Page 51 of Lord Hartwell’s Refuge

“Yes,” he said. “But we will wait upon Lady Hartwell’s readiness from now on.” He hadn’t intended to make the declaration, but there it was, and he nodded at his reflection in the looking glass. It felt proper.

His personal servant bowed to take his leave. “Of course, my lord.”

When Roman entered the drawing room adjacent to the dining room, he found Tamsin already present. For a moment he paused in the doorway, watching her as she stood before the hearth. Tamsin stared up at the painting above the fireplace: a landscape with his country home sitting in the background, the foreground full of wild flowers and a sweeping meadow.

“I hope you find the actual estate to your liking,” he said, and she started.

“I did not hear you come in.” Tamsin turned with a soft smile on her lips. She looked content—at least, he thought she did. She wore a gown the color of a rosy dusk, her dark hair piled up with a few soft tendrils curling loose around her cheeks.

She made a lovely picture.

He recalled himself enough to say, “My apologies. I did not mean to sneak up on you.” Then he came forward and gestured to the chair nearest the hearth. “Dinner will be ready shortly, I am certain. Would you care to sit?”

After Tamsin settled in the chair, he took the one across from her. It was a formality he’d observed every evening of his adult life and had never once questioned, until he saw her glance around the room somewhat nervously.

“Is something amiss, Tamsin?”

“No. Only—” She smoothed her skirts, taking a small, considering pause. “It feels strange, waiting in a room together before dinner, only the two of us.”

That made sense. “You are accustomed to a fuller table.”

“Very.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “I am not certain I have ever sat down to a meal with fewer than six other people in the room, unless one counts breakfast, and even that could be rather crowded some mornings.”

Roman found himself curious in a way he hadn’t quite anticipated. “How does it run, in your father’s house? The evening meal, I mean.”

“Oh. It is the same every day, really.” Tamsin said it lightly, the way one might describe the weather, entirely unaware that he was listening for something beneath the words rather than simply to them. She shared so much about herself without meaning to, he had seen that the first time they spoke in her family’s garden. “I see the youngest ones fed first. Henry and George and Daisy take a simpler dinner in the kitchen. They are still young and learning their manners. After, I see that they properly wash and go to bed before I dress for dinner myself.”

“And the elder children dine separately.”

“Once they are old enough to sit properly at table, yes. Edward will likely begin to do so after Christmas—when he is home from school, of course. He is old enough now, though he still needs reminding not to interrupt others while they are speaking. And not to talk when his own mouth ought to be chewing.” She laughed, briefly, at some private memory. “My father is not always present. Nor my stepmother, most evenings, if there’s a social meeting or a visit that runs long. My stepmother sets the week’s menu on Mondays, generally—she’s very decided about wanting a proper joint of beef on Sundays—but I am the one who sees it actually manages. If the butcher is short on the cut she wanted, or the fish does not come in on time, someone has to know what to put in its place before the cook is left standing there with nothing to serve. I would rather take an hour rearranging a menu than waste a good piece of meat that could feed us for two more days.”

She said all this the way a woman recited a well-worn errand—with nothing remarkable about it and entirely without complaint. It had apparently never occurred to her that a household of ten might reasonably employ someone specifically for the purposes she was describing so plainly.

Roman kept his expression even as his mind sifted through her words, the way it did in a meeting when a man across the table said something he did not intend to be revealing. “And who,” he asked, gently, “manages the household when you are not there to see to it?”

Tamsin blinked without comprehension. “I…I do not know. I suppose all that is in the past, now.” A small crease appeared between her brows—there and gone quickly, replaced by something more determinedly cheerful. “My stepmother will manage, of course. She did before I took on those duties.”

“Perhaps your sister next to you in age,” he suggested, watching her with care.

That brought a quick frown to his wife’s lovely face. “Oh. Seraphina. I suppose she is old enough to help now, and it is valuable training for when she runs her own household.” She looked down at her gloves, adjusting the buttons at the wrist. “The house has been in good order for a long time. I am certain it will all continue well enough without me.”

Something about that suggestion did not sit well with her. Did she doubt her sister’s abilities? No, that thought did not settle comfortably.

“I am certain you are right,” Roman murmured, choosing not to say what he was thinking.

A house did not simply manage itself into good order for a decade because a stepmother wished it to. Whatever this last week had cost the Mayweather household in confusion over fish deliveries and untended younger children, no one else had been prepared for it.

Tamsin had held her family together in more ways than she knew. All of them were likely to come to that realization before long.

Athena that morning, refusing to leave Tamsin’s side until told twice, came to mind. Dogs, at least, seemed to know instinctively what people did not always trouble themselves to notice. They knew when someone ought to be looked after because they were precious.

“You needn’t concern yourself with any of that, here.” Roman wanted to reassure her, but was aware even as he said it that it was an inadequate phrase to offer a woman who had just described, without any apparent awareness of having done so, a decade of running a household more complicated than his, on someone else’s authority, and with none of her own. “Mrs. Briers manages the ordering. You will have oversight of it, in time, if you wish it— but there is no fish course resting on your judgment tonight, or any night. You need only enjoy the meal you ordered.”

“I know,” Tamsin said, looking at her lap. “It will take some getting used to, I am afraid.”

“Yes.” He leaned back in his chair, tipping his head to one side as he studied her, this woman who now shared his life. “I am certain it will. But I hope it will soon feel comfortable. Being a baroness ought to have some advantages, after all.”

That brought her gaze to his. “Indeed. I am eager to discover each and every one of those advantages, too.”