “You know why, Tamsin. To make it clear my intentions are honorable. That our family supports the match.”
“Does Father support the match?”
That made her brother’s shoulders and jaw tighten simultaneously. “He would if he paid enough attention to know there was one.” There was enough truth in that to sting both of them.
Very well. She nodded her understanding. “What did Father say when you asked him?”
Leopold’s mouth flattened.
Oh dear. “You did ask him?”
“Yes, of course!” It was the closest to snapping her brother had reached in their conversation.
“And?” Honestly. Must every word be dragged from the mire of his thoughts?
“He said if Miss Despencer wished to see me, he supposed she would.”
Tamsin was silent. That sounded precisely like her father.
“And then,” Leopold added bitterly, “he asked whether I had heard rumor of a flock of waxwings near the river.”
Also entirely like their father. Waxwings wintered near their home, he counted them a happy treat. But to disregard Leopold’s question so quickly must have hurt her brother, for all that they had learned to expect such things.
Tamsin sighed heavily.