Page 29 of Lord Hartwell’s Refuge

She understood.

Roman looked at her profile. The bonnet brim. The line of her jaw. Her hand now folded again demurely before her. “Miss Mayweather.”

She turned to face him. “Yes, Lord Hartwell?”

He had planned to do this part in her family garden after speaking to her father for permission to present his suit. He had considered that scenario carefully; had planned his words with precision, knowing each word must bear the weight and dignity of a baron proposing a mutually beneficial arrangement to a young lady of limited means.

And yet— “I find I cannot wait any longer to ask you something.” He was throwing the whole plan completely out. Mentally setting it ablaze as he held his hand out to her. “Will you do me the honor of granting me your hand in marriage?”

Chapter Ten

“Yes.”

It was out of Tamsin before she placed her hand in his. Before she had finished hearing the question, nearly. She heard herself say it and felt a brief, dizzying surprise at her own certainty. She had settled the matter the moment he asked.

Lord Hartwell stared at her, his eyes wide and his body momentarily stiff.

Perhaps he had not expected such an instant answer, arriving without adornment or even a hint of demurring on her part. Perhaps she ought to have thought on it rather than speaking with such impulsivity. Yet as she stared back at him, quite surprised with herself, she found she had no wish to take her acceptance back.

“You have not heard my reasons.” The surprise in his tone was endearing.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Tamsin had spoken on instinct, and she might as well continue to do so. “I do not require your reasons to know my own mind.” She had not said yes blindly, either, and the practical part of her was already catching up to what she had done. “Though I do have questions. Concerns, perhaps would be the better word.”

Something in his shoulders eased, as if this—the questions, the concerns—was ground he anticipated and could stand on again.

“Ask them,” he said calmly. “I have given the matter of our union considerable thought.”

“My family.” Tamsin kept her gaze on him. “If I leave Sycamore Lodge, who manages the younger children? Anne does her best, but she has never been the one to oversee their lessons or their days, she busies herself with social calls and guiding the three girls of an age to marry. Looking after the children has fallen to me for some years now. I cannot simply—” She heard the anxiety in her tone, steadied her voice. “I will not abandon them to chaos for my own advancement. They are my brothers and sisters, and I love them.”

They had started back toward the gig, his arm offered and her hand resting on it out of habit. Walking made it easier to speak plainly.

Easier than standing still and watching his face for every reaction, anyway.

“The children’s lessons,” Tamsin continued. “Edward is away at school, but I keep up with his letters from the family. Daisy and George need their mathematics drilled daily or they forget them entirely. Henry barely has legible handwriting.” She heard herself listing each item as she might list household accounts and could not seem to stop. “Someone must see to it, or they will not be ready when it is time to go away to school. I do not know who that would be, if not me.”

“A governess,” Lord Hartwell said, without hesitation or seemingly any concern. “A proper one, qualified, paid a fair wage. I have already made inquiries. There is a woman known to my mother—she is well regarded, presently between positions. I can have her installed at Sycamore Lodge within the fortnight, should your father agree to it.”

“You have…already made inquiries?”

Lord Hartwell’s expression remained neutral, yet there was the barest twitch to his lips. “I told you I had given the matter considerable thought.”

Tamsin let that sit a moment, unsettled by how thoroughly he had considered her family before she had agreed to join his. It ought to have felt presumptuous of him…yet it felt instead like relief.

“The household,” she said aloud, before she could examine that feeling too closely. “My stepmother manages the accounts and the menus, but it is I who—” She paused, searching for the right way to say it. “It is I who keep the peace, generally. Between the servants. Between Mother and the cook, when there is a disagreement about the management of the table and kitchen. Between the older girls, when Seraphina and Pearl quarrel over nothing at all, which is often. I calm the younger children when they are quarrelsome or distressed. The neighbors, too, I keep in good humor when something unfortunate happens, such as Henry feeding their geese.”

Tamsin halted by the gig and realized he had not yet offered his hand. Indeed, Lord Hartwell was quiet long enough that she glanced up at him.

He was not looking at her. He was looking at nothing, staring downward, his brows drawn together. It was a surprising change to his otherwise always stoic demeanor.

“I had not considered that,” he admitted finally. “The governess, the finances—those I could plan for. All this is not something I took into account, because such a thing should not, I think, fall to the daughter of a household. Especially where there is a more mature woman in residence. Your father’s wife. I cannot think this is an issue for you to worry over. Family management, household management, it belongs to the heads of the house.”

Tamsin’s stomach twisted. It might be true, but that did not make hearing it from someone outside the family any easier. “Someone must do it.”

“Yes. But it ought not to have had to be you. Not at nineteen, not at five and twenty, not now.” Lord Hartwell paused. “Perhaps, without you there, your stepmother will find she must take it up herself. It may not happen gracefully, there will be fractures. But I do not think it is yours to carry any longer, not once you are my wife.”

Once you are my wife. She did not examine that phrase too closely either.

“And the finances you mentioned,” she said, because it was the last of it and the hardest, and though it had been said briefly the topic must be examined. She would rather have it said and done with than carried back to the gig unspoken. “You must know already that I have little to bring to this arrangement. I have no significant dowry—indeed, until I see the accounts I am unsure if my dowry has been spent. Daphne is to be launched at the Christmas assembly ball, and that alone will strain what funds remain. I would not have you mistake this for—” She twisted her fingers before her even as her lungs tightened. “I would not have you think I came to this arrangement unaware of what I lack.”