Page 120 of The Wallflower Takes All
“I think you should have every available choice.”
“Choice.” She looked down at the cottage paper. “A dismal cottage or a gentleman who deigns to accept Mama. What a lovely choice.”
“Poppy.”
“No. Forgive me.” She pressed one hand to her brow, then dropped it. “You are trying to help. I know you are. But tell me honestly—would you ask me to marry a man I do not love?”
The question pierced him more cleanly than any accusation.
Security mattered. He knew it did. He had seen what happened to women left dependent upon the mercy of careless men and careless law. Poppy needed shelter, money, protection, and a place in the world that could not be stolen by Algernon Montfort and his ridiculous preferences.
But Gabriel had kissed her.
He had held desire and trust in his hands.
How could he now send her toward a man whose chief virtue was not recoiling from her mother?
“No,” he said at last. “I could not advise that.”
Her breath caught.
“But I would not advise you to refuse security merely because it does not arrive in the form you wished.”
She looked away. “That sounds like advising without advising.”
He tugged at his lapel. “It is not meant to.”
Her chin lifted sharply. “What is it meant to be?”
“The truth.”
She laughed softly, without much amusement. “You and your truths.”
“The choice must be yours.”
“And I have made my choice,” she said quietly, placing her hand atop the cottage paper.
Something in her face softened so suddenly that he nearly reached for her.
A light knock sounded at the half-open door.
Jenkins appeared. “Forgive me, miss. Lady Vanover has arrived.”
Poppy turned. “Bea?”
“Yes, miss.” Jenkins hesitated. “She is not alone.”
Gabriel felt the warning before he understood it.
Poppy glanced at him, then moved past Jenkins into the hall.
Gabriel followed. When he saw the gentleman beside Lady Vanover, every sensible objection he had ever made to matchmaking went abruptly silent.
So this was Lady Vanover’s final measure?
The Marquess of Caldermere.
Gabriel knew of him. Everyone did. The marquess possessed one of the oldest titles in England, an estate in Kent, another in Derbyshire, a London house large enough to require its own map, and an income respectable men discussed only after ensuring they could not be overheard envying it.
