Page 45 of Lord Hartwell’s Refuge

Roman wanted to disentangle one of her hands and give it the purpose of holding his own, an absurd notion. He shook his head. “You are to enjoy your family and friends who have come to wish us well. You are to rest, Tamsin.”

It was such a small thing to give her. He was faintly astonished by how much it seemed to cost her to accept it when her expression tightened rather than relaxed.

Across the room, he saw his mother watching the exchange without appearing to watch it at all—a skill the former Lady Hartwell had perfected decades before Roman had needed it himself. He did not attempt to guess what she made of it. He had long ago stopped trying to read his mother's conclusions before she offered them.

Mrs. Mayweather reappeared at his elbow with a strange, overly bright expression, delivering a complaint in a tone more suited to charming news. “I do wish we might have asked more of our friends to come,” she said, “but one hasn't the room—still, I shall send cake round to all of mine directly. They will be so pleased to hear of the wedding and enjoy at least a small part of it.”

All of her friends? Perhaps it was a slip of the tongue. Surely, Tamsin had a list of people she would wish to share her moment with.

“I am certain they will,” Roman said, and watched her sail off entirely satisfied by his agreement.

Kettlewell materialized at his elbow. “I have found the good drink hidden away in a room full of stuffed birds.” He shuddered. “I braved the feathers to avoid whatever potion is laid out as the wedding punch.” He sipped a glass decidedly empty of the pink-ish-hued punch the other guests were sipping. “Longest ceremony I have sat through since my cousin's, and hers had a bishop.”

Roman’s lips twitched upward. “The vicar felt strongly about thoroughness.”

“The vicar felt strongly about the sound of his own voice. Small mercy the Marriage Act didn't require a second reading or more scripture.”

“Small mercy indeed,” Roman agreed, and found he meant that, too—some low, private relief that the whole business of getting married in England had not been made any more complicated than it already was for men with less patience than he possessed.

It was some time later, the room comfortably loud with Nelsons and Mayweather children and his mother's low conversation with Mrs. Holly, that Roman found himself watching Tamsin from whatever side of the room he was on throughout the festivities. When the meal was called at last, he sat beside her at the dining table.

Already, he wondered if he had miscalculated in at least one respect.

He had expected competence. He had married her, in part, for her ability to care for her entire household and recognize when she needed assistance. What he had not expected was the ease with which she'd absorbed an entire room of people, those who came as his guests as strangers, in under an hour. She was already remembering names, deflecting Mrs. Holly's more pointed questions with a lightness that cost her nothing, drawing Kettlewell into a conversation about the Christmas assembly even though he detested such topics of conversation.

Her siblings deferred to her, her father appeared proud, her stepmother breathless. His friends all had worked to put her at ease only to find her already quietly calm.

She was better at this than Roman was, and he had been bred for it.

He waited until there was a lull and gained a moment alone with her near the window, before he revealed what he'd been turning over. “You are doing this all very well.” He heard the stiffness as the words left his mouth and could do nothing to call it back. “The people. My friends. All of it. I had not—that is, I do not think I anticipated how well you could move through a crowd. I did not presume you would manage so well.”

Tamsin blinked. “That is either a compliment or an insult, and I find I cannot tell which.”

“A compliment,” he said, apologetic and quickly. “Badly delivered.”

“Very badly.” Her lips turned up a little more.

“I'm aware.” Roman adjusted his cuff nervously, a habit he was aware of and could not seem to break. “I am better at delivering remarks in the Guildhall than I am at telling my own wife she impresses me.”

Something in her expression shifted—amusement to surprise, he thought, though he could not have sworn it yet. In time, he would come to know all her expressions. At present, he did not examine it further. He was too occupied with a small, unwelcome discovery of his own: that he had rehearsed political speeches with less difficulty than he'd just managed a few honest sentences to Tamsin, and that the difficulty had nothing to do with words and everything to do with the fact he had wanted, quite badly, for her to believe him.

He did not have a name yet for wanting something to land with honesty for one specific person.

Roman tucked the discomfort away with the vague, uneasy sense he would be revisiting it later, and went to find his mother before he muddled another conversation with his wife.

Tamsin had never imagined her own wedding breakfast, though she had attended others over the years. She had experienced such events as a thing which happened to other women, within other families, where someone else arranged for the ham and the seating, and it fell to her to look after the small catastrophes of too many children in one room. She had not even had much time, since her engagement a mere two weeks before, to think about what her wedding breakfast might be like.

Perhaps she should have known she would spend the first hour of it fighting the urge to manage it.

It was Roman who had stopped her. She considered the moment more than once through the morning—his body warm behind hers, his voice pitched low enough to make her shiver. You are not to do that today.

She had spent more than a decade being the sole person in the house who noticed when something needed doing. To be told, gently, that it was no longer her job…it felt less like relief than like standing on a floor she wasn't certain would hold.

But it held. The footmen bumped into each other, and nothing happened. The children bickered in a corner over who had the larger piece of cake, but no tears came. Her stepmother flew about like a bird trapped inside, but no one else appeared the least bit ruffled.

Matilda Elgin leaned close, a bright smile on her face. “I cannot say when I have seen three such interesting matriarchs all in one place. My mother, your stepmother, and your mother-in-law. They seem to mostly avoid each other, keeping to their own sides of the room. Do you think they are territorial creatures when they have not their own friends near them?”

Tamsin nearly choked on her punch. A strange concoction, she was relieved to have a reason to put it down. “But my stepmother and Mrs. Holly are friends at present, are they not? Or did they have another falling out?”