Chapter Nineteen
By nine o’clock the next morning, Gabriel had found three cottages, rejected two, and developed a profound dislike of the third.
The first lay too far from any village to be useful unless Lady Montague learned to milk a cow, bake bread, and exist without an audience. Gabriel considered the chances of that transformation and discarded it at once.
The second had two bedchambers, a serviceable kitchen, and a salon large enough for Lady Montague to call inadequate, but its roof showed signs of past betrayal, and the landlord’s evasive notes suggested he considered rain an occasional visitor rather than a structural concern.
The third was possible, which was precisely why he hated it.
Possible was not the same as right.
It sat outside a small village in Surrey, within reach of provisions and too far from London for casual callers.
The rent was within the limits of Lady Montague’s reduced income.
The roof was reliable. There was a small garden for Freddie, a salon, two bedchambers, a kitchen, and a landlord whose temper seemed mild enough to withstand poetry, spaniels, and Lady Montague in reasonable quantities.
It also sounded dismal, at least according to the description he’d received.
The house was built of weather-darkened stone and approached by a narrow path leading to a crooked little gate.
Small windows peered from beneath a slate roof, and even the climbing rose sounded defeated.
It was said to bloom “in favorable years,” suggesting it had largely given up.
Gabriel stared at the notes from his man of business and felt the irrational conviction that if Poppy Montfort were placed in that cottage, some vivid part of her would fade by degrees.
He drew her list closer.
Poppy had written it with wit because she could not bear to write fear plainly. She had converted exile into requirements, humiliation into a practical inventory, and uncertainty into lines of neat black ink.
Last night he had kissed her in the drawing room while that list sat on the escritoire.
No. He had done rather more than kiss her.
He had loosened his own restraint as surely as she had loosened his cravat.
He remembered the sofa, her hands in his hair, the quiet shock of her trust when his hand covered her breast through the thin muslin of her gown.
He remembered telling her to say if she wished him to stop.
He remembered that she had not wished him to stop. He remembered the heat of her beneath him, the way her hands had clutched at his coat, the soft, broken sounds that had undone every civilized thought in his head.
Then Freddie had hurled himself between them, and Gabriel had retreated into the safest, stupidest words available.
I should not have done that.
He should not have said that, or most of what came after. But what he could not erase from his memory was the hurt in her eyes when she accused him of being the man who touches her and then remembers all the reasons he should not.
He had hurt her again, and it was the last thing he had meant to do.
He should have told her that wanting her was not the thing he regretted. He regretted risking her trust, her reputation, her hope, when he could not offer anything worthy of them.
He could not offer for her. Or rather, he could in the most literal sense, but he had no right to ask, and she had no sensible way to accept.
To marry him would cost her too much. He would take her from the world that had formed her and set her apart from it, just as marriage had once separated his mother from the life and friends she had known before.
Poppy would become an object of amusement and pity, the daughter of Lady Viva Montfort brought lower still by wedding a man with no title, no fortune, and no prospect of maintaining her in the style to which she was accustomed.
There was no chance that she and Lady Viva could go on as they did now.
What had he to offer her, after all, but affection and inadequacy?
He had tried to explain. Tried and failed. Then she had handed him the cottage list and asked him to find her the least unsuitable future.
He could not bear to think of her in the dismal little cottage. For several seconds, he simply stared at the list, despising every single line of it.
But she had asked him to find an adequate property. He was her solicitor. He had no right to replace her request with his own wishes.
Gabriel folded the notes, the paper snapping beneath his fingers. Then he slid the list safely inside his coat and left for Berkeley Square.
Once again, the Montfort front door stood open when he arrived.
Freddie shot past it with a sheet of paper in his mouth, pursued by Jenkins at a pace that suggested composure was now merely a memory.
“Freddie,” Jenkins called, not hopefully.
The spaniel skidded around the hall table, saw Gabriel, and attempted to change direction too late. Gabriel caught him with one hand beneath the ribs and removed the paper from his teeth with the other.
“Again,” Gabriel said. “This has become a troubling habit.”
Freddie looked deeply offended.
Jenkins arrived, slightly breathless. “Thank you, sir.”
Gabriel unfolded the dampened sheet.
My final breath shall carry Viva’s name,
Though seed cake may postpone the mortal flame—
Gabriel looked up. “Mr. Loxley is improving.”
Jenkins’s expression did not change. “He has eaten two slices of cake, sir.”
“Medicinally, I trust.”
“According to Mr. Loxley, yes.”
From the drawing room came Lady Viva’s voice. “Freddie, darling, if you steal a dying man’s poem, you must at least admire the rhyme!”
Mr. Loxley responded faintly, “It was unfinished. Much like my life.”
“Your life appears increasingly well provisioned,” Gabriel called before he could think better of it.
There was a pause.
Then Lady Viva laughed. “Mr. Ashby has come, sweetie. Now you may die legally.”
Mr. Loxley groaned. “Never legally. It removes the poetry.”
Poppy appeared in the drawing room doorway, one hand resting against the frame. She wore a soft green morning gown, and her red hair had been gathered into a careless knot that was already coming loose. The sight of her sent Gabriel’s carefully ordered thoughts astray.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
“Mr. Ashby,” she said.
“Miss Montfort.”
The names landed between them with all the formality they had abandoned on a sofa less than twelve hours ago.
Her mouth curved slightly, though not quite into a smile. “You have come about the cottage.”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go to the study.”
He inclined his head because there was no safe answer to that. He guessed she did not want Lady Viva to hear about the arrangements before she’d had a chance to deliver the news more gently.
She led him into the study and left the door ajar.
The room had changed again. Not greatly, perhaps, but enough to make Gabriel resent every alteration.
A snuff cabinet had been placed against the wall like an occupying force.
A folded length of shiny green fabric lay across one chair, hideous enough to confirm Lord Montague’s poor taste.
A list of instructions sat on the desk in Mr. Pritchard’s neat hand, and the late viscount’s portrait seemed to watch it all with smiling uselessness.
The house was being claimed before Poppy had left it. Gabriel hated that.
She crossed to the desk and then turned sharply to face him. “Have you found a suitable cottage?”
So that was how she meant to do it. She would set aside what had passed between them and speak to him in that brisk, practical tone, as if he were only her solicitor once more. He could hardly blame her.
Gabriel drew the cottage notes from inside his coat. “I have found one possibility.”
Poppy held out her hand. “Only one?”
“I found three. Two were unsuitable.”
“And this one?”
“Possible.”
She took the paper and read.
Gabriel watched her face. She had become good at guarding it, but he guessed at the way her lashes lowered at the rent, the way her mouth tightened at the address, the way she moved too quickly past the description of the village.
“It is affordable,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And the roof is sound?”
“Apparently.”
“A reliable roof is not to be discounted.”
“No.”
“There are two bedchambers?”
“Yes.”
“And a garden?”
“A small one.”
“Then it will do.”
Her acceptance of the thing was too quick. It struck him like a door slamming shut in his face.
“It may do,” he said. “The climbing rose sounds a bit sad. I will continue to look.”
She glanced up. “Gabriel, we have three days.”
“I am aware.”
“Then we cannot become particular about windows, colors, or whether the climbing rose is withering.”
“The move need not be permanent,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“That remains to be seen, but we must have somewhere to go when Algernon takes our home.”
She was right, of course, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear how determined she sounded to leave London as soon as possible.
Gabriel stepped closer. “It need not be your whole future.”
Her gaze met his, and Poppy lowered the paper. “Thank you for finding it,” she said, completely ignoring his remark.
“I will make inquiries about other properties,” he insisted.
She planted her hand face-down on the desk and the inkpot shook. “You need not.”
“I will,” he replied in an equally sharp tone.
She stood up straight, crossed her arms over her chest, and narrowed her eyes on him. “Why?”
Because the thought of you in that dismal cottage feels like failure. Because I want to give you something better. Because I kissed you as if I could keep you, then brought you a list of rooms to which I must surrender you.
He said none of that. Instead, he said, “I will continue assisting with whatever course offers you the greatest security.”
There. That was sensible. Sensible. Proper. Cowardly.
Her expression changed to slight surprise. “Including the marriage contract?”
He swallowed. “When required, yes.”
Her brows lifted. “When?” she asked. “Not if?”
“There is still a chance.” He pressed his lips together.