Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
January passed beneath snow—not a great deal of it, by Yorkshire standards, but enough to soften the roofs of York and collect along the walls.
Tamsin learned which of the windows at Hartwell House admitted a draft and which stretch of pavement outside the house became treacherous after sunset.
And somewhere between Christmas and preparations to remove to London, without Tamsin quite knowing when it happened, her marriage ceased to feel… new.
There was no single morning when she woke and thought, Now I am properly Lady Hartwell, no exact dinner at which Roman ceased to be the man she had married under circumstances of mutual practicality and became simply her husband.
It happened in smaller ways.
She learned Roman disliked marmalade but would eat it if it was set nearest his hand rather than trouble someone to pass what he actually wanted. So she asked Mrs. Briers to ensure that the honey was placed nearer him, even though it was her favorite.
He noticed after the third morning. “How…have you done this deliberately?”
Tamsin looked up from her tea and marmalade toast. “Doing what?”
“The honey.”
She glanced toward the little pot between them. “I cannot imagine what you mean.”
Roman narrowed his eyes. Tamsin drank her tea with innocently raised brows. The next morning the honey was beside her plate instead. She looked at it, then at him. Roman was reading the paper and did not lift his head.
That was marriage, apparently.
It was Roman coming home and finding Matilda Elgin in the drawing room with Tamsin and asking warmly, and without surprise, whether she would remain to dine.
It was Tamsin knowing when he had a difficult piece of news before he said a word but waiting for him to decide whether he wished to tell her about it. More often than not, he did.
The Yorkshire Philosophical Society occupied a considerable portion of his attention.
William Salmond was forever producing some new matter requiring discussion, and Roman had begun bringing home papers and letters with an enthusiasm that might have amused Tamsin if she had not found it rather endearing.
She knew Mr. Salmond well enough now that when Roman said at dinner one night, “Salmond has had another idea,” she replied, “Should I be alarmed?”
“Probably.”
She’d raised an eyebrow. “Is it practical this time?”
His slight smile grew. “Certainly not.”
“Then consider me alarmed.”
Roman smiled into his wine.
Sometimes he explained what had been discussed at a meeting and Tamsin understood perfectly. Sometimes she asked questions that made him stop halfway through an answer and stare at her before saying, “I had not considered that.”
She liked those occasions.
There were others when he spoke for several minutes about some scientific or antiquarian matter before pausing to study her expression. “You have no idea what I am talking about.”
“Not the faintest idea, no.”
Roman blinked.
Tamsin waited for the old impulse to appear: the one that insisted she ought to understand, ought to be useful, ought to find some intelligent observation that would justify the time he had spent speaking to her.
If it did, she let it pass. “I was hoping it would become clearer if I allowed you to continue.”
“And did it?”
Honesty slipped out before control took a hold. “Not really, no.”
His mouth twitched. “Would you like me to begin again?”
“Not particularly.”
He laughed, and Tamsin smiled because it was an honest reaction from both of them.
There were evenings when they spoke about nothing of consequence whatsoever.
There were mornings when Roman left before she had finished breakfast and afternoons when Tamsin went out without him.
There were dinners with friends and calls upon acquaintances and letters from her family that Tamsin no longer opened with the immediate conviction that whatever problem lay inside would shortly become hers to solve.
Sometimes there was no problem at all. That remained surprising.
When there was one, Tamsin became better at asking herself a question she had never thought to ask before. Is this mine to hold? Do I wish to fix it?
Sometimes the answer was yes. Increasingly, it was no. She discovered the world did not end when she allowed it to remain so.
Roman never congratulated her for this, but he seemed to understand, and it might have gone on in that way indefinitely.
Then her husband came home one afternoon the last week of January, and he stopped in the entryway after handing his gloves off to the footman.
Tamsin had been on her way to the front sitting room when the door had opened, and she paused. There was nothing dramatic in his expression—that was what made her stop.
Months ago, she might not have recognized it. She would have seen only Lord Hartwell arriving home with his mouth set rather more firmly than usual and his shoulders held very straight. Now she knew him. “What has happened?”
For one instant, she saw the answer he might once have given: Nothing. Or, not a matter that concerns you. Or perhaps merely, I will tell you later. Instead, his gaze shifted briefly toward the footman, who had taken his hat, then back to Tamsin.
“Walmgate Barbican is the next to face the vote.”
Her heart sank. “Oh.”
Roman pulled off his remaining glove. “They mean to widen the approach. There is talk of removing the entirety of the barbican, just like the others. Possibly more.”
Tamsin remembered the battle with the Corporation.
She remembered ink on Roman’s fingers and papers spread across his desk, his certainty, then his hope, then the terrible quiet after the vote.
She remembered a man who had lost something and afterward shut his grief away like a shameful secret, behind a locked door.
She remembered standing outside that door and wanting to step inside the grief to hold him through it.
Roman must have seen something of the memory on her face. “I do not know if it can be saved,” he said firmly. “The other three are already as good as gone. It is not the same fight.”
The admission was so simple that another person might have missed what it cost him. Tamsin did not as she crossed the remaining distance between them. “Then we had better try one last time.”
Roman stared. “We?”
“Unless you have acquired another wife since breakfast.”
For a moment he simply blinked. Then tension eased from his face. “No.”
“No?” She stood toe to toe with him as the footman withdrew.
He exhaled. “I have not acquired another wife.”
“I am relieved to hear it,” she teased softly.
“I have found one is quite sufficient.”
Tamsin lifted her eyebrows.
Roman’s smile was accompanied by his wince. “That did not sound as I intended.”
“No.” Her lips twitched.
“What I meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
He looked genuinely pained. “I suspect you do not.”
“I am quite certain I do.” She placed one hand on his chest, directly over his thumping heart. “What happens now?”
Roman looked toward the study door. Tamsin waited as his attention returned to her.
“I send three letters immediately. Four, perhaps. There is much to do before we remove to London for the opening of Parliament. I cannot fight it in person this time, certainly not as I did before. I need to speak with Salmond, Holly will know which men on the council might be persuaded before anyone has committed himself publicly. There might be records concerning the barbican that would strengthen the argument for preserving it. Drawings, perhaps. It is the last one to face the decision.”
Tamsin nodded slowly. There was indeed much to do. “Then you had better write your letters.”
“I had.”
“And I will ask whether you want dinner sent to the study when the time comes.” Tamsin smiled slightly as Roman’s eyes rested on her. “I did not say I would write the letters for you.”
“No.” His mouth curved. “I had not expected you to.”
“Good.” She turned toward the sitting room but—
“Tamsin.”
She looked back. Roman stood where she had left him, the bleakness she had first seen in him gone. The problem remained. The fear remained. He was simply no longer carrying the weight of those things alone.
“Thank you.”
Tamsin considered him. “I am always on your side, Roman.”
She went into the drawing room. Roman went to his study, and once again Hartwell House welcomed others who were hoping to help her husband win the victory. That, Tamsin thought later, might have been the greatest evidence of how much had changed.
Roman wrote his letters. Salmond came the following morning, bringing two more men with him and enough paper to suggest they intended to conduct a small war from Roman’s study. Mr. Holly called that afternoon and others followed.
Tamsin knew most of them now—who took sugar in his tea, who invariably forgot where he had put his spectacles, who could be trusted to speak plainly, and who required ten minutes of courtesy before arriving at his point.
But she did not make their lists. She did not organize their correspondence. She did not quietly take charge because she could see six things which might be done more efficiently.
Once, standing in the doorway of Roman’s study while three gentlemen talked over one another, Tamsin identified precisely how she might clear up the entire conversation. The knowledge arrived fully formed. She could have done it—she could have done it very well.
Instead she looked at her husband. Roman caught her eye across the room, his expression harried. Tamsin smiled. He narrowed his eyes, plainly suspicious of her amusement…and she left them to it. But then he came out into the corridor, called her back.
“You saw something there. It was in your beautifully intelligent eyes. My lady wife, would you have a moment to assist? I know you are preparing for our departure, but—”
“I suppose a moment would be all right.” She stepped into his study, and the men around her bowed, welcoming her to the conversation.