Chapter Twelve
The Montfort house was accepting flowers when Gabriel arrived.
Not one bouquet. Several. The hall table had disappeared beneath bluebells, hothouse roses, and an extravagant arrangement of foxglove, the floral equivalent of a declaration delivered too loudly.
Lord Crampton stood beside the largest vase, leaning upon the table while Lady Viva admired a card.
“Mr. Ashby,” she called. “Darling, have you ever seen such roses? Lord Crampton says they are the color of dawn.”
“They are the color of a debt collector’s face after waiting in the hall,” said a tradesman near the door.
“Mr. Pradmore,” Jenkins murmured, horrified.
“I beg your pardon,” the tradesman added quickly when he saw Gabriel. “My lady.”
Lady Viva waved her fan. “Nonsense. A poetic observation. Distressing, but poetic.”
Lord Crampton gave Gabriel a cool look, plainly displeased by the interruption. “Ashby.”
“My lord.”
Freddie darted past with a length of pink ribbon in his mouth, pursued by a footman who had abandoned all pretense of composure.
“Freddie,” Jenkins said, as if this alone might restore civilization.
It did not.
Gabriel removed his hat. “Is Miss Montfort at home?”
“She is,” Lady Viva said, smiling too widely. “She is in the morning room. Waiting for a caller. A sensible one, apparently. I am attempting to be pleased, though sensible men are so often dull.”
Lord Crampton’s mouth tightened. “A caller?”
“A baron,” Lady Viva said. “Very steady. Poppy likes steady things. She has had so few of them.”
The remark struck harder than Lady Viva had meant it to, and a moment later, her smile flickered with the realization.
Gabriel bowed. “I should speak with Miss Montfort.”
Lady Viva’s fan stilled. “Is something wrong?”
“Several things,” he said as he continued walking.
Lord Crampton sniffed. “Legal men do enjoy bringing gloom indoors.”
When Gabriel entered the morning room, Miss Montfort was seated beside the window.
She wore pale muslin with blue ribbons, her hair dressed simply, a small bouquet of violets pinned at her bodice.
The effect was quiet rather than elaborate, hopeful rather than desperate, and so carefully composed that Gabriel’s guilt sharpened.
A tea tray sat on the table, where two cups waited beside untouched cakes and a folded shawl lay over the back of the opposite chair.
More guilt sliced through Gabriel. It was all for Lord Ketterham.
Miss Montfort rose when he entered. “Mr. Ashby.”
The brightness in her voice lasted a moment before she saw his face. Her smile faltered. “Lord Montague replied,” she said solemnly.
“Yes.”
“Not generously,” she guessed.
“No.”
She reached for the back of the chair, then seemed to notice the gesture and let her hand fall. “What did he write?”
“He refuses the extension. He means to take possession at the week’s end.”
Miss Montfort closed her eyes.
Only briefly.
When she opened them again, the smile returned. He hated that smile. He hated the skill of it, the bravery of it, the way it gave every other person permission not to feel what she must.
“I see,” she said. “Then Algernon is nothing if not consistent.”
“Miss Montfort—”
“No, truly. One must admire a young gentleman who chooses a character and keeps to it. Snuff. Curtains. No mercy.”
Gabriel did not laugh.
She looked toward the door. “Does Mama know?”
“I believe she suspects.”
“That is almost worse. Mama’s suspicions become dramatic stories if left unattended.”
“I am sorry.”
“Yes.” Poppy folded her hands before her. “Well. Thank you for telling me yourself.”
There was still the other matter. The cup meant for Lord Ketterham seemed to accuse Gabriel from the tray.
Gabriel drew a breath. “There is more.”
Her expression changed. It was a smaller change this time, a more private one.
“What?” she asked.
“Lord Ketterham.” Gabriel straightened. “He came to my office this morning.”
She frowned. “He came to you before coming here?”
“Yes.” Gabriel nodded.
She was silent a moment. “Why?”
“He wished to ask about the rumors surrounding your mother’s household.”
Her fingers tightened in her skirts, alarm sparking in her eyes. “And what did you say?”
Gabriel forced himself to meet her gaze. “I told him I could not discuss confidential matters.”
Her eyes narrowed. “But that was not all.”
“No.”
She pressed her lips together and swallowed. “What else?”
“He asked whether the rumors were exaggerated.”
“And?” Her face was blank, prepared.
“I said they were accurate enough to matter.”
The words moved through her. Gabriel saw the change, a flicker in her eye, a small inward retreat, his answer reaching some tender place and making her draw away.
“Ah,” she said.
The one small sound was far worse than tears or anger.
“I also told him that you are the reason the household has not overtaken itself,” Gabriel said. “I told him you are loyal, capable, and undeserving of being judged by anyone else’s disorder.”
“How generous.”
“It was true.”
“Yes.” Her smile wavered. “That is the difficulty. You are so often correct.”
Gabriel said nothing.
She turned to the tea tray and moved one cake a fraction to the left. Then the spoon. Then the cup that had been meant for Ketterham.
None of them needed moving.
“Will he call?” she asked.
“He said he was reconsidering.”
“A polite word for retreat.”
“Yes.”
Poppy looked down at the cup before her.
The tea had gone untouched, a thin curl of steam rising from the surface while the room seemed to wait with her.
Lord Ketterham had been sensible, eligible, and exactly the sort of man she was meant to want.
Yet Gabriel’s answer had not landed like disappointment alone.
Her hand stilled beside the cup. “And did you want him to retreat?”
The quiet question struck him harder than anger would have.
Gabriel drew a breath. “Yes,” he breathed.
Poppy lifted her gaze toward him.
There. He had said it. The word stood between them, plain and damning.
“I told him the truth,” Gabriel said. “But I did not tell it kindly. I did not tell it in a way meant to preserve his interest. I told it because he wanted the easiest parts of you and feared the rest.”
Her eyes brightened. “The rest being Mama, Freddie, debts, and ruin?”
“The rest being loyalty. Courage. Wit. Stubbornness. A heart that has been made to carry too much and still has room for everyone else.” His voice roughened despite his effort to steady it. “If a man cannot see those as reasons to want you more, he has no business asking for any part of you.”
Poppy stared at him.
Gabriel had gone too far. Again.
He forced his hands to remain at his sides. “That does not excuse what I did.”
“No,” she said quietly. “It does not.”
The answer had enough truth in it to draw blood.
She looked down at the tea tray. “I suppose he wanted quiet.”
“He did.”
“And we are chaos.”
“Sometimes.”
Her mouth trembled. “How diplomatic.”
“Poppy.”
The name escaped him before he could call it back.
Her attention flew to his face.
He did not correct himself. “You are not chaos. You have been living inside it for so long that you mistake its noise for your own.”
She closed her eyes, her composure cracking at the edges.
Gabriel took one step toward her, then stopped. “Lord Ketterham is wrong if he thinks peace means choosing a woman untouched by trouble. Peace is what you create, again and again, with your hands full and no one thanking you properly for it.”
For a moment, she said nothing.
Then she gave a small, unsteady laugh. “You have a dreadful habit of ruining me for other men, Mr. Ashby.”
His chest tightened. “I know.”
This was the moment to step back. Apologize. Withdraw. Let her gather herself. Instead, Gabriel heard himself say, “Go with me.”
She frowned. “Go with you where?”
“For a drive in the park.”
Lord Ketterham had promised her that. Such a small thing, really. An ordinary courtesy. The next expected step in being courted. Yet even that had been withdrawn from her.
Her brows drew together more sharply. “I beg your pardon?”
She stared at him. The silence lengthened. Then, slowly, she said, “Mr. Ashby.”
“Yes.”
“You are my solicitor.”
“I am.”
“You have just informed me that another gentleman will not call because my situation is too complicated.”
“Yes.”
“And your solution is to ask me to go riding in the park?”
The first flicker of life had returned to her face, and Gabriel seized upon it because his judgment had clearly abandoned the room. “Why not?”
“A ride in the park is not a solution.”
“No. But it might be enjoyable.”
Her mouth trembled. Not with tears this time but with…amusement. “You make a very poor romantic hero,” she said.
“That I can’t deny. But still, it should not preclude you from saying yes.”
“Are you offering this drive for legal reasons?” she pressed.
“No.”
“You want me to go with you to the park…where people may see us?”
He shrugged. “It is daylight.”
“That is not the protection you think it is.”
“Then we shall take Lady Montague.”
At that, she laughed outright. It was small, startled, and still threaded with irony, but it was real. “Mama would ruin us both within five minutes.”
“Then we shall take the dog.”
“Freddie is worse.”
“I doubt that.”
“You have not seen him with ducks.”
Gabriel looked at her, and something in his chest eased because the sadness had not gone, but it had loosened enough for humor to slip through. Enough for Poppy to look, for one moment, less like a woman measuring another loss and more like herself.
Whoever she was when no one required bravery from her.
She looked down at the untouched tray, then toward the salon, where Lady Viva’s laugh rose in answer to something Lord Crampton had said.
“My mother will think this is an excellent idea,” she said.
“That is concerning.”
“She will say drives are useful because fresh air makes men foolish.”
“She may not be wrong.”
Poppy’s gaze returned to his and the air between them shifted again, warm with all the things he had no business wanting.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “I can have a curricle brought round within the hour.”
She studied him, clearly trying to determine what sort of madness had taken possession of him.
He wondered the same.
“I should not,” she said.
“No.”
“It is imprudent.”
“Likely.”
“And not at all useful.”
“I would not go that far.”
“Oh?” Her brows lifted. “Do tell me what is useful about Hyde Park.”
He shrugged. “It may improve your spirits.”
The words came out before he could stop them. They were too honest, too intimate.
Poppy’s expression softened, and Gabriel felt the change in her as a physical pressure.
“That,” she said quietly, “is not the job of a solicitor, to improve my spirits.”
“No,” he admitted. “It is not.”
From the salon, Lord Crampton said something about widowhood being a lonely estate. Lady Viva replied that loneliness depended entirely upon the quality of one’s callers.
Poppy closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. “Very well,” she said.
Gabriel’s heart gave one hard, inexplicable thump. “Yes?”
“Yes, Mr. Ashby. I will drive with you in the park.”
He bowed because it was safer than smiling. “Then I shall return within the hour.”
He turned toward the door before he could do something else reckless, such as look pleased.
“Mr. Ashby?”
He paused.
She stood beside the table with the untouched cakes, the folded newspapers, and the cup of tea intended for another man. Her smile was faint now, but no longer false.
“Thank you,” she said.
He inclined his head.
It occurred to him, as he left the room, that he had just done precisely what he had warned himself against doing. He had stepped into the vacant place another man had left.
Not as a solicitor, not as a matter of law, but…as himself.
And the worst of it was that he could not bring himself to regret it.