Page 69 of Lord Hartwell’s Refuge

Was it taking longer than normal for Tamsin’s maid to finish her work? It certainly seemed so.

He picked up the book he’d left beside his bed. Read half a page. Read it again. Perhaps even read it a third time. Even still, he could not have said what it contained.

Eliza’s footsteps crossed Tamsin’s room with purpose. A few moments later, Roman heard the outer door open and close. At last, his wife was alone.

He looked at the connecting door as he closed his book. He had already determined nothing approaching catastrophe had occurred. They could continue on as normal. At dinner, things had been a little awkward, but she had not renewed their disagreement.

A proper gentleman would not presume, though—or would not appear to presume. Perhaps it would be best if she decided when to open the door. He would let her come to him.

And so Roman waited.

Two minutes passed. Another. He picked up the book again. He read another paragraph without retaining it. Five minutes.

Enough. He put the book aside and stood. He would knock—that was polite yet restrained. She would know he was waiting and that he respected her decision whether or not to open the door. It was a logical, acceptable course of action. Knocking was not demanding anything. When she came to the door, he could ask if she wanted company. If she said no, he would listen, and leave her alone. That was an entirely reasonable application of what he’d learned that afternoon.

Roman crossed the room. He reached the connecting door with his hand raised to make a light tap—when he heard the faint scrape of metal from the other side.

He stopped as he realized what the sound was. The key turning.

Snick.

Roman stared at the door. For several seconds, he did not move.

They had never locked it. There had been no need. He would never enter Tamsin’s chamber without an invitation. She knew that. If she’d wanted solitude, she need only have told him.

Which meant the lock held a different meaning. One he did not understand. Roman moved his hand to knock anyway, but stopped before his knuckles touched the wood.

Please, Roman. Listen to me. Do not attempt to fix this again.

His hand fell. There was nothing he could do, the realization unbearable.

Something had gone terribly wrong. His wife was hurting on the other side of a door because of a miscalculation he had made, and she did not want him to try to make it better. The only responsibility left to him was to respect the boundary she had clearly put in place.

Roman stood there another moment in frozen uncertainty.

Then he stepped back. He did not knock. He did not turn the handle or rattle. He did not even call her name. He simply stood there, on the wrong side of the door from her, staring at a piece of wood.

For once, doing nothing was the thing required of him. A thing some men might find a relief. But not him.

In that unsettling moment, Roman had never felt less useful in his entire life.

Chapter Twenty

Meeting with Matilda along the New Walk, Tamsin did not tell her closest friend about the locked door. A door she had left locked for a second night, even though she had remained as approachable as ever during the day.

She told Matilda nearly everything else.

It was not a deliberate omission, not precisely. She simply found that when she reached that portion of the story, the words refused to come. Telling Matilda she and Roman had disagreed was one thing. Admitting she had stood in her nightdress with her hand upon a key, hesitating for several seconds before deliberately turning it against her husband, was another.

Some would have likely said it was not her right to prohibit her husband’s access to her. Not that she thought the lock really needed engaging, but it was the principle of the thing.

Wasn’t it?

So she let the story end downstairs in the dining room with her pounding headache.

“He meant to help,” Tamsin affirmed, for what she suspected was the third time.

Matilda pursed her lips and twirled the parasol over her shoulder. “Yes. I believe I understood that the first two times you mentioned it.”