Chapter Three #3
“How comforting. I could make an announcement in the papers. Wanted: respectable, titled gentleman willing to accept a penniless spinster, her mother’s debts, and whatever melancholic houseguest is currently reclining in the salon.”
“Miss Montfort.”
“I am sorry.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “I am being absurd.”
“You are not.”
“I am. But in my defense, I have recently learned I may need to become a wife before Cousin Algernon arrives to complain about the morning light.”
Mr. Ashby’s mouth moved. It was not quite a smile, but nearly. Though the amusement quickly faded. “I do not mean to make light of it,” he said.
“No,” she replied, quieter now. “I know.”
That was the awful thing. He was not making light of it. He was taking her predicament seriously, perhaps more seriously than anyone had taken her in years.
Poppy looked down at Freddie, who had begun licking the toe of her slipper with great devotion.
Marriage. Yes. It was the only reasonable answer. And she was not entirely without allies.
She had Bea and Georgie.
The thought steadied her so unexpectedly that she sat a little straighter.
Their friendship had begun in a retiring room at a ball, the three of them hiding from lecherous fiancés, infuriating suitors, and scandalous mothers.
They had called themselves The Wallflowers’ Revolt, half jest and half oath.
Georgie had escaped her unwanted marriage to a hideous, elderly marquess. And ended up married to an entirely different man altogether.
Bea had gone to war against her father’s political protégé and ended up married to the man she’d once skewered with her caricatures.
And Poppy—
Poppy had laughed. Smoothed. Managed. Apologized. Tidied. Pretended.
Perhaps now it was her turn.
Not to run from marriage…but to find one.
The thought was so humbling, so practical, so unlike the grand rebellions of her friends, that she almost laughed. Yet if anyone would understand the strange courage required to choose a thing because one must, surely it would be Bea and Georgie.
She would go to them. She would ask for help.
This time it would be her revolt. Even if it seemed more like a surrender. Either way, it would be her first line of defense against the impossible.
“Thank you,” she said to Mr. Ashby, and the words came out quieter than she intended.
The solicitor inclined his head. Then he seemed to remember himself, reached for the letter, and folded it with precise care. “I shall write Lord Montague. I will request a delay. I will also review every relevant document again before I give you my final opinion.”
Poppy pressed her lips together. “But you do not expect your opinion to change.”
“No.”
There was that candor again.
She nodded. Freddie nudged her slipper. She stood, because sitting any longer felt perilous. “Then I must go see to things. I have friends who might help me secure a match.”
Mr. Ashby rose as well. “Today?”
“Yes.”
“You need not decide everything immediately.”
Poppy looked at him, and the laugh that left her held a spark of her usual brightness. “Mr. Ashby, I live in a house where my mother may invite seven strangers to stay at any given moment. If I do not decide things today, tomorrow there may be acrobats in the pantry.”
He considered that, frowning. “Are there often acrobats?”
“Not often.” A pause. “Not never.”
This time, he did smile. It was brief, controlled, and deeply inconvenient. It altered his face just enough to make her wonder what he would look like if he smiled without permission. Or laughed. Or lost control entirely.
Another unhelpful thought.
Outside the study, Mama’s laughter rose again, bright and extravagant, followed by Mr. Loxley calling, “I forgive the sun, but only barely.”
Mr. Ashby glanced toward the door. There was no mockery in his expression, which was almost worse. Mockery she knew how to survive. Pity she could deflect. But this grave attention, this listening quality, made her feel unnervingly close to being understood.
“Mr. Ashby,” she said, because she needed the conversation returned to firmer ground, “do you think me foolish for wanting to remain in Society? To not immediately choose to move to the countryside?”
“No.”
She had expected hesitation. There was none.
“You answered quite quickly.”
“Because the answer is plain.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Wanting security is not foolish. Wanting to remain in the world you were born into, rather than being cast from it because men arranged property to favor other men, is not foolish.”
Poppy’s throat tightened. For one wild moment, she wished he had been less kind. No, not kind. Kindness was soft. This was something steadier. He had not made her problem prettier. He had not said there, there. He had not suggested it would all come right because saying so cost nothing.
He had simply looked at the truth and refused to make her feel foolish for being frightened by it.
She disliked him a little for that. It was much easier to resent a man when he was pompous or trite.
But then Mama called from the salon, “Poppy, sweetie, if you are still with the handsome solicitor, ask whether legal men approve of widows marrying dashing foreigners!”
Poppy closed her eyes.
Mr. Ashby made a sound that might have been a cough.
“No,” Poppy called back. “They do not.”
“You did not ask him!”
“I guessed.”
“Quite oppressive, darling!”
Poppy opened her eyes and found Mr. Ashby watching her, not with amusement exactly, though there was some of that, but with a look that made her feel both steadier and less steady at once.
“I should go,” she said again.
“Yes,” he replied.
Neither moved.
Then Freddie barked, Mr. Loxley loudly declared that his pulse was becoming faint, and from somewhere overhead came the crash of what sounded very much like a porcelain basin meeting its end. The Frenchwoman, perhaps.
Poppy lifted her chin, gathered Algernon’s letter from the desk, and gave Mr. Ashby her brightest smile. It felt less false than usual. “Wish me luck, Mr. Ashby.”
He pressed his lips together. “In what endeavor?”
“With the titled gentlemen of England, of course.”
His expression changed. It was only a little. But she saw it.
“Good luck, Miss Montfort,” he said.
Poppy turned and left the study before she could do something useless, such as wonder whether he meant it.
By the time she reached the stairs, she had already begun composing a mental note to Bea in her mind.
Dear Bea,
I require the full force of The Wallflowers’ Revolt.
Only I don’t wish to avoid marriage.
On the contrary, I mean to secure one.
And quickly.