Page 24 of The Wallflower Takes All

Mr. Ashby’s gaze flicked past Poppy toward the sound. “I shall endeavor to put it in legal terms, my lady.”

Poppy bit the inside of her cheek.

Mr. Ashby glanced down as Freddie planted both paws on his boot and attempted to climb him. “Where did you get this dog?”

“Freddie?” Poppy bent to scoop him up. “Mama appeared with him one afternoon. That is how things arrive in this house,” she added. “Puppies, poets, bills, mysterious guests. Mama appears with them, and I discover they are staying.”

Freddie licked her chin with great affection and very little accuracy.

Mr. Ashby looked from the dog to the salon to Poppy. Something moved behind his expression. Amusement, perhaps. Or dismay. With Mr. Ashby, it was difficult to tell. He seemed the sort of man who kept all emotions under lock and key, then catalogued the keys in alphabetical order.

“You intend to take my advice and look for a husband?” he asked.

His voice was perfectly even, but his gaze moved over her face too closely, searching for the answer beneath the one she was expected to give. Poppy felt the attention low in her body, an unwelcome heat that made the word husband feel suddenly improper.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Good.”

The word was so firm, so certain, that Poppy found herself grateful for his approval.

Then she remembered that this was ridiculous. Mr. Ashby was not her ally. He was her solicitor, at least temporarily, and perhaps not even that for long if he had inherited his father’s good sense without his father’s affection for hopeless causes.

Lady Viva lifted her head from the sofa. “Are we beyond redemption, Mr. Ashby?”

Poppy froze. Had Mama truly said that aloud?

Mr. Ashby’s eyes moved to hers, and the corner of his mouth shifted by the barest degree. “I should prefer to review the documents again before issuing so final an opinion.”

Mama sighed. “Legal men are never decisive. It is one of their great failings, darling.”

Poppy tucked Freddie beneath one arm and gathered the remaining shreds of her composure. “I shall return as soon as I can, Mama.”

“Yes, yes. Go confer with your revolutionaries.” Lady Viva settled back again. “Tell Lady Vanover I am still cross that she married so sensibly after all that promising defiance. It gives the wrong impression.”

Poppy paused.

Mama was not entirely wrong.

Which was precisely the trouble.

After all her friends’ glorious defiance, Poppy’s own revolt had come to this: a sensible marriage, chosen in haste because necessity had left her no grander rebellion.

Archer House did not smell of champagne, eggs, or impending disaster.

It smelled of beeswax, fresh flowers, excellent tea, and the particular sort of order money could purchase when everyone inside the household understood exactly what to expect. The footmen did not look harried. No invalid poet reclined on a sofa declaring himself wounded by daylight. No one had left a hatbox or a hound dog in the hall.

Poppy was happy for Bea. Truly, she was.

She had watched her friend struggle to arrive here—married to the infuriating and brilliant Marquess of Vanover, in possession of her rebellious drawings, her heart, and, somehow, more freedom than she had ever had beneath her father’s roof.

It was lovely.

It was also, at the moment, rather difficult to stand amid all this calm and not feel as though the universe had handed out happy endings in a most uneven fashion.

Georgie was already there when Poppy arrived, seated beside Bea in the pale green drawing room that had become one of their preferred meeting places. Georgie—Lady Pembroke now, though Poppy rarely thought of her that way—looked softer than she had before her marriage, her dark hair pinned elegantly, her lavender muslin gown perfectly suited to her. Marriage to Jason, the Earl of Pembroke, had not made her less Georgie. It had only given her room to breathe.

Bea, by contrast, had become no softer at all.