Chapter Seven #2
Poppy tilted her head. “You make approval sound like a sentence being handed down.”
“I admit I am out of practice with approval.”
“Clearly.”
His mouth softened by a fraction. “Do you like him?”
It was a useful question, the sort a sensible woman could answer without hesitation. Instead, she found herself saying, “He is kind. Or kind enough. He laughs when I mean to be amusing, which is more than many men manage.”
Mr. Ashby’s brows drew together. “That is a low standard.”
“It is the standard available to me.”
His face changed.
Poppy wished she had phrased that differently. Or perhaps she did not. Perhaps she wanted him to hear the small, humiliating truths instead of only the brave ones.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I had no right to speak as if this were easy.”
“No,” she replied. “You did not.”
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then his hand lifted as if he meant to touch her sleeve, perhaps to steady her, perhaps to stop her from stepping back. He caught himself before his fingers reached her. The arrested movement was so small no one else would have noticed.
Poppy noticed.
Mr. Ashby lowered his hand. “Any man who asks for your future should understand what it has cost you to offer it.”
Her throat tightened. “That is an inconveniently high standard.”
“It is the one you deserve.”
She had no answer for that.
Lord Rillington crossed the room toward them.
Mr. Ashby stepped back at once, every line of him returning to correctness. “Miss Montfort.”
“Mr. Ashby.”
Lord Rillington bowed. “Miss Montfort, may I have the honor?”
For one moment, she simply stared.
Then she remembered that this was the point of the entire evening. Lord Rillington was titled, eligible, and interested. Mr. Ashby was a solicitor who had just stepped back from touching her sleeve as if restraint were a virtue and a punishment. She should not still be thinking about him.
“I should be pleased, my lord,” she said.
It had been so long since a gentleman had asked her to dance that Poppy scarcely knew what to do with her hands.
But the music began, and Lord Rillington was accomplished, and Poppy knew the steps. Of course she did. Wallflowers learned dances the way hungry people learned menus. They watched. They imagined. They prepared for being chosen, even when they were not.
Only this time, she had been chosen.
Perhaps only because Georgie and Bea had arranged the entire room like a chessboard.
Still. A dance was a dance.
As they moved about the small space, Lord Rillington smiled at her. Poppy smiled back.
At the edge of the room, Mr. Ashby stood with Lord Pembroke and made no attempt to join their conversation. His attention remained on the dance, fixed with such disciplined restraint that Poppy felt it as surely as Lord Rillington’s hand at her waist.
She was doing exactly what she had come here to do. Dancing with a titled gentleman. Smiling. Being seen.
So why did some foolish part of her want to cross the room and ask Mr. Ashby whether his silence objected to Lord Rillington, the dance, or the fact that another man’s hand rested where his never had?
When the dance ended, Lord Rillington bowed. “You dance beautifully, Miss Montfort.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
“I hope you will grant me another before the evening ends.”
A flicker of pleased surprise moved through Poppy. A second dance? That was promising. “I should like that,” she said, and for once the answer cost her no performance at all.
Then Mama laughed loudly, and it was not her usual sparkling laugh, the kind that could rescue a dull room and overturn a sensible one. This laugh carried an edge of alarm beneath the pleasure.
Poppy turned.
Count Bellarosa stood beside a small writing table at the far end of the room, one hand pressed to his heart, the other holding a folded paper. Lady Viva sat at the table with a quill in hand. Mr. Ashby was already moving toward them.
Poppy’s stomach dropped.
“Only a small subscription, darling,” Mama was saying. “To encourage art. One must always encourage art.”
“Lady Montague,” Mr. Ashby said, arriving with astonishing calm, “may I see that paper?”
The count drew it back. “Sir, this is a private matter of patronage.”
“Then Lady Montague will have no objection to advice before she signs,” Mr. Ashby retorted.
Mama looked from the count to Mr. Ashby. “Must everything be advised upon?”
“When it concerns money, yes,” Mr. Ashby said.
Mama rolled her eyes. “How oppressive.”
Poppy reached them then with Lord Rillington behind her. “What is it?”
The count smiled expansively. “A modest opportunity, Miss Montfort. A subscription toward the development of a grand Italian opera in five acts, celebrating the tragic love of a princess and a revolutionary.”
“There is no money for opera,” Mr. Ashby said, aggravation clear in his tone. He hadn’t said it loudly, but he also hadn’t seen Lord Rillington. He was faced away.
Poppy winced.
Lord Rillington’s brows lifted.
Near the center of the room, Georgie and Bea exchanged a tense glance.
Mama waved her quill. “There is always money for opera, sweetie. One merely has to neglect something dreary.”
“Such as food?” Mr. Ashby countered.
“No,” Mama replied. “Food is not dreary. Coal is dreary, darling.”
Mr. Ashby grabbed the paper from Bellarosa and read it. His expression turned glacial. “This is not a subscription.”
The count’s smile dimmed. “It is phrased with passion.”
“It is phrased as a promissory note,” Mr. Ashby replied.
Lady Viva blinked. “Is it?”
“Yes.” Mr. Ashby nodded.
Poppy closed her eyes for a fraction of a second. There was little she could do. Lord Rillington had heard it all.
Of course Mama had nearly signed away money she did not have to a man who might not possess the title he claimed, in the middle of the first evening Poppy had a gentleman looking at her as though she were something other than a cautionary tale.
Mr. Ashby folded the paper once. “Lady Montague will not sign this.”
The count drew himself up. “Sir, you interfere with art.”
“Be that as it may,” Mr. Ashby continued.
“Madam.” Count Bellarosa turned to Mama. “Will you allow a man of documents to stand between you and art?”
Mama looked genuinely torn. “When you say it like that, darling—”