Chapter Fifteen
After returning Poppy and Freddie safely to the Montfort doorstep, Gabriel returned to his office and spent the better part of an hour accomplishing nothing.
It was not a condition to which he was accustomed.
His desk remained precisely as he had left it: Lord Montague’s refusal letter arranged beside the late viscount’s will, Lady Montague’s settlement, the draft of Poppy’s marriage contract, and the notebook in which Gabriel had once written, with infuriating confidence, that he meant to conclude the Montfort account once the urgent matters were settled.
The line had been struck through.
But it remained legible.
Gabriel sat behind the desk and opened the late viscount’s will again.
He had read it four times already. A fifth reading altered nothing.
Brambleberry Court was entailed. The London house belonged with the estate.
Lady Montague had no right to remain once the new viscount claimed possession.
Her jointure might maintain her modestly, if she were capable of modesty, but it offered no rescue from the approaching deadline.
He moved to the deed box.
Leases. Receipts. Correspondence. The same disappointing collection he had examined before. There was no forgotten property, no obscure provision, no legal phrase capable of stretching five days into five weeks.
He read every page regardless.
He told himself this was industry. He suspected it was desperation.
The office door opened without a knock.
Gabriel did not look up. “You are no longer working, Father.”
“So you have reminded me several times,” his father said. “Yet here I am.”
The elder Mr. Ashby entered carrying a parcel beneath one arm and wearing the old brown coat Gabriel had spent years attempting to persuade him to replace. One button remained fastened in the wrong hole.
His father placed the parcel upon the desk.
“What is that?” Gabriel asked.
“Seed cake.”
Gabriel shook his head.
“Lady Montague sent it.”
“Why?”
“She believes solicitors require feeding when obliged to deliver unpleasant news.”
“That is surprisingly sensible.”
“She also asked whether cake might be substituted for payment.”
Gabriel closed his eyes briefly. “Of course she did.”
His father lowered himself into the chair opposite and regarded him with open curiosity. “You look troubled.”
“I am working.”
“You are staring at a deed you could recite from memory.”
Gabriel set the document down. “Lord Montague has refused an extension.”
“So I heard.”
“How?”
“Lady Montague told me when she sent the cake. She added that the new viscount possesses all the generosity of a chair leg.”
“That is unfair to chair legs. They serve a purpose at least.”
His father smiled, then glanced toward the open notebook. The amusement faded from his face. “You have never cared for the aristocracy.”
“Should I?”
“Your mother was one of them once.”
“And as I recall, Mother had nothing good to say about them. They rejected her entirely after she married you, did they not?”
His father nodded. “They did. But she never regretted it.”
Gabriel swallowed. They rarely talked about Mother…and she’d been gone for many years.
“What happened today?” Father asked.
Gabriel’s first instinct was denial. But that instinct had become less useful since meeting Poppy. It wouldn’t solve the problem.
“I kissed Miss Montfort.”
His father stilled. For one gratifying moment, the elder Mr. Ashby appeared to have no reply at all.
Then he said, “Ah.”
Gabriel frowned. “Do not say ‘ah.’”
“What would you prefer?”
“Nothing that sounds pleased,” Gabriel said.
“Who said I am pleased?”
“You are very poorly disguising it.”
“I am attempting to disguise surprise. The two expressions may resemble one another.”
Gabriel leaned back and folded his arms. He blew air into his cheeks. “I have behaved indefensibly.”
“Did Miss Montfort object?”
“No.”
“Did you force an attention upon her she did not welcome?”
Gabriel’s brows drew together. “Of course not.”
“Did she slap you?”
“No.”
“Pity. That would have clarified matters wonderfully.”
Gabriel glared at him.
His father opened the parcel, broke off a corner of seed cake, and took a bite with infuriating calm.
“I told her I could no longer act as her solicitor,” Gabriel said.
His father stopped chewing.
For the first time since he had entered the office, his father looked genuinely startled. The seed cake remained halfway to his mouth, forgotten between his fingers. “You told her that?”
“I had to.”
His father’s eyes narrowed. “Did you?”
Gabriel scrubbed a hand across his chin. “I could hardly pretend nothing had changed.”
“No,” his father said slowly. “I suppose you could not.”
“You will need to take over the matter until Lord Montague arrives and the account is settled.”
His father lowered the seed cake to its paper wrapping. “No.”
Gabriel frowned. “No?”
“No.”
“You cannot mean to refuse. Someone must see the matter through.”
“Yes,” his father replied. “You must.”
“That is impossible,” Gabriel retorted.
“It’s not impossible. Merely uncomfortable.”
Gabriel’s hand tightened around the arm of his chair before he made himself release it.
His father brushed a few crumbs from his fingers.
“You have spent years believing my fault was caring too much for the Montforts. It was not. My fault was allowing care to become softness when it ought to have become decision. I excused when I should have advised. I waited when I should have acted. I mistook patience for a plan more than once.”
“Then you understand why I must step away.”
“I understand why you wish to.” His father’s voice gentled, which somehow made it more aggravating. “You think walking away will prove you are different from me.”
“I think walking away is the only honorable course.”
“Honor does not always require retreat, Gabriel. Sometimes it requires staying long enough to repair what one has disturbed.”
Gabriel said nothing. It felt as if the air had been knocked from his lungs. His father had to see the logic in his request.
“You kissed her,” his father continued. “You told her you could no longer serve her. You left her with less certainty than she had before. Handing off the matter now will spare your pride, perhaps, but it will do nothing for her.” His father studied him for a long moment. “There is another course.”
Gabriel’s hand stilled on the desk. “No.”
“I have not said what it is.”
“You need not.”
His father’s expression remained mild, which was usually when he was most dangerous. “You are unmarried.”
“And Miss Montfort is a viscount’s daughter,” Gabriel said. “Lady Viva may like me well enough as a solicitor. She may even find me useful. But she would not want me as a son-in-law.”
His father did not answer.
“She is far too accustomed to her comforts,” Gabriel continued. “Comforts I cannot provide. Nor could I give Miss Montfort the life she knows. Ballrooms. Drawing rooms. Every connection her birth still grants her, however precariously.”
“And you believe Miss Montfort would value those things above you?”
“I believe she would try not to.” Gabriel’s voice roughened despite his efforts to keep it even.
“That is precisely the danger. She would try to make do with less. She would try to make Lady Viva fit inside a life too small for her. She would tell herself affection was sufficient and call every loss a choice because she is brave enough to do it.”
His father’s gaze held his.
For a moment, neither man spoke.
They did not need to.
The shape of his mother’s name stood between them, unspoken and unmistakable.
Gabriel looked away first. “I will not ask that of Poppy.”
His father leaned back in his chair. “Very well. If you are done being her solicitor, then decide what you are to her instead. But do not pretend that abandoning the work is the same as protecting her.”
“Abandon is an unfair word,” Gabriel insisted.
“It is an accurate one.”
Gabriel’s hands tightened into fists, but he could not argue the point. The only thing that made his father’s little speeches more annoying was how often they were accurate.
“You began this,” his father said quietly. “The legal matter, the promises, the hope that someone would help her hold that house together a little longer. If you must change the terms, then change them. But see it through yourself.”
The office seemed suddenly too quiet. Outside, wheels rattled along the street. A bell rang from some distant shop. Ordinary London continued while his father dismantled one of Gabriel’s most reliable convictions with maddening composure.
“My judgment is impaired,” Gabriel said.
“You believe affection and judgment are enemies,” the elder Mr. Ashby said. “They are not. Judgment without affection may become cruelty. Affection without judgment may become indulgence. A man requires both.”
Gabriel’s gaze dropped to the notebook.
Recommend alternate solicitor.
Conclude account upon settlement of urgent matters.
Those had been the easy instructions. The neat ones. The plan prepared before he had seen Poppy’s careful little book, before he had watched her straighten tea trays when she was anxious, before he had understood the exhaustion concealed beneath her laughter.
He could find another solicitor. He could still hand over the account. But now his father’s words settled heavy in his middle.
Gabriel swallowed. “My feelings are involved.”
“I know.” His father regarded him for a long moment. “But would leaving her now serve her interests?”
Gabriel opened his mouth, then closed it again.
“She has little time,” his father said. “Lord Montague has refused to delay. Lady Viva remains Lady Viva. Miss Montfort has relied upon you to review the settlement, manage the correspondence, and determine whether anything may yet be done. If you disappear because you have discovered she matters to you, what will she hear?”
Gabriel did not answer.
He knew.
Poppy would hear what Lord Ketterham had already implied.
Too much trouble.
Too much disorder.
Too much to take on.
His father’s voice gentled. “You have a job to complete. And perhaps a few things to admit to yourself before you decide what is truly honorable.”
Gabriel turned his head toward the window, his frustration mounting with each second. “Every answer available to her is greater than I am.”
“Is that so?” His father narrowed his eyes. “What do you believe she needs?”
Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest. “A title. A fortune. A secure home. A place in Society that cannot be laughed away because her mother invites fraudulent counts to dinner.”
“All useful things.”
“She needs them.”
“Perhaps.”
“And I do not have them.”
“Not all of them, no.”
His father’s agreement was quiet, but it still struck hard.
Gabriel glanced back at him. “What would you have me do?”
“Look at it differently.”
Gabriel scrubbed a hand through his hair. “At what?”
“At the problem, of course.”
Gabriel clenched his jaw.
“Assist her,” Father said simply.
Assist her? What the devil was that supposed to mean? He’d been trying to assist her and had done nothing but confuse the matter. She needed to marry a peer.
Is that what Father meant? Assist Poppy in marrying another man.
It was the honorable thing. The useful thing. The thing a man did when he had nothing adequate to offer and no right to let his own desire narrow a woman’s future.
His father studied him. “Do not tell yourself sacrifice is wise merely because it hurts. Pain is not proof of wisdom.”
Gabriel gave him a hard look. “Have you spent your retirement preparing speeches?”
“I have spent my retirement enjoying the opportunity to deliver them without charge.”
“Well, that explains the arrears.”
His father’s face broke into a wide smile. “Ah, excellent.”
“What?” Gabriel remained frowning.
“You have become a little less grim. Miss Montfort is good for you.” He rose, adjusted his coat, and reached for the cake parcel.
At the door, his father paused. “Gabriel.”
He looked up.
“Do not mistake fear for principle.”
Then the elder Mr. Ashby departed, leaving Gabriel alone with a desk full of papers and a conviction that no longer fitted as neatly as it once had.
For several minutes, Gabriel sat motionless.
Then he sat, drew his notebook toward him, and turned to a clean page.
Montfort affairs
Call upon Lord Montague’s man of business.
Review Lady Montague’s jointure for temporary accommodation.
Complete Miss Montfort’s marriage contract when required.
He paused. The quill hovered above the paper. Then, with more force than the words deserved, he added: Maintain a proper distance.
Gabriel looked at the line. It seemed perfectly clear. Entirely sensible.
It also looked ridiculous.
Distance had not kept him from kissing her. Professional caution had not kept him from wanting her. Every rule he had trusted now seemed to exist for one purpose: to give him respectable language for retreat.
He closed the notebook.
First, he would find whatever delay, refuge, or practical relief the law could secure before Algernon Montfort arrived at the week’s end.
Then he would determine whether he was capable of helping Poppy search for a titled husband without despising every man who considered her a bargain with complications.
A man capable of offering her the security she required.
A man willing to take Lady Viva, Freddie, the poets, the bills, the laughter, and every disorderly, inconvenient, vivid part of Poppy’s life.
A man who would cherish all of it.
Gabriel had no idea whether such a man existed.
He only knew that if such a man did exist, Gabriel would envy him past all reason.