Page 19 of Lord Hartwell’s Refuge

These were facts. They formed a coherent argument.

His mother would see through them immediately.

Not because they were untrue. Because they were not, if he was honest with himself, the reason he was standing in his room putting together a debate the way he would for the House of Lords. The practical points were the reason he could present the idea at all. The actual sequence of events which had led him to his decision was considerably less dignified, and he had no intention of sharing the truth with anyone.

First, he had asked his groom to look into a woman because she had been kind to his dog.

Second, he had sat in his own study and listened at a door for the better part of half an hour rather than announce himself or close it, telling his brother Athena was to blame, which Lyness had not believed for a moment.

Third, Roman had called on a family he had never met, on the stated grounds that one of their youngest children had admired his dogs near the city walls, which was an explanation he had now offered twice and which sounded no more convincing the second time.

And this afternoon in a meadow he had a conversation that was, on its surface, entirely unremarkable—short, slightly halting, conducted at a careful distance—and had been unable to stop thinking about his conversational partner.

He adjusted his cuff.

The difficulty was not that he couldn’t explain any of this. The difficulty was that the explanation, laid out plainly, amounted to: he had paid an unusual amount of attention to a woman he had spoken to for a combined total of perhaps half an hour, and the attention showed no sign of diminishing of its own accord.

Which was not a thing he was accustomed to. He was accustomed to being deliberate. Measured. To knowing why he was doing a thing before he did it.

He was unaccustomed to his dog’s behavior constituting evidence of sound judgment.

Yet here he was, prepared to go downstairs and tell his mother he thought Miss Thomasine Mayweather might make a fine baroness, with Athena’s opinion of the woman forming a not-insignificant part of the foundation of that position.

It was not, he thought distractedly, his finest hour as a rational man.

But the practical argument was also true. The two things together—the practical argument, and whatever the other thing was that he was not yet prepared to name—was more than enough to act on.

Roman took a breath and examined himself one last time. His mother needed to see a clear-eyed man who had made a decision and intended to stand behind it. Even the parts which did not reflect especially well on him.

The drawing room was warm enough that Lady Hartwell had drawn her chair closer to the lamp than the fire, the better to examine the catalog spread across her lap. It was a substantial volume she had been studying for days—Roses of Europe, with illustrations detailed enough to satisfy a woman who took her garden seriously—and she turned its pages with a focused contentment he knew came from her love of the flowers.

Roman stepped into the room and took up a position at the window with his hands behind his back, staring out at the darkening street. “Do you know anything of the Mayweather family?”

“You came in so quietly, I had stopped expecting you to say anything at all.” She turned a page. “Mayweather. Mayweather. A unique name. The Mayweathers on the Tadcaster Road?”

“Yes.”

“Mm.” His mother tilted the catalog toward the lamp to better examine an illustration of a climbing rose. “Mm.” She tapped the drawing. “These would not survive a Yorkshire winter.” She turned another page. “I know Mrs. Mayweather through Mrs. Holly. A perfectly agreeable woman, very energetic on committees. No interest in gardening whatsoever, which is a shame. They have quite a decent bit of land out there and she does nothing with it.” A fresh page, a fresh examination of a new rose. “Why do you ask?”

Roman ensured his voice remained level. “I was curious what you knew of the family. Christopher Holly knows them through his sister. He said they move about Society a good deal.”

“Did he?” Lady Hartwell found a page on Italian varieties and paused. “A Rosa gallica. I wonder if that would survive our climate?” She glanced up at Roman. “They have daughters, I think. The oldest I have not seen in some time. Then there is a pair of them, out in Society, I have seen them at assemblies. Pretty girls, very close together in age.” She frowned slightly at the catalog. “Do you think Rosa gallica would manage out of doors here, or would I need to give it a glass house? It wants full sun apparently, which is not something York offers with any reliability.”

Her obsession with roses could not be distracted, then—or at least, not yet. “I could not say. But we have talked of the glass house before, Mother. I am certain it would not work within the city.” He knew if he let the conversation stray toward roses, there would be no pulling it back. “As to the Mayweathers, I have encountered the eldest. Miss Thomasine Mayweather.”

“Indeed?” She looked up briefly. “I do not think I have ever seen her at anything. One hears of the others constantly. Miss Seraphina, the pretty dark one, and Miss Pearl, and a younger is coming out at Christmas, I believe. But the eldest?” She considered. “No. I do not think I have ever seen her anywhere at all.”

Roman’s pulse did not flutter. It did not. “She does not go out much, I am told.”

“Apparently not.” Lady Hartwell returned to the catalog. “The Italian roses are beautiful. Whether they are beautiful enough to justify a hothouse is another question entirely.” She turned another page. “Roman.”

Why not a hothouse, if it could be a small one? “Yes, Mother?”

She gazed at him steadily. “Why are you telling me about a young woman I have never met?”

He remained facing the window. “I wondered if you might like to meet her.”

There was quite a pause before his mother answered him. “Why,” she asked slowly, “should I want to meet a young lady I have barely heard of and never glimpsed?”