Chapter 24 #2
He looked away from them, toward the clouded window. Beyond it the afternoon had already surrendered to darkness. Somewhere beyond the glass and the narrow streets and the roofs crowded one against another, Micklegate Bar with its bold barbican stood where it had stood for centuries.
For now.
“What will you do?” Thaddeus asked quietly.
There wasn’t an immediate answer. None came to mind.
There ought to be an answer. Another petition.
Another letter. Some appeal beyond the council, perhaps, though he had already considered the possibilities and knew how thin they were.
Writing to the York Herald had not swayed public opinion, though there was a chance he could make Patchett defend the decision publicly.
Perhaps he might seek another estimate, or architect, or a man with expertise and a willingness to lend his name to the cause.
He could do… Nothing.
The realization arrived with such completeness that for a moment Roman stared at the wine in his glass without awareness.
There was nothing left for him to do.
The council had voted. He possessed no office by which to challenge them, no authority over the city, no purse large enough to undertake the preservation himself even if such a thing had been permitted.
Every thought he had amounted to trying to make noise, enough to ensure everyone in York knew precisely how he felt about the matter.
None of it would save the barbican.
“There is nothing to do,” Roman said quietly.
No one contradicted him. His heart sank.
He finished the wine in his glass. Kettlewell reached for the bottle, but Roman put his hand over his glass. “I said one.”
“You also said you did not want to come at all.” His friend smirked with his usual impertinent manner.
With a shrug, Roman gestured with his free hand to the room. “Yet here I am, demonstrating remarkable flexibility of character.”
That produced the laugh he had intended. His friends relaxed, perhaps believing him feeling somewhat better. He could do that much for them, at least.
He stayed, accepting nothing more in his cup. Kettlewell finished his own glass, Phineas ordered something to eat, and Holly objected on grounds Roman did not entirely follow. They spoke of other topics after that; deliberately, he suspected, but he was grateful enough not to question it.
By the time he left, the worst of the disappointment had receded. That, or he had become better at holding it. Either would do.
The house was quiet when Roman returned.
The longcase clock in the entryway told him it was later than he had realized, though not scandalously so.
His coat and hat disappeared into a servant’s hands and he answered the footman’s quiet inquiry about whether he required anything with a shake of his head before standing for a moment at the foot of the stairs.
He was tired. Not the satisfying fatigue of a long day in which something had been accomplished; this felt heavier and somehow less deserving.
He had sat in a chamber. He had listened. He had lost.
He ascended the stairs. His room and Tamsin’s were next to one another in the corridor. Roman stopped before her door. He had thought of her more than once at the Black Swan. He had imagined telling her, though never very far beyond the first sentence.
We lost.
She would understand immediately what he meant, and what the loss meant to him, and somehow that was not what he wanted in the least.
His own bedroom was dark save for the lamp left burning low near the bed. Roman moved quietly. Tamsin slept soundly more often than not, and if she had already retired, a few footsteps would hardly wake her. Still, he eased the door between their rooms open with care.
The room beyond his was dark. For a moment, he could make out nothing. His eyes adjusted to find the familiar shapes of her bed curtains, the dressing table, the chair near the hearth. The fire had burned down to a faint red glow.
Tamsin lay on her side beneath the covers, facing away from him. Sleeping soundly.
Roman stood with one hand still on the door. He could cross the room.
The thought came without invitation. He could undress in the dark, or call his valet and purposefully risk waking her, or simply shed enough of his clothes to make do until morning.
He could climb into the bed beside her and feel the mattress shift beneath her weight when she turned to him.
Perhaps she would wake. Perhaps she would ask after the barbican. Then he would have to tell her.
His hand tightened on the knob. He would have to tell her everything. Not merely that the vote had gone against him, that was easy enough. A few sentences. Facts. And he would have to endure the softness in her face when she understood what it meant to him.
Roman closed his eyes. He did not want pity.
No. That was unfair. Tamsin would not pity him.
Which was worse somehow, because whatever she offered him would be real, and he had no idea what he was meant to do with those emotions, let alone hers. Not tonight.
There was nothing she could fix. Nothing he needed her to arrange.
No letter she could write or introduction she could make.
There was no useful purpose in waking her simply because he did not want to be alone.
His wife had spent years being summoned whenever someone else had a need.
He would not be another person who did that to her.
The thought settled into place with the satisfying firmness of something reasonable as Roman looked at her once more. She shifted beneath the covers, and he froze.
For one absurd instant he wanted her to wake. The decision would be taken out of his hands. Wanted her to roll over and see him there and say his name in that soft, sleep-thickened way she sometimes did, finding nothing strange in his standing in the doorway.
She nestled deeper into her pillow. Roman’s grip on the knob relaxed at last.
Good. His lady wife needed her sleep.
He withdrew and closed the door carefully behind him. His room seemed colder than before. He stood for a moment, looking at the closed door.
Roman undressed and went to bed alone.
The moment Tamsin woke, she knew Roman had not crept in beside her.
She knew it before she opened her eyes. The bed felt different to how it did when he had joined her. Undisturbed. There had been no gradual stealing of blankets in the night, no warmth at her back, no faint movement of the mattress when Roman rose earlier than she did.
When she opened her eyes the other side of the bed was smooth. She reached for the undented pillow, laying her hand flat on its surface. She stared for a moment, her mind catching up to why this was significant, why she had hated retiring to bed before he arrived home.
Then she remembered.
The vote.
Tamsin sat up quickly enough to make herself dizzy. She had meant to wait up for him; remembered taking a book to bed and reading the same page three times, listening whenever she heard movement somewhere in the house.
She must have fallen asleep.
Perhaps he had come home very late. Perhaps he had thought it better not to wake her. That sounded like Roman.
Tamsin pushed the covers aside and rang for her maid, rushing through the process of dressing for the morning, ignoring the tray brought up. “I will breakfast with the baron, if he is still at table?”
“Yes, my lady.” Eliza helped her tie her short stays with wide eyes, but precise movements. “He has been there a quarter hour.”
“Then I must make haste. I can tidy up after, if I go out.” Though decently dressed when she left her room, Tamsin knew she was barely put together, hiding most of her hair beneath a lace-trimmed cap.
In the dining room, Roman sat in his usual place with a cup of coffee near one hand and a folded letter in the other. The newspaper lay beside his plate.
He looked entirely himself: as put together as ever, not even a wrinkle in his cravat or a hair out of place. He rose as she entered the room, nothing in his expression giving away his thoughts. “Good morning, my lady wife.”
“Good morning, my lord.” Tamsin took her seat and waited until the footman had poured her tea to speak.
She did not know why she waited. The servants had certainly heard the result by now. Half of York had probably heard it. But she watched her husband, trying to read his eyes, the line of his lips, the set of his jaw.
Nothing.
Roman folded his letter and set it aside, lifting his cup of coffee to his lips and driving her utterly mad with suspense.
Finally, she asked timidly, “What was the result of the vote?”
A pause in his movement kept the rim of his cup an inch from his lips. He did not so much as blink as he said, “The council voted to remove the barbican.”
No. “Oh, Roman.”
“The bar itself is to remain.” He spoke as though consoling her, rather than himself.
Her heart squeezed painfully on his behalf and she reached her hand across the table. “Oh, Roman. I am sorry.”
“Thank you.” No inflection colored his tone, no easy rise and fall in the words told her what went on behind his calm facade. Surely he masked his feelings?
Tamsin watched him drink his coffee. His movements were precise and ordinary. He did not look angry or sad, exactly. He looked like…Roman. Which meant almost nothing at all. “Did Mr. Holly and the others accompany you?”
“They did. Afterward we went to the Black Swan for a time.”
“I am glad your friends were with you.”
His gaze lifted to hers then, and something in it softened. His lips twitched. “So am I.”
Tamsin relaxed. She wanted to ask more. What had happened? Had Patchett spoken? Had anyone defended the preservation? Was Roman angry? What would his next action be? Surely, he had not given up?