The Wallflower Takes All (EBOOK)

London, July 1820

Of all the mornings for the Montfort household to behave itself, it chose this one to stage a small insurrection before half past ten.

Miss Poppy Montfort knew this because someone was crying in the blue drawing room, someone was laughing in the front salon, someone had misplaced a peacock-feather fan of alarming proportions, and Freddie, the spaniel puppy, had just stolen a deviled egg from beneath a drunken countess’s very nose.

“Freddie!” Poppy called.

Freddie, who possessed the long ears of an angel and the conscience of a highwayman, darted beneath a gilt side table with the egg clamped triumphantly in his jaws.

“Oh, let him have it,” said Lady Stone from the sofa, already on her third glass of champagne and not yet noon. “He has such a soulful face.”

“He has yolk on the Aubusson,” Poppy pointed out.

“That too,” Lady Stone agreed with a small shrug.

Poppy bent, reached beneath the table, and narrowly avoided having her fingers nipped—not out of malice, merely enthusiasm. Freddie swallowed the egg in one heroic gulp, then wagged his entire body at her as if he had secured a victory for England.

From the adjoining room came Mama’s peal of laughter, rich and reckless and a shade too loud for respectable Society.

“Oh, do not be silly, darling,” Mama said. “If I had truly meant to insult Lord Tewksbury, I should have done it far more elegantly.”

A second burst of laughter followed, male this time, then the unmistakable clink of glass.

Poppy closed her eyes.

Just once in her life, she would like to wake to a quiet house, a balanced account book, and a mother who did not collect stray poets, improper widows, impoverished baronets, theatrical sopranos, and mysterious gentlemen from questionable lineage the way other women collected calling cards.

Instead, Lady Viva Montfort collected people, emptied wine bottles, and set drawing rooms ablaze with a sort of glamorous catastrophe that had become, over the years, their family’s chief distinction.

Poppy rose and smoothed her morning gown. The gown was plain white muslin, belted with a faded blue ribbon, and chosen for the sort of morning in which one expected to review ledgers, not encounter yolk, poets, and inebriated countesses.

She tried to recover the expression of serene competence she had cultivated since the age of thirteen—since her father died. It was the expression that said nothing in this household had ever surprised her, though in truth almost everything did.

Especially today.

“Miss Montfort?”

Their butler, Jenkins, hovered in the doorway, his expression suggesting he had spent the morning deciding whether to resign, take to prayer, or hurl himself into the Serpentine. 

“Yes, Jenkins?”

In a properly ordered house, such reports would have reached Poppy by way of a housekeeper. The Montforts, however, had been without one for nearly two years, since every respectable woman with references had shown a tiresome preference for regular wages, manageable guests, and a mistress who did not assign bedchambers according to inspiration.

Jenkins took a breath. “There is a gentleman in the foyer interested in discussing the accounts from the wine merchant, and Tommy says the Frenchwoman in the yellow bedchamber refuses to leave unless someone finds her pearl earbob. Also…” He hesitated.

Poppy braced herself. Jenkins did not hesitate unless the news was quite bad indeed.

“Her ladyship has ordered champagne.”

Poppy stared at him. “Champagne?”

“For breakfast, miss.”

Lady Stone lifted one hand weakly from the sofa. “A woman of taste.”

“A woman of gout, if she continues,” Poppy murmured.

Lady Stone appeared to consider this. “Also possible.”

Poppy handed the countess’s abandoned empty glass to a passing footman. “Tell Madame Perue I shall find her earbob. Tell the wine merchant’s man he may wait another quarter hour. And under no circumstances is anyone to bring Mama champagne.”

Jenkins’s expression flickered. “Her ladyship said if we refused, she would send Tommy with a note to the wine merchant.”

Poppy looked toward the ceiling.

Some daughters were called upon to pour tea, play the pianoforte, and soothe an occasional maternal indisposition. Poppy spent her days preventing Lady Viva from ordering champagne for breakfast, mortgaging what remained of the silver, and inviting unsuitable people to reside indefinitely under their roof.

The fact that Poppy had once imagined herself a romantic girl with dreams of courtship and elegant balls seemed, at this point, almost comical.

“Very well,” she said. “Bring her coffee instead and put it in a champagne flute. She may not notice.”

Jenkins gave a solemn nod, suggesting this was not the strangest instruction he had received that week, and withdrew.

Poppy turned just in time to see Freddie emerge from beneath the table and spit out a piece of deviled egg onto the hem of her gown.

Naturally.

She scooped him up before he could commit another offense against upholstery and tucked him beneath her arm. He smelled faintly of butter, dust, and puppyish triumph.

“I hope you are enjoying yourself,” she told him.

Freddie licked her wrist. That, unfortunately, was answer enough.

She crossed the foyer, stepping around a stack of hatboxes, a sleeping hound dog that did not belong to them, and Mr. Loxley, the melancholy poet Mama had met at a musicale, who was sprawled on a chaise.

“Miss Montfort,” he said faintly, without opening his eyes, “the morning has wounded me.”

“Then I recommend drawing the curtains.”

“I suffer best in natural light,” Mr. Loxley insisted.

Poppy kept walking. The front salon doors stood open. Inside, Mama presided over the room like a queen of some disreputable little kingdom, draped in lilac silk, a bright red curl fallen artfully over one eye, a teacup in one hand and, Lord help her, a champagne flute in the other.

Poppy narrowed her gaze. Where did she get that? So much for coffee in a flute.

Around Lady Viva lounged several houseguests in varying states of leisure, none of whom Poppy could be certain had ever been invited in the ordinary sense of the word.

Lady Viva looked up and brightened. “Poppy, darling. There you are. Tell Mr. Fenwick he is wrong. A person absolutely can live on champagne and anchovy toast if she is committed enough.”

Poppy lifted a brow. “I refuse to encourage this discussion.”

Lady Stone raised her champagne flute. “I should be delighted to assist with the research.”

Mr. Fenwick, who had a dazed expression and a rumpled cravat, had wandered in by accident three days ago and had not yet found the door. He gave her a small, desperate bow.

Poppy scowled at him.

Mama waved a dismissive hand. “You are dreadful company before noon, sweetie.”

“I am dreadful company after noon also, as you very well know,” Poppy informed her.

This earned a delighted laugh from the room, which was irritating, because she had not intended to be amusing.

Lady Viva extended her cup. “Jenkins is tyrannizing me.”

“No,” Poppy said. “Jenkins is attempting to preserve what remains of our household’s dignity.”

Lady Viva sighed. “A household should be lived in, darling, not preserved like a pickled fish.”

“Hear, hear,” Lady Stone murmured, though she appeared to have forgotten what they were applauding.

Poppy opened her mouth, then closed it again. There was never any point. Mama could turn recklessness into wit so deftly that half the room forgot there was anything harmful in it.

That was the problem, in fact. Mama was charming. Glorious. Dazzling, even. Society scolded her while secretly hoping she would do something outrageous enough to enliven the week.

And Poppy—

Poppy paid the bills.

Or tried to.

For years, dear, patient Mr. Ashby, Mama’s solicitor, had helped her do precisely that. He knew Mama. He knew which tradesmen would wait, which guests would never leave unless tactically starved into movement, which awkward situations required legal intervention, and which debts Poppy had hidden beneath the blotter because she could not bear to see them in daylight.

Mr. Ashby had never laughed when Poppy brought him ledgers with trembling hands and asked whether they were ruined this time. He had only adjusted his spectacles and said, “Not today, Miss Montfort, if I can help it.”

And now Mr. Ashby had retired.

Retired.

The very word felt like betrayal.

This morning his replacement was due to arrive, and Poppy had spent the last hour in a state of such dread she could scarcely breathe.

His replacement would know none of it. He would walk into this madhouse, see the wine, the guests, the dogs, the disorder, and know at once that Poppy Montfort—a twenty-three-year-old woman who had smiled her way through every disaster of the past decade—was barely holding the whole thing together with sealing wax and prayer.

“Mama,” she said, lowering her voice as she approached. “Please tell me you have not invited anyone else to stay.”

Lady Viva blinked at her with large innocent eyes no one in England—or on the Continent, for that matter—should ever trust. “One or two.”

Poppy briefly closed her eyes. Her mother’s sums were never correct. “How many is one or two?”

“Six.”

Poppy blinked.

Mama brightened. “Possibly seven, if Celeste returns from Bath. But Celeste hardly counts, because she always brings her own maid.”

Poppy released a slow breath. “You have invited seven more people into this house?”

Lady Viva waved her hand again. “They were in need.”

“We are in need.” Poppy nearly stamped her foot.

As usual, Mama looked faintly bored by arithmetic. “Oh, sweetie, need is so unfashionable when discussed plainly.”

Poppy pressed two fingers to the point between her brows. “Where are you proposing to put them?”

“Beds may be shared, darling.”

“They may not.”

“Then sofas may be used.”

“Mama.”

“What? I have slept on sofas all across Europe. Some of them were quite accommodating.”

Poppy was still deciding whether to laugh, cry, or seize the nearest bottle of champagne for herself when a knock thundered through the front hall.

The sound cut through the chatter, through Mama’s half-finished complaint about the decline of civilized hospitality, and through the yapping of Freddie, who clearly believed any knock heralded a visitor sent expressly to see him.

Poppy went still.

The new solicitor was here.

At once, every disorganized detail around her sharpened into horror, the half-empty wineglasses, the houseguests in varying states of dishabille, the poet dying beautifully in the corridor, the puppy with egg on his whiskers, and Mama in wrinkled skirts and disreputable good spirits before luncheon.

The trouble ran deeper than precarious straits, tradesmen waiting in the hall, or creditors hovering like ravens. Everyone she loved, every room she crossed, every account she touched, every smile she managed, existed in a state of beautiful, tottering chaos—and Poppy could not stop it.

“Who is it?” Mama asked idly.

“The new solicitor,” Poppy informed her.

Mama made a face. “Must he come this morning? Morning is such an unflattering hour for legal advice.”

“Yes,” Poppy said grimly. “It appears he must.”

She did not wait for commentary. Instead, she gathered her skirts and marched into the hall, trying with each step to transform herself back into Miss Poppy Montfort, composed, polished, charming, and thoroughly equal to her circumstances.

By the time she made it to the foyer, Jenkins had just opened the front door.

And Poppy sucked in her breath.

The man on the threshold was not at all what she had expected.

For one disorienting moment, Poppy thought Jenkins had admitted the wrong visitor entirely.

This man was tall, broad-shouldered, and unfairly handsome, with sun-gold hair brushed back from a striking brow and eyes a clear, impossible blue. His coat was cut well—not in the peacockish manner of gentlemen who wished to be admired at twenty paces—and he carried himself with quiet confidence.

He did not look like a solicitor. Solicitors were elderly and staid and boring. This man looked more like the sort a lady made the mistake of noticing across a ballroom and then dreamed about for a fortnight.

Poppy stopped so abruptly that Freddie bumped into the back of her legs.

The gentleman’s gaze found hers.

And changed.

It wasn’t a dramatic change. Or one that anyone else would have marked, perhaps. Something in his expression merely sharpened, warmed, lingered. As if he, too, had not expected—

Well…her.

For one startling instant, the noise of the house receded. Poppy became aware of the deviled egg on her hem, the loosened ribbon at her waist, the rapid beat of her pulse, and the entirely inconvenient fact that this stranger was looking at her with an intensity that made the disorder around them seem to fall away.

“Good morning,” he said.

His voice was low and even and maddeningly pleasant. Worse, it seemed to slide over her skin before it reached her ears, which was an unexpected thing for a voice to do and not at all helpful when she was already attempting to remember how to stand.

Poppy’s heart gave one completely traitorous little flip.

Who was this? Surely not a creditor. Creditors did not possess shoulders like that. Not one of Mama’s strays either. He was too self-possessed, too neat, and far too sober.

Then he removed his gloves, and Jenkins said, with dreadful calm, “Miss Montfort, Mr. Gabriel Ashby.”

The floor did not open and swallow her, though it was very much invited to.

Mr. Gabriel Ashby.

Mr. Ashby’s son?

Oh, dear. Now it made sense.

This was their new solicitor. The man who was, at this very moment, taking in the overturned umbrella stand, the traveling case abandoned on a chair, the suspicious scent of spilled champagne before noon, the barking puppy, and—if heaven had fully abandoned her—the sound of Mama in the salon declaring that no truly interesting person had ever balanced a ledger correctly in his life.

Heat rushed into Poppy’s cheeks. Of all the days for Mr. Ashby’s son and replacement to appear looking like an archangel with excellent tailoring, it had to be this one.

He bowed. “Miss Montfort.”

She ought to have curtsied. Or spoken. Or at the very least remembered how ordinary human breathing worked.

Instead, she heard herself say, “You are young.”

The corner of his mouth raised. “I beg your pardon?”

Dear God. She wanted to die.

“What I meant,” Poppy said, her dignity apparently determined to fling itself from a rooftop, “is that Mr. Ashby did not mention—”

“My age?”

“That he had sent”—she gestured vaguely, hating herself more with every passing second—“someone not old.”

One golden brow lifted.

Behind her, from the salon, Mama’s voice floated into the foyer. “Poppy, darling, if that is the flower merchant at the door, remind him that lilies make me sneeze.”

Mr. Gabriel Ashby’s gaze flicked over Poppy’s shoulder toward the sound. Then back to her.

There was that look again. It wasn’t quite mockery. It was more like…understanding.

And Poppy knew, with a sick plunge in her stomach, that before this day was over, Mr. Ashby, the younger, would understand far too much.

Because he had not simply entered a position. He had stepped into the wreckage she had spent years trying to disguise. And under that steady blue gaze, Poppy had the awful feeling that he had already begun to see straight through all of it.