Page 155 of The Wallflower Takes All

His jaw hardened. “I would never wish you to regret choosing me.”

“Then trust that I know what I am choosing.”

“I do trust you.”

“Not in this.” She reached for his hand. “You still think love has made me careless. If I accept tonight, you will spend our marriage waiting for me to discover my mistake. Every difficulty will become proof that you took too much from me. Every sacrifice will become another sum you must repay.”

His fingers tightened around hers.

“I love you,” she said. “But I cannot accept your offer.”

The pain in his face nearly broke her resolve.

“Because I spoke of duty?”

“Because you still believe my happiness is yours to calculate.” She lifted his hand and pressed it to her heart. “You fear I shall regret choosing you, so you have decided the choice cannot safely be mine.”

His fingers tightened against hers. “I would never wish you to surrender your whole life for me.”

“And I would never wish to spend our marriage proving that I had not.”

He stared at her.

Poppy drew a careful breath. “If I accepted tonight, every difficulty would become evidence that you had taken too much from me. Every sacrifice would become another debt you believed you must repay.”

He shook his head. “That is not what I want.”

“No,” she said softly. “But it is what you fear. I am tired of waiting for gentlemen to decide my future. If I must, I shall take Mama and Freddie to the country and make a life there without you or Lord Caldermere.”

Silence settled between them.

At last, Gabriel lowered his gaze to their joined hands. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “I do not know how to love you without fearing what it will cost you.”

Poppy’s throat tightened.

“And I do not know how to marry a man who cannot believe I would choose the cost.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Algernon Montfort arrived to claim the town house wearing a waistcoat the color of a beetle’s wings and carrying enough snuff to incapacitate a regiment.

He was an entire day early.

A day Poppy had needed. A day to pack, to plan, to breathe. To decide her own fate.

Gabriel had slipped from her bed this morning at dawn, careful and silent so he would not wake her, restrained by the knowledge that staying until full daylight would test every servant’s discretion in the house. Before he left, he had pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder.

“I meant every word,” he had whispered.

Poppy had pretended to be asleep.

Opening her eyes would have meant reaching for him. Asking him to stay. Asking whether a proposal made of honor, fear, desire, tenderness, and terrible timing could ever become the proposal she truly needed from him.

Now Algernon’s carriage drew up before the house, and answers became another luxury she could not afford.

Poppy stood at the drawing room window in a plain gray gown chosen for packing, not for receiving the young man who had come to take her home. The skirt was dusty near the hem, and one sleeve bore a crease from carrying books down from the library.

Her cousin’s equipage was handsome, newly painted, and obviously expensive. A second carriage followed, piled with trunks and bandboxes. Then came a small cart bearing two servants, a rolled carpet, and what appeared to be another cabinet devoted to snuff.