Chapter Thirty-Six
Between their combined efforts, Jilly and Poppy had turned the ball into a rousing success. The twins were holding court with a bevy of admirers between sets, and the entire house seemed to be filled to bursting. David had not inquired who, precisely, had received invitations, but by the crush he assumed that few, if any, had been rejected. Even Leighton had elected to attend, though he seemed to be avoiding his fiancée, who herself did not appear to be particularly put out over it.
Poppy hovered nearby, looking lovely and poised in her gown of burgundy silk. Usually she stuck quite closely to his side, using him as a welcome buffer between herself and the rest of society, but tonight she had set some distance between them, as if the few feet of empty space between them provided a buffer from him.
It seemed like it should have been such a simple thing to breach it, but those few feet stretched between them like an abyss, and he had the queer sense that sooner or later, one of them would tumble headlong into it.
He’d thought about requesting a waltz of her, but she seemed distracted enough in keeping a watchful eye on the twins, in playing the part of hostess to people who had all too recently shunned her. Though she was certainly aware of the vacillating good will of the Ton, she had still managed to greet each attendee with kindness and grace. Even those who had been so quick to declare her a scheming social climber seemed to have acquired a sort of grudging respect for her.
Still, he wanted to stand beside her. Or perhaps he wanted her to stand beside him. That indefinable distance mocked him, taunted him. She was a strong, capable woman—she could stand on her own without him. But she shouldn’t have to. She hadn’t let him stand alone.
Just as he’d made up his mind to approach her, Jilly and Rushton appeared at her side, and Jilly whispered something into Poppy’s ear. He watched her brows draw, her lips flatten into a grim line. She gave a brisk nod, and a moment later both women were threading their way through the crowd, heading for the exit. Rushton heaved a sigh and took a long swallow of his champagne.
David caught his eye and gave a jerk of his head, summoning Rushton to his side. “What the devil was that?” he asked.
“A minor disturbance,” Rushton said. “Viscount Hallston and his family have arrived, sans invitation.”
“Hallston?” David echoed. “But that’s—” Poppy’s cousin. The loathsome Cousin Rupert who had summarily ejected all three girls from the only home they’d ever known, casting them to an uncertain fate.
“It would seem so,” Rushton said. “Jilly thinks Poppy should have the decision of whether or not to boot him out.” He shrugged, a bland gesture of nonchalance.
“Of course she should boot him out,” David said. “He’s come without an invitation.” David had known the man was in London, of course, but had discarded the information as inconsequential. He’d been fortunate enough not to encounter the viscount at any rate, but the very thought that the bastard had decided to presume upon a familial relationship to force his way into an event to which he had not been invited sent a white-hot current of rage surging through him.
“Well, he is family,” Rushton said. “Of a sort, anyway. I don’t know that I’d care to claim him, but women tend to be a bit softer in their outlook on such things.”
Dear God, he certainly hoped not. It didn’t matter that Hallston’s callous disregard for his cousins had ultimately led to the circumstances through which David had met and married Poppy—it only mattered that Hallston had hurt her, hurt all three of the women that were now under David’s protection. That he had shown himself now, to presume upon a relationship with Poppy now that her title eclipsed his own, was a trespass not to be borne.
“I’m going,” he said.
“I thought you might,” Rushton said, with a sliver of a smile. “Jilly had them shown into the library, I believe. The viscount was…we’ll say less than pleased.”
Less than pleased was the least of what he was going to be, David thought. The man would be lucky to escape life and limbs intact. The raw fury that prickled the hairs on the back of his neck only rose to a crescendo as he stalked out of the ballroom and down the hallway toward the library. A booming, blustery voice rose to meet him, at first indistinct, but growing more obnoxious and forceful with every step he drew nearer.
“How dare you!” the man bellowed, with the sort of sonorous, slurring voice that put one to mind of a man ruined by years of drink and excess. “How dare you presume to refuse me!”
Poppy’s voice rose to meet David’s ears, magnificent in its calm, even tenor. “Cousin, you were not invited. I won’t have Victoria and Isobel’s ball disrupted in this manner.”
“Disrupt! Disrupt! I’ve never been so insulted in all my life—by God, I ought to have beaten the insolence out of you when I had the chance.”
“Cousin, I would ask that you control yourself,” Poppy said, in that same blasé monotone.
“Papa,” wailed an unknown girl’s voice, “you said you would make her admit us!”
David arrived at the library at last, gratified to see several footmen blocking the door, lest the unwanted guests attempt to take matters into their own hands. Poppy stood, hands clasped before her, resolved and unflinching. A jowly gentleman of some fifty years, none of which had been kind to him, stood before her, much too closely. The morbid flush burnishing his cheeks spoke of barely-leashed rage, and he had puffed out his chest—which did nothing to offset the rotund girth of his belly—in a flagrant attempt to intimidate Poppy. Several feet behind him, three women stood closely together. A rabbit-faced woman, clearly the viscountess, and two young ladies perhaps a bit older than the twins, who wore matching pouts of displeasure and bristled with impatience.
Jilly hung back near the footmen, ready to command the footmen to eject the whole damned family the moment Poppy gave the order.
The viscount snarled, “You think you’ve risen above us simply because you managed to trap some fool nobleman into marriage? You’re no better than you ought to be, and the whole of London knows it. Your disgrace could have cost my girls everything merely by association—and by God, you’ll be making it up to them.” He jabbed her shoulder with one beefy paw, and yet she held her ground, tilting up her chin in the stalwart determination that David had always admired.
“Take your goddamned hands off of my wife.” The words had erupted from him without thought, without conscious design. He only knew that Hallston had laid hands on Poppy, and it had elicited an incandescent fury. The footmen guarding the door shuffled aside to admit him and promptly closed ranks behind him once again.
Hallston swiveled to face him, his bulbous nose turned up in an unwarranted arrogance. “I suppose you must be the fool husband,” he said. “I would have thought you’d have kept a tighter rein on your wife.”
“I would have thought you’d be wise enough not to turn up where you weren’t invited,” David returned silkily. “Between the two of us there’s a fool present, but it’s certainly not me.” He prowled across the floor, his muscles burning to release the pent-up energy that collected inside him, the force of restraining it drawing his shoulders tight and stiff.
He hadn’t realized quite how tense Poppy had been, but the moment he’d announced his presence she had relaxed, and her breath escaped her on a soft sigh. Her white-knuckled grip eased, and her shoulders dropped to a natural slope. She might have intended to follow through this confrontation on her own, but he did not doubt but that she was grateful for his support.
“We’ve a right to be here,” Hallston spat. “D’you know what’ll be said of us if we’re refused?”
“Likely the truth,” David replied. “That not only were you not invited, but that you were ejected when you showed the poor manners to appear anyway.” He shrugged, unconcerned. “There will be talk, of course. All sorts of nasty whispers regarding why you, their closest family, were deliberately excluded.”
“Speculation,” Hallston snapped. “I won’t h
ave my family maligned by such malicious gossip.”
“But would it be gossip, cousin?” David let the word pass from his lips like the basest of curses. “It might have been easy to dismiss such rumors when they were on the fringes of social acceptance, virtual unknowns. Perhaps no one would have cared. But Poppy is now my countess, and Victoria and Isobel are the unqualified successes of the Season. Do you think your reputation will survive society knowing how derelict you were in your duties toward them?”
Hallston made an incomprehensible sound of fury. “I had no duties toward them,” he said. “Got a family of my own, don’t I? No one would have expected me to keep them on indefinitely.”
“But you didn’t keep them on at all, now, did you? You tossed them off the estate like so much rubbish, as soon as you arrived to claim it.”
“It was my estate!” Hallston bleated.
“It was their home,” David roared, and Hallston took a reflexive step back, his eyes going wide and shocked.
With an audible swallow, as if he had just realized his precarious position, Hallston lowered his voice and tried for a measure of composure. “Had I known—had I imagined—”
“What?” David snapped. “Had you imagined that Poppy would become useful to your social aspirations, you might have discovered some heretofore unknown well of human decency within yourself and seen fit to offer them the support to which they were due? It was through her own determination that Poppy managed to rise above the circumstances in which you, in your boundless cruelty, placed her. She owes you nothing—less than nothing. You should be grateful that she chose a private location to see you, because I’d have let you make a fool of yourself in public.”
The rabbit-faced viscountess, pale and trembling, wrapped her arms around her girls. “Hallston,” she said, “perhaps we ought to go.”
But Hallston could not resist a last-ditch attempt at a reprieve. “You can’t throw us out,” he said fiercely to Poppy. “We’re family.”
David scoffed. “Family only at your convenience,” he said. But he turned to Poppy and softened his voice to ask, “Poppy, do you want them to stay?”
She drew a slow, soft breath, but at last she shook her head. “If it had just been me,” she said to David, “I could forgive their cruelty. But they would have let the girls starve in the streets without a second thought.” Her shoulders straightened as she turned to Hallston. “My lord, I would remind you that it was your decision that we were no family of yours. We are simply honoring your wishes. We wish you no ill, but we would prefer not to renew our acquaintance.”
“There you have it, Hallston. Will you go of your own accord, or will you insist on being thrown out?” With a vicious smile, David added, “The ballroom is positively packed. I’m certain I could drum up an audience for you.” He took his place beside Poppy, the closest he’d been to her all evening. He hadn’t given into the impulse to strike Hallston, though he’d badly wanted to—but as Poppy’s small hand slipped into his, her fingers clinging as if she drew strength simply from his presence, he’d never felt more powerful.
∞∞∞
In the end, Hallston and his family had left unaided, though a cluster of footmen had escorted them to the door, along with Jilly, who had cheerfully and succinctly informed them that in the wake of their boorish behavior, they should not expect to receive invitations from anyone who mattered ever again. David had found himself rather touched by the show of solidarity, though he was not certain that Poppy would have approved of such an action. She hadn’t wanted to injure Hallston—she had only wanted him gone. But he supposed that Jilly had been no less furious than he that her home had been invaded in such a fashion, and Hallston had been a fool to think that such a slight against so powerful a woman would have gone unpunished.
Poppy wilted somewhat once they were alone, and she let out a long, trembling breath, full of the tempestuous emotions she had held in strict check for the purposes of standing strong in the face of her so-called family’s censure. But she still held his hand as if it were a lifeline, and he relished the feeling of her slender fingers wrapped within his own.
“I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t invite them to Kittridge Hall for Christmas,” he said, in attempt at lightening the dour mood with humor. “I doubt I could stomach more than a few moments in Hallston’s company without succumbing to the urge to plant him a facer.”
Poppy gave a strange little laugh, raspy and hoarse, as if it had been caught in her throat for weeks. She made a hollow sound that came from somewhere deep in her chest, and it contained a wealth of strain, years and years of strife and worry. She bent her head briefly, and he thought he saw a glint of tears shining in her eyes.
“Oh, Poppy,” he sighed, and he reached for her with his free hand.
She jerked away before he touched her, and her fingers slipped from his. Another horrible little sound escaped her, and another, and she backed away from him as if he presented a far greater threat to her than her ill-mannered bastard of a cousin.
“Please don’t,” she whispered, and her shoulders shook with the force of each rasping breath she took. “Just—just—” She couldn’t seem to get the words out, and she wouldn’t quite look at him.
She hadn’t truly looked at him in days, he realized. That sinking feeling settled in his stomach, churning madly.
“Poppy,” he said. “Something’s been bothering you, hasn’t it?”
Her shoulders lifted in a shrug, but her face crumpled as she averted it from him, in a sort of hopeless despondence. She pursed her lips as if to hold back something she desperately wanted to say to him, but whatever it was she clearly feared it just as much.
“It’s nothing,” she said, though the words sounded forced. “Please. I’d like a moment alone.”
A lie if he’d ever heard one, on both counts. She didn’t need to be alone. She needed to unburden herself. He was her husband; her problems were as much his as they were hers. She ought to be able to share anything with him, but just as she had taken on the responsibility of routing Hallston on her own, so now was she determined to shoulder her worries alone.
He found himself reaching for her again. “Poppy, please—”
“I love you.” She said the words on a pained little gasp, jerking as if she’d surprised herself with the admission.
David felt himself freeze, one hand still extended to her. The moment seemed to drag out uncomfortably, and when she looked at him—finally looked at him—he realized why she had not. He could see it there, in her eyes, just as he’d been able to see everything else. What little color to which she had laid claim leached from her face.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said, as if she’d been asked to give her defense for a crime. “I didn’t want to. But I—I just did, and I do, and—and it’s awful.” She swiped at her face, cringing away from him.
He let his hand drop to his side, feeling as if the room had listed sideways beneath his feet. His cravat was suddenly uncomfortably tight, and his heart—his heart battered his ribs, thumping out a painful rhythm. His throat felt drier than a desert.
“Poppy, you must know I’m…very fond of you.” Even to himself, the words sounded weak-willed, patronizing. They sliced through her confession, an apathetic hand batting away an insect.
“I know,” she said, in a dull, lifeless voice, and he suffered a shock of alarm at the sound. She drew a deep, steadying breath, and set her shoulders, and in mere moments he watched her undergo a terrible change. She’d learned it at last, that cool, polished artifice that she’d lacked. He’d given it to her with his indifference to her tender feelings. He watched her shed layers of herself with a sort of horror, watched her retreat within a shell of unruffled reserve, watched her become what every other lady of the Ton exemplified.
“I know,” she said again, and nothing lived within the cool cast of her eyes. Not a shred of emotion could breach the placid lines of her face. If there lurked a soul within her body, he could see no evid
ence of it. And when she spoke again, there was no spirit to it, nothing that hinted at even the slightest shadow of who she had once been. “One day, I hope I’ll be fond of you, too.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
David awoke the next morning feeling as if he hadn’t slept a wink. Poppy had left the ball early the evening before, pleading a headache, and so he’d been obliged to stay through the end of the event to see the girls safely home. Of course they hadn’t arrived home until the early hours of the morning, and though the girls had gone straight up to bed, chattering animatedly to one another, David had headed for the library, where he had proceeded to slog his way through half a bottle of whisky.
He’d wanted to crawl in bed with Poppy, but he didn’t imagine she would have welcomed the intrusion, given how things had been left between them. Of course he had not meant to hurt her—certainly she would know that. But he had nonetheless, and surely she would want a bit of time and space to collect herself.
But the whisky had been a poor choice, he realized upon rising. The sharp intrusion of sunlight through the bed hangings suggested it had gone past midday already, and the brightness in the room irritated his senses.
The house seemed unusually quiet with the day so far advanced. With two young ladies in residence, there was nearly always some sort of noise—whether it was in preparation for an outing, or practicing the piano, or simply giggling and gossiping as girls of their age were wont to do, he’d grown quite accustomed to the constant chatter and thrum of their lively presence.
Instead it felt as if the house had become a tomb, silent and still. He supposed they might still be asleep—it had been quite a late night—but somehow it seemed unlikely. The clock on the mantel told him it had gone just past three in the afternoon, and he’d never known the girls to sleep quite so late, even when their engagements had kept them out hours past midnight.
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