Chapter 29 #2
She helped him where she could before their departure from York.
When Roman asked if she remembered Mrs. Milner mentioning her brother had once made a drawing of the barbican, Tamsin wrote to inquire.
When Mrs. Sissons called and heard what was happening, she offered a valuable piece of information Tamsin carried to her husband.
When Roman asked her opinion, she gave it.
When he did not, she did not assume he had forgotten she possessed one.
Matilda came to visit before their departure, staying an entire afternoon, and carefully not saying how much she would miss Tamsin’s company.
“You can visit me in London,” Tamsin said at last. “You know you are invited at every single moment. I will send our carriage for you or have one from the estate bring you to us.”
“Mother would feel abandoned. And I think…I think there is one thing that my brother must resolve before I can contemplate such a thing.” Matilda sighed and embraced Tamsin at the door.
“You are my dearest friend. I am happy for your happiness. I will try to visit. Perhaps in the spring.” Her smile turned sly. “You will want company more then.”
It was astonishing how much time remained in a day when one did not automatically adopt every unattended responsibility in sight. Her husband had to do the same, letting a great deal go into the hands of other men, trusting them to do all they could to save the history of York.
Walmgate and its barbican still stood. For now. No one knew whether it would continue to do so, and while their days were spent working hard in its defense, there were no defenses between the two of them. The door between their rooms stayed unlocked, with both of them passing freely between.
On the last night of January, Roman sat alone in his study long after the house had gone quiet.
Tomorrow at first light they would leave for London—three days of hard road if the weather held, with barely a day to spare before Parliament opened—and Hartwell House already had the strange, hollowed-out feel of a place mid-departure, trunks strapped and waiting in the hall.
The fire had burned low, the room cold. He had not noticed.
His mother was already installed at the country estate, where she would be near Lyness and his wife, away from the social exhaustion of London as she much preferred.
She hadn’t needed a companion, though she loved her daughters-in-law.
She had needed permission to rest and find her own life again.
It had taken Tamsin’s gentle conversations with him for Roman to finally understand, and then give his full blessing to Mr. Conyers’s courtship.
Three letters lay before him. One required an answer he no longer had time to give properly and would have to wait for the road.
Another contained information which ought to reach Salmond before Roman left York.
The third was from a gentleman Roman had hoped might support them and who, after two pages of meandering cordiality, had declined to commit himself to anything whatsoever.
Roman read the last paragraph again, then reached for a fresh sheet of paper—he must act on Salmond’s instructions, the ones that mattered most, the ones he could not simply finish from an inn somewhere along the Great North Road.
The house was silent.
He knew this silence. For years, he had prized it—silence meant uninterrupted work. Or it used to.
He looked down at the papers covering his desk. There would always be another letter, another meeting, another man who required persuading, another thing Roman loved that he might fail to protect. His fingers tightened around the pen.
Micklegate had taught him that.
No.
Roman set his pen down. Micklegate had taught him something else. It had taught him what he became when he failed.
He had come home from that vote carrying defeat inside him like an injury and done his utmost to ensure no one saw it.
He had shut Tamsin out because he had believed that was strength: because a husband ought to bring his wife certainty and security.
Anything but the raw, humiliating truth he could not always mend what was broken.
Tamsin had told him what that had cost her. She had told him plainly.
I did not agree to be alone inside a marriage.
Roman stared at the blank paper. He had promised nothing that night—there had been nothing he could promise. He had not known how to become a different man merely because she had shown him the deficiencies of the one he was.
Perhaps he still did not.
But he knew what the old Roman would do tonight.
The old Roman would remain at this desk until the letter was finished, then another, then another.
Even tonight, with the carriage ordered for first light and three days of hard road ahead of them.
He would go upstairs when the house was sleeping, or perhaps not at all.
He would tell himself it was necessary. He would tell himself Tamsin understood.
And she would. That was the worst of it.
But he would not allow her to be lonely again.
Roman pushed back his chair, the letter unfinished. He looked at it for several seconds. Then he left it there.
The corridor outside his study was dark except for the lamp burning near the stairs. He went to his room, tapping gently on the connecting door before pushing it open.
Tamsin was sitting near the fire in her dressing gown, a book open in her lap, her traveling trunk already closed and strapped near the wardrobe. Her hair had been taken down for the night and fell over one shoulder in a loose braid.
There was no alarm in her face at the sight of him—only a smile of welcome. “Ah, there you are. I was beginning to wonder if you meant to work until dawn.”
Roman closed the door behind him. “For a moment, I was tempted,” he admitted, remaining beside the door.
Her eyes moved over him. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” he said quietly. “That is why I stopped.”
Understanding came slowly into her expression.
He crossed the room and stood before the fire, holding his hands toward it.
Only then did he realize how cold they were.
“There is another letter I ought to write. Salmond ought to have clear instructions before we go, or he will simply do whatever seems most dramatic. But I realized, it could wait. Some things can’t. ”
Tamsin closed her book. She always did that when he spoke to her; gave him her full attention.
Roman looked into the fire. “I have been thinking about something you said to me.”
A little smile pulled her lips upward, an expression he loved because it meant she was engaged, and pleasantly so. “Many a man might find such a thing dangerous, you know. Thinking about things your wife says.”
He sighed as one thoroughly put upon. “It has proved inconvenient.”
“I am sorry.”
He could hear the repressed laughter. “No, you are not.”
“Well. Perhaps not entirely sorry. We shall have to see what it was I said this time.”
He smiled faintly before the expression faded. “You told me you would not be alone in this marriage.”
Tamsin’s smile vanished. “Yes. And I meant it.”
Roman had rehearsed nothing. Perhaps that was why the words were so difficult.
He was accustomed to speaking when he knew what he meant to say—in Parliament, in meetings, across dining tables.
He arranged arguments before he made them.
He anticipated objections. But there was no argument to make now.
“I thought I understood you at the time.” He turned his back to the fire, watching her instead, tracing the features of her lovely face as he spoke.
“I understood I had hurt you. I even knew you were right. But I don’t think I knew what I was doing or how to stop.
Not immediately.” He rubbed his thumb over the side of his hand.
“I have spent most of my life believing the honorable thing is to carry whatever is mine, and to do it without complaint.”
“Yes, we have that in common,” Tamsin said softly. “And you are very good at taking up responsibility.”
Roman glanced at her. There was the smallest hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. He huffed a breath. “I am not certain that I wish to be good at it anymore.” Her smile disappeared and he stared into the fire. “Micklegate mattered to me. I thought I could make it matter to others.”
“I know.”
The words poured from him. “I did not want it to matter as much as it did after we lost.”
“I know that, too.”
“I thought if I could act unhurt, eventually the pain would stop.” Tamsin’s expression softened. Roman shook his head. “It was an idiotic theory.”
Her voice was warm. “Perhaps a little impractical, yes.”
Roman snuffed a laugh. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome.”
He drew a breath. “Walmgate matters—and yet, we might lose. Again. And there will be other things after it. Other fights and failures. People I cannot persuade. Things I cannot save. In York and in London. There will be people I cannot save.” His throat tightened unexpectedly.
Roman swallowed. “I cannot promise you I will never shut a door again.”
Tamsin’s brow creased. “I would not believe you if you did. I might be offended, in fact.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“I would wonder whether you had mistaken me for someone very stupid.”