Chapter Three #2
But no. He had already asked them to leave. Politely, perhaps. But the meaning was plain enough.
He meant to take the only home Poppy had ever known.
She forced herself to look down at the letter again and continue reading.
As Miss Montfort is of marriageable age, I assume she will soon be settled elsewhere.
Such arrangements are, of course, no concern of mine, though I trust you will see to the matter with all reasonable haste.
I must also request that the blue bedchamber remain available for my personal use, as I find morning light disagreeable except when filtered through eastern curtains.
Poppy’s eyes burned.
Eastern curtains.
He was tossing them from their home and had included instructions about curtains.
“Mama,” she said, and was proud of how calm the word sounded. “How many letters have there been?”
Lady Viva made a vague gesture. “Several.”
“Several.”
“At least more than one.”
“Mama.”
At the sharper note in Poppy’s voice, Lady Viva opened both eyes. For a moment, pain moved across her face. It was gone nearly as soon as it appeared.
“Oh, do not look at me like that, sweetie,” she said, too lightly. “Algernon has been threatening to arrive since Easter. Men with new titles are always threatening to arrive. It is how they introduce themselves.”
Poppy shook the letter. “According to this, he will be here in ten days.”
“Yes, well. Algernon has always been fond of sounding decisive. It disguises how little he understands.”
“He expects us to leave.”
“Darling, people expect things all the time. I once expected to adore Portugal and was quite disappointed.”
Poppy folded the letter with hands that were not quite steady. “This is not Portugal.”
“No,” Mama agreed. “Portugal had dreadful roads and far too much sunshine.”
Poppy pressed the letter to her middle, trying to hold herself together by force.
Lady Viva watched her and, for an instant, the room between them altered. Mama’s expression softened, her painted mouth parting on the edge of something true. Something motherly. Something that acknowledged the floor had opened beneath them.
Then Lady Stone snorted beneath the fan, Mr. Loxley groaned from the corridor that he could feel the end approaching, and Mama looked away.
“Poppy,” she said, more gently, “give the letter to Mr. Ashby. That is what solicitors are for, is it not? To make wretched things less vexing.”
Poppy glanced toward the study. Mr. Ashby had not made anything less vexing yet. But perhaps sharpness had its uses. She left the salon without trusting herself to answer.
The study door stood partly open. Mr. Ashby remained behind the desk with his coat still buttoned, his posture straight, and half the Montfort misery arranged before him in careful piles.
Freddie lay beneath the desk gnawing what appeared to be the corner of an old calling card.
The puppy had evidently decided Mr. Ashby’s severity improved the room.
Mr. Ashby looked up the moment she appeared. “Miss Montfort?”
She stepped inside and shut the door behind her.
His gaze dropped to the letter in her hand. “Another bill?” he asked.
“No.” She moved toward the desk. “Worse, I think.”
He rose at once.
Poppy hated that. There was nothing rude in it, of course. His courtesy was perfectly polite, and that was precisely the trouble. It made her feel suddenly fragile, and she could not afford to feel fragile in front of this man.
She held out the letter. “It is from Algernon Montfort.”
Mr. Ashby’s expression changed. “The heir.”
“The new Viscount Montague,” she said. “Yes.”
Mr. Ashby took the letter and read it in silence.
Poppy watched his face because she could not bear to watch his hands.
His hands were capable and well-shaped, and this was no time to notice such things.
Unfortunately, not looking at them did not make her forget them.
She had seen the long fingers holding Algernon’s letter, the clean strength in them, the steadiness, and her mind had chosen, most unhelpfully, to imagine what such hands might feel like if they were not holding paper at all, but doing something far more intimate.
She swallowed and shook her head. That thought was entirely unhelpful.
His face, at least, offered very little. She guessed at his reactions as he read. A faint narrowing of the eyes at “neglect.” A pause at “vacate.” Another at “marriageable age.”
He read the letter twice. Then he laid it on the desk.
“Well?” Poppy asked.
The word sounded too much like it had earlier, when she had asked about the accounts. She hated that. She hated that every question she asked this man seemed to contain the possibility of disaster.
Mr. Ashby did not answer immediately. Which was answer enough.
She swallowed. “He can do this?”
“The town house belongs to the estate?”
“Yes. I believe so. Papa always said…” She stopped. Papa had said many things. Most of them at dinner, with a drink in his hand and Mama laughing beside him, when Poppy was still young enough to think parents could arrange the world into permanence. “I believe it belongs to the estate.”
“I have seen nothing to suggest otherwise,” Mr. Ashby replied.
“And Brambleberry Court?” Poppy asked.
“Entailed with the title.”
“Yes.” Poppy looked down at the letter. “Of course.”
“I will need to review the late viscount’s will and your mother’s settlement again, but if the town house was not separately settled upon Lady Montague, then Lord Montague is likely within his rights to take possession.”
Poppy nodded once, so sensibly, so composed, that it almost concealed the fact that she had just learned she might be homeless in ten days.
“What course is open to us?” she asked.
Mr. Ashby’s gaze lifted to hers. “Us?”
The word struck harder than it ought to have. She drew herself up. “Mama and myself.”
His expression shifted into something like regret, quickly mastered. “Of course.”
Poppy moved to the chair opposite the desk and sat because her knees had become less trustworthy than she preferred. Freddie crawled out from beneath the desk, trotted over, and set his chin on her foot.
She lowered one hand to his head.
Mr. Ashby remained standing for a moment. Then he sat as well, though not comfortably. Men like Mr. Ashby did not lounge. They occupied chairs with every appearance of readiness to rise at the first sign of disorder.
“I will be plain,” he said.
She swallowed. “I had not supposed you would be anything else.”
That almost earned her a smile. Almost.
“If Lord Montague insists upon taking possession, and if there is no separate legal right allowing Lady Montague to remain here, then the law offers little protection. I may be able to negotiate additional time. Perhaps a month. Perhaps two, if he is susceptible to argument or persuasion.”
Poppy thought of Algernon’s letter. “He does not seem susceptible to anything but snuff and curtains.”
“Then perhaps less.”
She nodded.
“The remaining funds,” Mr. Ashby continued, “are not sufficient to maintain a household in London. If properly managed, and if Lady Montague’s expenditures are curtailed at once, there may be enough to secure modest lodgings, for a short time…in the countryside.”
“The countryside?” Poppy repeated. She couldn’t imagine Mama living in the countryside. The few times they’d visited had been brief and markedly hostile to Mama’s constitution.
“Indeed,” Mr. Ashby replied.
“How modest?” Poppy ventured.
He paused.
Poppy’s stomach dipped. “Mr. Ashby?”
“A small cottage…in the country,” he said. “For some months. Not indefinitely.”
A country cottage.
For some months.
Poppy pictured Mama in a dreary little cottage with no parties, no candles blazing until dawn, no admirers, no distraction from the grief she had spent years outrunning.
She pictured herself counting coal and potatoes, fending off creditors, watching Lady Viva wither or rage or turn the village upside down from sheer despair.
It was not that Poppy objected to cottages on principle. Some cottages were charming. Some contained roses around the door and cozy reading nooks. Some were written about in sentimental poems by men who did not have to live in them with widowed mothers who ordered champagne on credit.
But a rented cottage was not safety. It was merely a pause before the next misfortune.
“I see,” she said finally.
Mr. Ashby’s eyes remained on her face. “There is another possibility.”
She looked up too quickly.
His mouth tightened, as if he disliked the words before speaking them. “Marriage.”
Poppy laughed once, and the sound came out all wrong, far too brittle. “Yes. That. My cousin mentioned it. And of course I’ve been…trying.” The last word came out far too high-pitched.
“Miss Montfort—”
“No, no. It is perfectly reasonable.” She sat straighter.
“I am of marriageable age. Lord Montague has already helpfully observed as much, and I have thought of it, of course. But, you see, I have no dowry, no house, no fortune, and a mother with a gift for becoming the chief topic of breakfast conversation across Mayfair. Naturally, gentlemen are not exactly forming queues.”
Mr. Ashby’s brows drew together. “You need not speak of yourself that way.”
Poppy expelled her breath. “Someone must. Everyone else is too polite.”
“I doubt that.”
That startled a small laugh from her. “No. You are right. Everyone else is not remotely too polite.”
Mr. Ashby leaned forward, forearms braced on the desk. “It is not the worst course.”
Poppy arched a brow. “Marriage to a gentleman selected at speed, with all the care one gives to choosing a hackney in the rain?”
Mr. Ashby drew up his shoulders. “I did not say it was ideal.”
“No. Merely not the worst. Quite the endorsement.”
His gaze held hers. “If the gentleman were respectable, titled, and able to provide security for you and Lady Montague, it would answer several urgent difficulties.”