Page 94 of The Wallflower Takes All

Gabriel closed his eyes for one moment. When he opened them again, the hunger she had seen earlier remained, but something harder stood behind it. Restraint. Decision. Painfully earned and terribly stubborn. “Don’t you see? That is why I must go,” he said.

Poppy watched him. He bent and gathered Freddie’s ribbon from her hand, not touching her fingers this time. The absence of contact felt deliberate. Cruel because it was careful.

“I will see you safely back home,” he said. “Then I will speak with my father.”

The ordinary words hurt more than any dramatic farewell could have done. He was leaving. He meant to leave the park, the afternoon, and the intimacy that had unsettled them both. He meant to place some other solicitor between them, to retreat into professional correctness, and to leave Poppy with five days, a marriage settlement, and a collection of titled men who might give her what she needed while failing to be what she wanted.

She could not tell him he was wrong, because every practical part of her understood the mercy of his retreat. Only the part of her that wanted him wished he had been far less merciful.

Chapter Fifteen

After returning Poppy and Freddie safely to the Montfort doorstep, Gabriel returned to his office and spent the better part of an hour accomplishing nothing.

It was not a condition to which he was accustomed.

His desk remained precisely as he had left it: Lord Montague’s refusal letter arranged beside the late viscount’s will, Lady Montague’s settlement, the draft of Poppy’s marriage contract, and the notebook in which Gabriel had once written, with infuriating confidence, that he meant to conclude the Montfort account once the urgent matters were settled.

The line had been struck through.

But it remained legible.

Gabriel sat behind the desk and opened the late viscount’s will again.

He had read it four times already. A fifth reading altered nothing. Brambleberry Court was entailed. The London house belonged with the estate. Lady Montague had no right to remain once the new viscount claimed possession. Her jointure might maintain her modestly, if she were capable of modesty, but it offered no rescue from the approaching deadline.

He moved to the deed box.

Leases. Receipts. Correspondence. The same disappointing collection he had examined before. There was no forgotten property, no obscure provision, no legal phrase capable of stretching five days into five weeks.

He read every page regardless.

He told himself this was industry. He suspected it was desperation.

The office door opened without a knock.

Gabriel did not look up. “You are no longer working, Father.”

“So you have reminded me several times,” his father said. “Yet here I am.”

The elder Mr. Ashby entered carrying a parcel beneath one arm and wearing the old brown coat Gabriel had spent years attempting to persuade him to replace. One button remained fastened in the wrong hole.

His father placed the parcel upon the desk.

“What is that?” Gabriel asked.

“Seed cake.”

Gabriel shook his head.

“Lady Montague sent it.”

“Why?”

“She believes solicitors require feeding when obliged to deliver unpleasant news.”

“That is surprisingly sensible.”

“She also asked whether cake might be substituted for payment.”