Page 16 of Lord Hartwell’s Refuge

Holly was quiet for a moment that lasted precisely long enough to make Roman aware of exactly how thin his stated reasoning was.

The man knew how to use silence to drive someone mad.

“This,” his friend said at last, “is the most peculiar idea you have ever had.” He unfolded his hands and rose, opening a closet almost invisible in the wall. He reached inside for his greatcoat and shrugged into it with an unhurried manner. He was always methodical and calm. Roman had yet to ever see his friend flustered. “As your friend, I have a thousand questions.” He picked up his hat, turning it once in his hands before settling it. “As your solicitor, I will humor your strange whim without asking a single one of them. Shall we take your carriage or walk? ‘Tis a distance.”

Roman stood. He had not actually expected this to work quite so smoothly, which meant he had not entirely thought through what came next. A rarity in his life.

“The carriage,” he suggested. “The dogs are at home, and we must fetch them first.”

Holly fixed him with a look. “Of course we must,” he said, with no inflection whatsoever, and led the way to the door. “One cannot meet new acquaintances without Apollo and Athena.”

After they collected the dogs they did not speak much on the ride to Tadcaster Road. Holly stared out the window, and Roman thought the man appeared to be enjoying this unexpected interruption to his day. The carriage turned toward Micklegate, and he watched the barbican rise ahead of them through the glass. Outside the city walls they went, on a thoroughfare the Romans were rumored to have paved into a road over a thousand years before.

Roman looked at the hat in his hands. Trusting his intuition had never served him wrong. The visit with Holly was another instance of that. He was a man who had built a political career on reading situations accurately and acting on what he observed.

He had observed something worth investigating in Miss Mayweather.

He was entirely certain that was all this was: a curiosity. Once he visited her, saw her again, he would know why his thoughts kept circling back to her.

Athena grumbled from where she sat on the carriage floor and dropped her chin on his leg. The dogs preferred to run alongside the carriage for short stretches, but he wanted their energy and best behavior for the Mayweather children, however many of them there were.

As the carriage turned onto a small lane off Tadcaster Road and a house came into view, Roman caught the very edge of something cross Holly’s face; a suspiciously knowing smile, which disappeared before it fully arrived.

Roman decided not to mention it.

The twins had been tolerably well-behaved for nearly half an hour, which was approaching their natural limit.

Daisy had produced a creditable sketch of the apple tree at the garden’s edge, though she had given it considerably more fruit than it currently possessed, and George had drawn what he described as a horse but which bore a stronger resemblance to a very confident dog. Tamsin praised both with equal sincerity and was in the process of redirecting George toward a second attempt when Henry’s voice reached them from the direction of the house.

“They are here! They are HERE! Tamsin, TAMSIN, the LION-DOGS⁠—”

He came around the corner of the house running breathlessly, arms swinging with abandon, face incandescent with a joy suggesting the second coming of something genuinely miraculous. Behind him, moving at a considerably more dignified pace, came her stepmother—and behind her stepmother, acting as if it was a perfectly ordinary thing to happen on a cloudless afternoon in September, came Lord Hartwell.

Tamsin became immediately and acutely aware of her bonnet.

It was not a bonnet fit for company. It was a bonnet for garden work and overeager children to knock askew. It was a wide-brimmed straw configuration, slightly lopsided from being sat upon the previous spring, with a ribbon faded from its original yellow to something approaching the color of old paper. She had not given it a moment’s thought when she put it on that morning.

She gave it a great deal of thought now.

With any luck, barons did not care about gardening hats. Or, well, anything to do with her.

What on earth was he doing here?

Lord Hartwell looked exactly as he had by the city walls: composed, and deliberately dignified. Dressed with impeccability. She wondered if he had ever in his life reached for the nearest hat without thinking about it first. He was holding himself with a posture that reminded her, absurdly, of a captain inspecting his crew, having arrived at Sycamore Lodge with a purpose and intending to see it through.

Was this some sort of invasion? Had she done something wrong when she visited his home? Perhaps his brother told him of it and the man had come to tell her not to presume to make such visits in future?

Then she saw Mr. Holly following a step behind, Matilda’s brother’s expression as polite as when he often escorted his sister to their home. He caught Tamsin’s eye briefly, and she had the distinct impression he was finding something privately amusing, though what specifically she could not have said.

Henry had turned back after his declaration to launch himself toward the dogs at Lord Hartwell’s heels. Apparently they had been told to stay, for they remained precisely where they were despite Henry’s enthusiastic arrival in their immediate vicinity. One of the dogs regarded the child with a certain dignified patience, quite used to being the sort of a creature who inspired excitement. The other dog’s ears twitched once, looking up at their master with great restraint.

The lady of the house was clearly restraining herself too as she spoke. “Lord Hartwell, this is my husband’s eldest daughter, my stepdaughter Miss Thomasine Mayweather. Thomasine, dear, you will of course recognize Lord Hartwell.”

Tamsin tried to smile even as her pulse fluttered.

Her stepmother’s voice had the warmth it reserved for occasions when she needed Tamsin to do something without argument. “Lord Hartwell has been kind enough to call, and Mr. Holly with him. I will take Mr. Holly inside to speak with your father, and I wonder if you would be so good as to show his lordship the meadow beyond the garden. He would like to exercise his animals. Henry has been talking of nothing else since—well.” She smiled at Lord Hartwell, gracious as ever, but obviously with more important things on her mind. “Since he saw your dogs near the walls. The children would so enjoy seeing them run properly.”

As expected, her stepmother did not wait for an answer from Tamsin. She turned to Mr. Holly with a focused energy Tamsin well knew. Her stepmother had decided he was going to solve her problems whether he knew it yet or not.