Page 146 of The Wallflower Takes All

The simple agreement steadied her.

By the time the hackney turned into their street, rain was coming down in steady sheets. When the coach drew up before the town house, Gabriel descended first, removing his coat to cover the ladies’ heads as he helped Poppy down. Jenkins opened the door before they reached the top step, alarm visible beneath his composure.

“We found her,” Poppy said.

His shoulders eased. “Lord Caldermere called,” he said solemnly.

Poppy nodded. “I expected as much.”

“He left his card.”

Poppy nodded again.

Gabriel and Jenkins managed to guide Mama upstairs. Lady Viva protested only once, murmuring that seed cake would be acceptable after all if Cook had not allowed it to become stale.

Then she disappeared with Jenkins and her maid.

Poppy remained in the foyer.

Gabriel came down the stairs a moment later.

The house had gone quiet around them.

For one suspended moment, the scene felt unnervingly familiar: Gabriel standing near the open door, the lamplit street beyond him, and Poppy with too much pressed against her heart and no smile left to shield herself.

Neither of them spoke.

Then Gabriel turned toward her.

His face was no longer guarded in the way she had come to expect. Weariness showed in the set of his shoulders, and concern had gentled the hard line of his mouth. He still held himself with that careful composure of his, yet this time it did not hide him entirely.

“Poppy?”

She crossed the foyer until only a breath of space remained between them. “I do not wish to be alone,” she said, and the admission cost her dearly.

Gabriel looked at her for a long moment, as though he heard everything beneath the words.

“I choose you, Poppy,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Three

For several moments, neither of them moved.

The foyer remained hushed around them. They closed the front door against the rain. The lamp upon the wall burned low. Upstairs, a floorboard creaked as Mama’s maid crossed the passage. Somewhere farther back in the house, a servant shut a door with quiet care.

Gabriel stood beside the hall table, his hat resting where he had placed it, his dark coat still buttoned, his expression composed enough to deceive anyone who had not learned how much effort composure cost him.

Poppy had learned.

She could see it in the line of his shoulders, in the way his fingers flexed once at his side and stilled again. His restraint had always looked like armor to her—polished, familiar, nearly impenetrable. Tonight, she could see the cracks.

Poppy drew one slow breath. Her pale pink muslin was wrinkled from the carriage, wet at the hem from the rain, and no longer arranged with any ambition toward charming a marquess. She felt oddly relieved by that. The gown, like Poppy herself, had survived the day and had no further patience for pretending.

“Mama will sleep for hours,” she said.

Gabriel’s gaze moved toward the staircase, then returned to her face. “No doubt.”

“Jenkins has gone to the servants’ hall.”