Page 128 of Lord Hartwell’s Refuge

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.