Page 30 of Lord Hartwell’s Refuge

“Miss Mayweather.” Lord Hartwell raised both hands and caught hers, carefully disentangling them to hold one in each of his own. His gaze held her steady. “I am a baron with considerable income and no need of your dowry. I have asked for your hand, not your father’s accounts.”

“That is generous of you to say.” Though hardly practical.

“It is not generosity. It is simply true.” Something flickered across his face—not quite a smile, but adjacent to one. “Though I confess I had not expected to spend my proposal defending the fact that I wish to marry you, and not your family’s money.”

It startled a short laugh out of Tamsin, unexpected and entirely genuine, and for a moment the gravity of everything they had just agreed to lifted enough that she could breathe. “What of our consequence? We have little enough of it.”

That had him keeping hold of one of her hands, guiding her up into the gig. “Your family is generally known and respected in York Society. Your father is a gentleman. Your mother was, and your stepmother is, a lady. I cannot think of any reason to have doubts on that matter.”

Her family’s lack of consequence was, it seemed, of no consequence to him.

Puzzled, Tamsin settled in her seat. He gathered the ribbons and climbed in beside her as though the matter was settled, but it was not. And she had to speak.

“Lord Hartwell.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked up at him, studying his expression. His fine features. The expensive suit of clothes. “If my family’s fortunes are of no interest to you, and indeed you intend instead to spend money on them by hiring a governess, then why would you ask me to wed you? Surely there are other candidates. You cannot pretend, I think, to have fallen deeply in love with me after only two encounters.”

“Three,” the gentleman corrected. “The first near the walls, with Henry.” His eyebrows gave the slightest tilt upward, and she caught it then—a sense of humor. Whether it was with himself or the situation, she could not guess. “And no. I will not claim myself moved by an unlikely, hasty passion. The reason is to my liking, even if no one else understands it.”

“And what is it? Your reason?” She needed to know, to be certain she was not agreeing to a match offered for something she did not have or could not grant. Though there weren’t any great misunderstandings of her family’s situation on his part.

Lord Hartwell took both reins in one hand and laid the other atop hers where they rested in her lap, the touch strangely intimate, yet she did not recoil from it. “Miss Mayweather, I asked you to be my wife because I have seen and heard evidence to assure me you would be exactly the partner I need going forward. You are thoughtful, practical, and kind. You are respectful of others and resourceful. I am a busy man, tending to the needs of the city, county, and the realm. I have estates and households to manage. Political meetings and responsibilities. A mother in need of a companion.” He gave a gentle squeeze to her hand as his head tilted toward her. He lowered his voice as he said, “It is past time for me to have a baroness by my side through it all. Past time for me to have a family of my own, including a wife and children. I think you are an excellent choice, from all I know of you.”

The answers were quite practical. And, somehow, that disappointed her. “Oh. I see.”

“But there is one thing more.” He watched her carefully, his gaze shaded by the brim of his hat. “I find that I am curious about you.”

Now that startled her. “Curious?”

“Yes. Today I watched you laugh at a joke about bread passed between windows, and put your hand against a thousand-year-old wall, expecting it might tell you something, and I find I am curious about what else you might do, given the chance to simply exist rather than manage anyone other than yourself. I suspect you have not been given much opportunity to consider your thoughts and plans before others’ in some years.”

He was right. That startled her more than his proposal had.

“How soon do you want to be married?” Tamsin asked, putting away the rest of the conversation to examine later.

“As soon as I can arrange for a Common License, if that suits.”

Quickly, then. Within days.

Did she mind? It gave her little time to plan or think through what this change would mean. Then again, Tamsin had spent the last decade of her life considering marriage and never had the opportunity to put her theories into action. Here, at last, was the opportunity.

“Of course. You had better speak to my father at once.”

He gave his attention to the horse. “As you say, Miss Mayweather.” He guided the horse onto the path and the road toward home, where she was quite certain her news would cause a stir far bigger than Lady Hartwell’s visit—or indeed, anything else, ever had.

In short order, Lord Hartwell was sequestered with her father in the study at Sycamore Lodge. Tamsin stood in the corridor outside the room and waited for the shock to arrive.

Somehow, she remained perfectly calm.

A baron had proposed marriage to her not forty minutes past, in a gig, beside an old Roman wall. She had said yes. He had brought her home and walked directly into her father’s study with the calm of a man who had already decided how this afternoon would proceed. She had watched the door close behind him. She was still watching it now.

What Tamsin felt was not shock, exactly. It was quieter than shock. Something like the moment after finishing a very long list of household duties—that relief when the rooms were clean and quiet, and there was nothing left to catch the attention of one’s mind.

That seemed significant.

The sound of her sisters on the stairs brought her attention back to the present, and it was Seraphina who saw her first. “You’re back early. Did something—” She had a good look at Tamsin’s face. “Something did happen.”

It was not a question. Seraphina had always been able to read Tamsin well.

“Lord Hartwell is speaking with Father.” Tamsin declared it plainly, for there was no better way to say it. She pursed her lips and considered how best to explain what she herself was still puzzling out.