Chapter Eight
Poppy smiled through the final half hour of the evening, thanked Georgie for a lovely dinner, assured Bea that, no, she would not allow her mother to bring Count Bellarosa to the ball, and helped Mama locate her reticule, which had somehow been lost beneath a fern.
Count Bellarosa, who had recovered from the death of his operatic dreams with impressive speed, kissed Georgie’s hand at the door and promised to call upon Lady Viva again with “newer, grander, more immortal opportunities.”
“Please do not,” Poppy said.
The count smiled beatifically. “I adore a woman of firm opposition. It gives destiny something to push against.”
“Mama,” Poppy said, drawing out the word like a warning.
Lady Viva gave a dreamy sigh. “He is absurd, sweetie, but with such excellent posture.”
“He tried to persuade you to sign a note for money we do not have,” Poppy pointed out.
“Artists are notoriously poor with figures,” Mama replied.
“He is not an artist. He is a man in a velvet coat with a large sapphire and several conflicting origins,” Poppy said.
Mama waved her fan in the air. “Darling, that is practically the definition of an artist.”
Poppy might have answered, but Mr. Ashby appeared beside them, dark coat immaculate, expression composed, hat in hand. “Lady Montague,” he said. “Miss Montfort. Lord Pembroke has asked that I see you safely home.”
Poppy looked sharply at him. “That is not necessary.”
“Perhaps not,” he said. “But it is sensible.”
One could not argue with a man who made being sensible sound like an edict.
Mama brightened. “How gallant. I adore gallantry when it arrives in a handsome man wearing a fine coat.”
“Mama.”
“What? He knows he is handsome. Men always know, darling. They merely wait to see whether women will be bold enough to mention it.”
Mr. Ashby’s face did not change, but Poppy had the distinct impression he was wishing himself back among ledgers, where figures at least had the decency not to comment upon his clothing.
Georgie pressed Poppy’s hand in farewell. “Tomorrow,” she whispered. “We shall regroup.”
Bea, standing just beyond her, nodded. “And Rillington is not the last titled man in England.”
“No,” Poppy said. “Only the first to run away very quietly.”
Bea’s eyes softened. “Poppy—”
“Don’t worry. I am fine.”
“I don’t believe you,” Bea said.
Poppy sighed. “Neither do I.”
That earned the faintest smile, which was precisely why Poppy had said it. If she could make Bea smile, then perhaps she was not as close to tears as she felt.
The drive home was short, but Mama managed to fill it with opinions on Lord Rillington’s cravat, Count Bellarosa’s posture, Lady Pembroke’s footmen, the quality of the wine, Italian opera, and whether Mr. Ashby’s coat had been cut by a tailor of uncommon talent.
Poppy answered, “Yes, Mama,” seven times. She meant it perhaps once.
When the carriage came to a stop before the Montfort town house, Mr. Ashby descended first and offered his hand.
Poppy placed her gloved fingers in his.
The contact should have been nothing. Leather against leather. Courtesy. Balance. Yet his hand closed around hers, firm and steady, and for one suspended moment, as she stepped down from the carriage, she was aware of nothing else.
Then Mama swept past them in a rustle of silk.
“Jenkins,” Lady Viva called as the front door opened, “tell me whether there is cake. I have survived a promissory note, a nearly deaf baronet, and a disappointing amount of champagne. I require consolation.”
Jenkins bowed. “I believe there is seed cake, my lady.”
“Seed cake is not consolation, darling. It is penance masquerading as refreshment.”
“I shall inquire whether Cook has anything else, my lady.”
“Do, sweetie. And if she has nothing better, tell her I admire her diligence but question her priorities.”
“Mama,” Poppy warned.
Lady Viva paused on the bottom stair and turned back. “Yes, yes. I know. Now thank Mr. Ashby for being useful and handsome. One must encourage men when they manage both.”
Heat climbed Poppy’s neck. “Good night, Mama.”
“Good night, darling. I am going upstairs before anyone attempts to discuss prudence with me. I feel a megrim coming on.”
She disappeared up the stairs, one hand trailing along the banister, her voice floating back down as she asked Jenkins whether seed cake could be improved by soaking it in brandy.
Poppy closed her eyes briefly.
When she opened them, Mr. Ashby stood just inside the threshold, hat in hand, the open front door behind him giving onto the lamplit street. Cool night air slipped into the foyer and stirred the ribbons of Poppy’s bonnet against her cheek.
Jenkins hovered near the hall table.
“That will be all, Jenkins,” Poppy said.
The butler’s gaze flicked once to Mr. Ashby, then to the open door, then back to Poppy. If he disapproved of leaving her in the foyer with a gentleman, he was too well trained—or too accustomed to Montfort irregularity—to show it.
“Very good, miss.”
He withdrew.
And Poppy remained in the foyer with Mr. Ashby. They were not alone. Not precisely. The front door remained open. The street lay beyond Mr. Ashby’s shoulder. Somewhere above, Mama continued to discuss cake. A footman moved in the passage behind the stairs.
It only felt like being alone.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
That was the difficulty with silence. When shared with the wrong person, it was awkward. When shared with Mr. Ashby, it became something charged and impossible to ignore.
At length, he said, “Again, I am sorry for what happened in front of Lord Rillington. I should have reached Lady Montague sooner.” His gaze moved over her face, lingering a fraction too long on her mouth before he seemed to force it back to her eyes. “I was distracted.”
Poppy’s breath caught because there was no possible way to misunderstand him.
“Yes,” she said. “You mentioned that.”
Mr. Ashby’s face hardened. “He should not have looked at you as he did.”
Poppy’s fingers tightened together. “How did he look at me?”
“Like you had become a calculation.”
The quiet force of his anger made the words feel less like observation than confession.
She looked past him to the dark street beyond the open door and sighed. “Perhaps I am a calculation. I have certainly become quite good at sums.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“No.” Poppy made herself look at him again. “It is what Lord Rillington meant though. A man would be a fool not to calculate before marrying me.”
He frowned. “A fool?”
“Or a saint. Possibly both.” She tried for a smile. “I come with debts, an unruly mother, a rambunctious puppy, several alarming acquaintances, and more than a whiff of desperation. That is hardly a romantic inventory.”
Mr. Ashby’s nostrils flared. “You are not an inventory.”
“Everything is an inventory if one is desperate enough.” The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Mr. Ashby’s gaze held hers in the dim foyer. The hall lamp touched his cheek, his mouth, the uncompromising line of his jaw, and made him look less severe than he ought to have looked.
Or perhaps she was growing accustomed to his severity, which was not at all sensible.
“I have been reviewing the marriage contract you prepared,” he said after a moment.
Ah. Safer ground. Mr. Ashby always returned them to papers before feeling could make an unwelcome appearance.
“And?” she asked.
“It is better than I expected.”
Her brows shot up. “Is that praise?”
“It is an assessment.”
“From you, I shall take what I may.”
He inclined his head. “You accounted for Lady Montague.”
“Yes.”
“And for possible debts attached to the household.”
“Of course.”
“And for the question of separate funds in the event of widowhood.”
Poppy looked down at her gloves. “I thought it best to be practical.”
“You were more than practical. You were careful.”
Careful. Now there was a word chosen with unsettling precision.
“I have had practice,” she said.
“So I gathered.”
“I do not want to be caught unaware.” Her voice was quieter now. “Not again.”
Mr. Ashby did not answer immediately.
“Were you?” he finally asked.
“Was I what?”
“Caught unaware.”
It was impertinent, perhaps. Too direct. Yet he seemed to ask it as he asked legal questions, not to pry but to gather every particular.
Poppy could have deflected. She was very good at deflecting. Instead, perhaps because the night had already stripped away too many of her defenses, she said, “When Papa died, yes.”
Mr. Ashby’s expression changed, but he did not interrupt.
“I was thirteen,” she said. “Old enough to understand people were speaking softly around me. Not old enough to know what any of it meant. Not really. One day there was Papa, and laughter, and Mama in yellow silk singing too loudly after dinner, and the next…” She paused.
“The next, everyone was whispering about settlements and entailments and what Lady Montague would do now.”
“What did she do?” he nearly whispered.
Poppy looked toward the staircase.
“She…stopped,” Poppy said, expelling a long breath.
“It happened slowly, without any single moment people could point to and say, ‘There, that is when it changed.’ She stopped being the person who knew where my gloves were. She stopped knowing whether bills had been paid or servants dismissed or letters answered. She still laughed. She laughed more, perhaps. But the part of her that had been my mother retreated somewhere I could not follow.”
The foyer seemed very still after that.
“That sounds unkind,” Poppy said.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t. I understand.” Mr. Ashby’s gaze lowered for a moment. “My father changed as well after my mother died.”
Poppy looked at him. She had known his mother had died, but until this moment she had not considered that they shared this awful inheritance: a parent altered by grief, and a childhood shaped around the space it left behind.