Page 120 of Lord Hartwell’s Refuge

Roman relaxed. “Yes. I suppose so.” He sat with the realization a moment as a clock started to chime, and then kept on chiming. Midnight. Both of them looked toward it as he frowned. “Is it really that late?”

His wife glanced at the mantel. “Apparently so.”

He had been home more than an hour. He could not remember when time had disappeared so completely and so pleasantly.

Tamsin untucked her feet and reached for her abandoned book. Roman felt an immediate, irrational objection: he did not want the evening to be over. The thought arrested him as the pair of them rose.

For several days he had been attempting to spend time with his wife, because she had told him, with painful clarity, that she could not endure a marriage in which she was alone. He had thought the answer was to be present—to come home, sit beside her, ask questions about her day. He had treated companionship as another obligation he had neglected, another item on his daily agenda, another obligation he must learn to perform properly.

Tonight he had not performed anything. He had walked through the door wanting Tamsin: not her competence or her judgment, not her ability to smooth a difficult dinner or manage an impossible family or tell him what someone else required.

He wanted to be near her. He had wanted to see what expression crossed her face when he told her about Salmond’s ridiculous collection, and hear what questions she would ask. He had wanted to make her laugh.

Tamsin moved toward the door and Roman fell into step beside her, the dogs following them.

“Do you think,” she asked as they climbed the stairs, “Mr. Salmond would allow me to see the fossil?”

Roman considered. “I am certain he would be delighted by your interest, if that is truly what you wish.”

“It is. I would like to see something that old with my own eyes.”

The answer rose easily to his lips. “Then I will take you myself.”

Tamsin looked up. Roman wondered whether he had moved too quickly — whether she would hear assumption in it, or obligation, or one more decision made on her behalf. “If you would like me to.”

Her expression softened. “I would.”

They continued toward the stairs, and while Tamsin walked beside him, he no longer had the peculiar sensation that they were two people traveling in the same direction by accident. He kissed her goodnight outside her bedchamber door, but they both knew the door between bedrooms would open within a quarter hour, and they would be in each other’s arms again.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

December 25th, 1822

The church bells were still ringing as Tamsin stepped out into the cold Christmas morning air. She paused beneath the stone archway, one gloved hand gathering her deep blue cloak, and looked toward the road.

Lady Emily Eastwood stood a dozen paces away, ready to be handed up into the carriage, to sit beside her husband.

Her husband. The thought brought a smile to Tamsin’s lips.

Lyness didn’t seem aware of the crowd surrounding him—which, considering the number of guests attempting to congratulate him, was no small accomplishment. Emily said something Tamsin could not hear and Lyness bent his head to listen, his expression softening in a way she had seen several times since becoming acquainted with him, always near his beloved. Emily smiled up at him, and that was that. The whole world narrowed between them.

“Rather indecent, is it not?” Roman’s voice sounded beside her.

Tamsin turned to her husband. “What is?”

“Being that pleased with oneself in public.”

She followed his gaze to his brother. “I believe he is pleased with his bride.”

“Precisely. He has done nothing to earn that expression.”

Tamsin looked at Roman. His face was perfectly solemn. “You stood beside him through the entire ceremony.”

“I did.”

Oh, her husband was most confusing sometimes. “Yet you remain unconvinced that marrying the woman he loves is an accomplishment.”

His expression remained steady. “His now-wife did most of the difficult work.”