Page 105 of Lord Hartwell’s Refuge

The council had voted. He possessed no office by which to challenge them, no authority over the city, no purse large enough to undertake the preservation himself even if such a thing had been permitted. Every thought he had amounted to trying to make noise, enough to ensure everyone in York knew precisely how he felt about the matter.

None of it would save the barbican.

“There is nothing to do,” Roman said quietly.

No one contradicted him. His heart sank.

He finished the wine in his glass. Kettlewell reached for the bottle, but Roman put his hand over his glass. “I said one.”

“You also said you did not want to come at all.” His friend smirked with his usual impertinent manner.

With a shrug, Roman gestured with his free hand to the room. “Yet here I am, demonstrating remarkable flexibility of character.”

That produced the laugh he had intended. His friends relaxed, perhaps believing him feeling somewhat better. He could do that much for them, at least.

He stayed, accepting nothing more in his cup. Kettlewell finished his own glass, Phineas ordered something to eat, and Holly objected on grounds Roman did not entirely follow. They spoke of other topics after that; deliberately, he suspected, but he was grateful enough not to question it.

By the time he left, the worst of the disappointment had receded. That, or he had become better at holding it. Either would do.

The house was quiet when Roman returned. The longcase clock in the entryway told him it was later than he had realized, though not scandalously so. His coat and hat disappeared into a servant’s hands and he answered the footman’s quiet inquiry about whether he required anything with a shake of his head before standing for a moment at the foot of the stairs.

He was tired. Not the satisfying fatigue of a long day in which something had been accomplished; this felt heavier and somehow less deserving.

He had sat in a chamber. He had listened. He had lost.

He ascended the stairs. His room and Tamsin’s were next to one another in the corridor. Roman stopped before her door. He had thought of her more than once at the Black Swan. He had imagined telling her, though never very far beyond the first sentence.

We lost.

She would understand immediately what he meant, and what the loss meant to him, and somehow that was not what he wanted in the least.

His own bedroom was dark save for the lamp left burning low near the bed. Roman moved quietly. Tamsin slept soundly more often than not, and if she had already retired, a few footsteps would hardly wake her. Still, he eased the door between their rooms open with care.

The room beyond his was dark. For a moment, he could make out nothing. His eyes adjusted to find the familiar shapes of her bed curtains, the dressing table, the chair near the hearth. The fire had burned down to a faint red glow.

Tamsin lay on her side beneath the covers, facing away from him. Sleeping soundly.

Roman stood with one hand still on the door. He could cross the room.

The thought came without invitation. He could undress in the dark, or call his valet and purposefully risk waking her, or simply shed enough of his clothes to make do until morning. He could climb into the bed beside her and feel the mattress shift beneath her weight when she turned to him. Perhaps she would wake. Perhaps she would ask after the barbican. Then he would have to tell her.

His hand tightened on the knob. He would have to tell her everything. Not merely that the vote had gone against him, that was easy enough. A few sentences. Facts. And he would have to endure the softness in her face when she understood what it meant to him.

Roman closed his eyes. He did not want pity.

No. That was unfair. Tamsin would not pity him.

Which was worse somehow, because whatever she offered him would be real, and he had no idea what he was meant to do with those emotions, let alone hers. Not tonight.

There was nothing she could fix. Nothing he needed her to arrange. No letter she could write or introduction she could make. There was no useful purpose in waking her simply because he did not want to be alone. His wife had spent years being summoned whenever someone else had a need. He would not be another person who did that to her.

The thought settled into place with the satisfying firmness of something reasonable as Roman looked at her once more. She shifted beneath the covers, and he froze.

For one absurd instant he wanted her to wake. The decision would be taken out of his hands. Wanted her to roll over and see him there and say his name in that soft, sleep-thickened way she sometimes did, finding nothing strange in his standing in the doorway.

She nestled deeper into her pillow. Roman’s grip on the knob relaxed at last.

Good. His lady wife needed her sleep.