Page 145 of The Wallflower Takes All

He had come with her. He had stood beside her. He had not turned away from the worst of it.

“Yes,” Poppy said. “Let’s go home.”

Mama fell asleep in the hackney before they reached the end of Albemarle Street.

Lady Viva rested against the squabs with one hand curled loosely in her lap, her cloak drawn around her. The exhaustion had stripped the animation from her face. She looked older than she had that morning and, somehow, more peaceful.

Poppy sat beside her.

Gabriel occupied the opposite seat, one hand braced against the side of the carriage as it rolled through London.

For several streets, neither spoke.

Poppy did not know what to say.

Too much had happened. Mama’s disappearance. Bellarosa’s false license. The preposterousness of Mr. Pottle. The first tears Poppy had ever seen upon her mother’s face. The apology she had wanted for ten years and discovered she could not receive without mourning everything that made it necessary.

And Gabriel had witnessed all of it.

Not every word, perhaps. He had given them what privacy a hotel parlor permitted. But enough. Certainly enough.

Poppy looked toward him. “I am sorry,” she said softly.

His brows drew together. “For what?”

She nearly laughed. She had spent so many years apologizing for Mama, the house, and every complication attached to them that the words came before thought. “For drawing you into this.”

“Poppy.”

The quiet reproach in her name stopped her.

Gabriel leaned forward slightly, his voice low enough not to wake Mama. “You did not bring me anywhere I did not choose to go.”

The word settled inside her.

Choose.

He hadn’t had a chance to reply when she’d asked him to choose her. But he had remained beside her today without hesitation.

Poppy looked down at Mama’s sleeping face. “I did not know,” she whispered. “I thought she did not cry because she did not feel it as deeply as I did.”

“I think she felt too much.”

“Yes.”

The carriage rocked gently over the street. Poppy drew in a breath. “That does not excuse everything.”

“No.” The answer came without hesitation.

She looked at Gabriel. He understood. Not merely Mama’s grief, but hers as well. He did not expect Poppy to forgive ten years in one embrace or transform pain into something pretty because the tears had finally arrived.

“She is my mother,” Poppy said. “I love her.”

“Yes.”

“But I cannot continue as we were.”

“No.”