Chapter Four
By the time Poppy prepared to leave the house, Freddie had eaten the entire calling card, Mr. Loxley had decided his health required plum cake, and Mama had become convinced that the new Viscount Montague’s letter could be answered with “a tone of elegant vagueness.”
“It cannot,” Poppy informed her, tucking the folded letter into her reticule.
Lady Viva reclined upon a sofa in the front salon, apparently untroubled by eviction, solicitors, or correspondence that smelled of snuff. “Darling, elegant vagueness has carried half the aristocracy through the last three centuries.”
Poppy tightened her grip on the strings of her reticule until they bit into her gloves. “And look what it has done for us.”
Mama waved one pale hand, the lace at her wrist fluttering in delicate refusal of poverty, unpleasantness, and the failure of elegant vagueness. “It made us interesting.”
Poppy went very still. “Homeless in ten days is not interesting, Mama. It is desperate.”
For the briefest moment, something flickered across Lady Viva’s face—too quick to name and gone before Poppy could catch it. Then Mama lifted her cup with a sigh. “It depends upon who tells the story, sweetie.”
Poppy drew in a steadying breath and reminded herself that she loved her mother.
She did. Fervently. Exhaustingly. In the marrow of her bones. She loved Mama’s laughter, her generosity, the way she could make a room feel less like a room than a stage upon which something marvelous might happen at any moment.
She did not love that Mama had hidden letters from the man who intended to turn them out of their home. Or that Mama’s present solution seemed to be reclining.
“I am going to see Bea and Georgie,” Poppy said.
She had changed into a pale walking dress, a short blue spencer, and a straw bonnet whose ribbons she had tied with more determination than grace.
Respectability, she had discovered, often depended upon buttons, starch, and a woman’s ability to look untouched by a morning spent contemplating eviction.
“Please do not order anything, promise anything, invite anyone to live or stay here, sell anything, purchase anything, or agree to marry anyone before I return.”
Lady Viva opened her eyes. “That is an ungenerous list.”
“It is a necessary list.”
Her mother lifted her chin. “May I receive callers?”
“Who?”
“Darling, how am I to know who they are until I receive them?”
“That is what cards are for, Mama.”
“What is the fun in calling cards? A lot of paper and ink and dullness, if you ask me.”
In the hall, Freddie barked, sparing Poppy from having to answer that ridiculous question.
A moment later, Mr. Ashby appeared from the study, the stack of ledgers in one hand and his hat in the other.
He looked as he had earlier—precise, sober, and entirely out of place among the abandoned shawls, wilting flowers, and faint scent of spilled champagne that haunted the Montfort town house no matter how often the windows were opened.
Poppy’s stomach did the small, foolish thing it had already taken to doing whenever she saw him.
A sort of half-flip, half-churn that was quite disconcerting.
And for some reason, it seemed worse now that she had decided to look for a husband.
A sensible woman should not react so vividly to a man who had already told her she required another.
She ignored her stomach with vigor.
“Miss Montfort,” he said, bowing.
“Mr. Ashby.” She curtsied, though it was difficult to look dignified while Freddie attacked the hem of her gown. “You are leaving?”
“For the moment. I have what I need to begin a letter to Lord Montague.”
“Do tell him he is being quite tiresome,” Lady Viva called from the salon.
Mr. Ashby’s gaze flicked past Poppy toward the sound. “I shall endeavor to put it in legal terms, my lady.”
Poppy bit the inside of her cheek.
Mr. Ashby glanced down as Freddie planted both paws on his boot and attempted to climb him. “Where did you get this dog?”
“Freddie?” Poppy bent to scoop him up. “Mama appeared with him one afternoon. That is how things arrive in this house,” she added. “Puppies, poets, bills, mysterious guests. Mama appears with them, and I discover they are staying.”
Freddie licked her chin with great affection and very little accuracy.
Mr. Ashby looked from the dog to the salon to Poppy. Something moved behind his expression. Amusement, perhaps. Or dismay. With Mr. Ashby, it was difficult to tell. He seemed the sort of man who kept all emotions under lock and key, then catalogued the keys in alphabetical order.
“You intend to take my advice and look for a husband?” he asked.
His voice was perfectly even, but his gaze moved over her face too closely, searching for the answer beneath the one she was expected to give. Poppy felt the attention low in her body, an unwelcome heat that made the word husband feel suddenly improper.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.”
The word was so firm, so certain, that Poppy found herself grateful for his approval.
Then she remembered that this was ridiculous. Mr. Ashby was not her ally. He was her solicitor, at least temporarily, and perhaps not even that for long if he had inherited his father’s good sense without his father’s affection for hopeless causes.
Lady Viva lifted her head from the sofa. “Are we beyond redemption, Mr. Ashby?”
Poppy froze. Had Mama truly said that aloud?
Mr. Ashby’s eyes moved to hers, and the corner of his mouth shifted by the barest degree. “I should prefer to review the documents again before issuing so final an opinion.”
Mama sighed. “Legal men are never decisive. It is one of their great failings, darling.”
Poppy tucked Freddie beneath one arm and gathered the remaining shreds of her composure. “I shall return as soon as I can, Mama.”
“Yes, yes. Go confer with your revolutionaries.” Lady Viva settled back again. “Tell Lady Vanover I am still cross that she married so sensibly after all that promising defiance. It gives the wrong impression.”
Poppy paused.
Mama was not entirely wrong.
Which was precisely the trouble.
After all her friends’ glorious defiance, Poppy’s own revolt had come to this: a sensible marriage, chosen in haste because necessity had left her no grander rebellion.
Archer House did not smell of champagne, eggs, or impending disaster.
It smelled of beeswax, fresh flowers, excellent tea, and the particular sort of order money could purchase when everyone inside the household understood exactly what to expect.
The footmen did not look harried. No invalid poet reclined on a sofa declaring himself wounded by daylight.
No one had left a hatbox or a hound dog in the hall.
Poppy was happy for Bea. Truly, she was.
She had watched her friend struggle to arrive here—married to the infuriating and brilliant Marquess of Vanover, in possession of her rebellious drawings, her heart, and, somehow, more freedom than she had ever had beneath her father’s roof.
It was lovely.
It was also, at the moment, rather difficult to stand amid all this calm and not feel as though the universe had handed out happy endings in a most uneven fashion.
Georgie was already there when Poppy arrived, seated beside Bea in the pale green drawing room that had become one of their preferred meeting places.
Georgie—Lady Pembroke now, though Poppy rarely thought of her that way—looked softer than she had before her marriage, her dark hair pinned elegantly, her lavender muslin gown perfectly suited to her.
Marriage to Jason, the Earl of Pembroke, had not made her less Georgie. It had only given her room to breathe.
Bea, by contrast, had become no softer at all.
She sat upright near the tea table, golden hair gleaming in a shaft of afternoon light, one brow already arched in command. As usual, she looked like a duke’s daughter, a general in silk, and a woman prepared to form an opinion with no more than a moment’s notice.
“Thank heavens,” Poppy said, the moment the footman withdrew. “You are both here.”
Georgie rose. “Poppy, what is it?”
Bea’s eyes sharpened. “Your note said it was urgent.”
“It is.” Poppy looked between them, and all the speeches she had rehearsed in the carriage promptly deserted her.
How was one meant to begin?
Hello, my dears, I am to be turned out of my home in ten days, and I have concluded that my only reasonable course is to marry a peer with indecent haste. Do have biscuits.
Instead, she’d merely indicated that she must speak to both of them at once.
She opened her reticule and withdrew Algernon’s letter. “The new Viscount Montague is coming to London.”
Bea’s face altered first, subtly but unmistakably. “When?”
“In ten days.”
Georgie’s hand flew to her throat. “So soon?”
Poppy nodded and handed the letter to Bea, who unfolded it with swift, efficient fingers. Georgie leaned over her shoulder to read. The silence that followed was worse than outrage.
Poppy wandered to the mantel because sitting still seemed impossible. There was a porcelain shepherdess there, smiling witlessly down upon a porcelain sheep. Poppy straightened the shepherdess by a fraction. Then the sheep.
Bea finished first. “Neglect?”
“Yes. That was my favorite part as well.”
“This man is insufferable,” Bea said, scowling.
Georgie’s mouth tightened. “And he means to turn you out?”
“He has requested that we vacate before his arrival,” Poppy replied.
“Requested,” Bea repeated, in a tone that practically did violence to the word.
“In the manner of men who know no one can refuse them,” Poppy added.
Georgie shook her head. “What does Mr. Ashby say? Oh, wait. You said the new solicitor was coming today. Did you meet him?”
“Yes,” Poppy said.
Georgie tilted her head. “And?”
“He is Mr. Ashby’s son,” Poppy told her.
“Is that so?” Georgie replied, considering the information.
“And he is young,” Poppy continued, because there seemed no point in pretending otherwise. “And handsome. Vexingly so, considering the circumstances.”
Georgie’s brows rose. “How vexing?”