Page 38 of The Wallflower Takes All

The count offered his arm with enough grandeur to suggest trumpets ought to have been involved. Lady Viva took it with great ceremony, and together they proceeded toward the salon.

“Has Belloronni become a duke while I was asleep?” came Lady Stone’s sleepy voice from the room.

“Not yet, darling,” Lady Viva replied.

“Pity.”

Gabriel remained in the hall, deliberating ignoring the absurdity drifting from the salon.

Too many things, Lady Viva had said.

Yes. Miss Montfort knew how much was owed to the wine merchant. No doubt she knew which guests might steal spoons and which would merely borrow books indefinitely. She knew how to calm creditors, redirect her mother, manage servants, soothe poets, and laugh while the roof cracked overhead.

She knew too many things because everyone else knew too few. And it was entirely unfair.

Gabriel returned to the study and sat down again, though he did not immediately reach for the papers.

He thought of the unmarried titled gentlemen of England, with their respectable names, solvent estates, and power to offer protection. Any one of them could give Miss Montfort a house where she need not count candles or barter with wine merchants.

Marriage was the sensible answer. Perhaps the only answer. A titled husband would solve several practical problems.

Gabriel had told her so himself.

The trouble was that he could not stop imagining some faceless peer assessing Miss Montfort as a bargain to be weighed against debts, a dowry, and the inconvenience of Lady Viva.

Even worse, the faceless peer in his imagination had hands. Too many hands. Gabriel imagined them at Miss Montfort’s waist in a dance, lifting hers to his mouth, touching her with the casual claim of a man who had offered for her. Gabriel had no reason to resent such things, and yet he resented them with a force that made mockery of every scrap of restraint he possessed.

His fingers tightened around the quill.

Ridiculous.

He had known the woman one day.

Less than that.

He had no claim. No cause. No reason whatsoever to feel anything but professional satisfaction if her well-placed friends managed to arrange what law and ledgers could not. Besides, a wealthy husband might be able to settle the amount the ladies owed to him and his father.

Yet when he drew his notebook closer and turned back to the list, the final line seemed less tidy than it had that morning.

Conclude account upon settlement of urgent matters.

Gabriel stared at it.

Then he struck the words through. His decision had not precisely changed, but urgent matters remained unsettled, and he disliked premature conclusions. That was all.

A sound at the study door made him look up.

Miss Montfort stood there, eyes bright with something that might have been fear, hope, or both. For one unreasonable instant, the room seemed to arrange itself around her.

He noticed the wind-touched color in her cheeks first, then the loosened bonnet ribbon, then the bright blue of her eyes. The sequence was damning. A solicitor ought to notice documents before ribbons and practical concerns before beauty. Gabriel, evidently, had begun noticing all the wrong things in exactly the wrong order.

“Mr. Ashby,” she said breathlessly. “I have been to see my friends, Lady Vanover and Lady Pembroke.”

Those names were more than familiar. Lady Vanover and Lady Pembroke were exceptionally well regarded, though the scandals that had attended their marriages had likely helped as much as they had hindered. Society adored a scandal once it had been made respectable by a wedding ring and a title.

He rose. “And?”

Miss Montfort stepped into the room, then stopped beside the chair opposite his desk. For a moment, her expression held, bright, composed, almost eager.