Page 6 of The Wallflower Takes All

“And one day,” Gabriel had replied, “you may discover that certain categories exist for good reason.”

His father had laughed then, quietly, maddeningly, and said nothing more.

Now Gabriel stood in the foyer of the Montfort town house, and every sensible opinion he had ever held appeared to have been proven correct within the first twenty seconds.

There was an overturned umbrella stand near the wall. A traveling case sat abandoned on a chair, half-open, with a lady’s stocking escaping from it like a flag of surrender. Somewhere nearby, glass clinked, a woman laughed too loudly, and an orange-spotted spaniel puppy barked at Gabriel’s left boot with the righteous fury of a magistrate.

The air smelled of beeswax, alcohol, perfume, and something suspiciously like egg.

And before him stood Miss Poppy Montfort.

That was the part for which he had not prepared at all.

His father had mentioned her, of course. Often. Gabriel had formed an impression of a pretty, indulged young aristocrat who had grown up among unpaid bills, late mornings, and endless excuses, with little notion of what things cost and less interest in learning.

She was not merely pretty.

That was the first inconvenient fact.

She was lovely in a way that made nonsense of his expectations, red hair bright against the morning light, blue eyes alive with embarrassment and intelligence, a mouth made for laughter even while dignity deserted her.

Gabriel had expected an indolent girl drifting through disorder with no notion of who was left to set it right. Instead, Miss Montfort looked harried, brisk, and entirely occupied, curls slipping from their pins, a suspicious yellow smear near the hem of her gown, and one hand still hovering in the air from the unfortunate moment in which she had informed him he was “someone not old.”

Her cheeks had gone pink, and Gabriel had the immediate and deeply unwelcome thought that the color suited her.

He dismissed it at once.

Miss Montfort was a client’s daughter. More precisely, the daughter of a client from whose affairs Gabriel intended to extract himself at the earliest prudent opportunity.

A sensible man did not notice the blush of a client’s daughter. He certainly did not notice her mouth, which seemed inclined to utter any thought that wandered near it, no matter how inconvenient.

And he had no business wondering whether that mouth would soften as quickly under pleasure as it sharpened under embarrassment.

Gabriel shut the thought away immediately. Then, irritatingly, found he knew exactly where he had put it.

He had no business thinking this way about a client—especially an aristocratic one.

Aristocrats were like large children…overindulged, self-assured, and forever astonished when the world failed to arrange itself around their wishes. His mother had been born close enough to that world to understand its language, though she wore her connections lightly. Gabriel remembered fragments: a seal pressed into crimson wax, letters in a careful hand, his mother saying that old names often sounded grandest when they concealed the heaviest obligations.

She had left friends, position, and everything familiar to marry his father, and Gabriel had grown up aware of the small silences that sacrifice left behind.

She had laughed when she said it.

Then she had died, and laughter had left the house with her.

His father had always had a kind heart, and his grief had made him tender toward every vulnerable client who crossed the threshold. A widow in difficulties, a daughter with frightened eyes, a household toppling under debts—each one found a way past the elder Mr. Ashby’s professional caution because grief had trained him to answer need before arithmetic. Gabriel had watched it happen too many times. Fees forgiven. Evenings surrendered. Family security treated as secondary to other people’s storms.

That was what affection did when left ungoverned. It turned duty porous. It made a sensible man generous past the edge of prudence.

Gabriel had learned that lesson early, though not in any manner a child could have explained cleanly. The week his mother took ill, his father had taken him into town on an errand, and Gabriel had lingered too long before the confectioner’s window, staring at a twist of barley sugar set out in a little glass jar. He had wanted it with the sharp, foolish wanting of a boy who had been told no and felt the refusal as an injustice.

When the shopkeeper turned to wrap another customer’s parcel, Gabriel slipped one piece into his pocket.

A small theft. A sweet worth a few pennies. The sort of wickedness adults might have scolded, corrected, and forgotten before the week was out.

But he had known he had done wrong. Worse, when his mother later asked why his fingers were sticky, he lied. She had been sitting near the fire with a shawl around her shoulders, pale already, though he had not understood that then. She had looked at him with tired fondness and said, “Gabriel, truth first. Always.”

He had promised her he was telling it.